Early life (1917–1934) Toshiko Ueda was born on August 14, 1917, in
Tokyo City. She moved with her parents to
Harbin,
Manchuria (located in present day
China) several days after her birth, where her father worked as a businessman for the
South Manchuria Railway Company. Ueda grew up in Harbin, where she lived with her parents, an older sister, a younger brother, and a servant, and learned to speak both Japanese and Chinese. When Ueda finished elementary school in 1929, she returned to Tokyo to study at the
Shoei Girls' Junior and Senior High School. While attending school in Tokyo, Ueda discovered the manga series by
Katsuji Matsumoto in the manga magazine
Shōjo Gahō, which inspired her to become a manga artist. At the time, manga artistry was a male-dominated profession; it was thus an unusual career for a woman to pursue, and one that Ueda's father did not approve of.
Debut and departure from manga (1935–1950) In 1935, at the age of seventeen, Ueda met Matsumoto through an acquaintance of her brother and convinced him to take her on as an
apprentice. Through this apprenticeship, Ueda published illustrations in the magazine
Shōgaku Rokunensei published by
Shogakukan, and in 1937 published her first manga series in
Shōjo Gahō. This makes Ueda one of the earliest published female manga artists, preceded by
Machiko Hasegawa, who made her debut two years earlier in 1935. Following
Kamuro-san, Ueda illustrated the series , which was serialized in the daily Tokyo newspaper
Tokyo Nichi Nichi Shimbun for a year. Upon the conclusion of
Buta to Kūnyan, Ueda joined a
yōga (western-style painting) workshop to develop her artistic technique, where she studied with painters Junkichi Mukai and Conrad Meili. She continued to create illustrations and manga for various magazines while living in Tokyo. In 1943 she suffered a decline in health, and the manga artist told her that she was too "naive" to be a manga artist and that she should "work and see the world". Subsequently, she decided to leave Japan to return to her family in Harbin. In Harbin, Ueda worked for the South Manchuria Railway Company and later for a local newspaper, while also working as a freelance poster illustrator. Following the
Soviet invasion of Manchuria in 1945 and subsequent takeover of Manchuria by the
Eighth Route Army, the Ueda family took refuge with Chinese friends until 1946, after which they were forced to flee. Ueda and her family
returned to Japan, though her father was imprisoned after being accused of economic war crimes as part of his work with the South Manchuria Railway Company. Ueda's father was executed after several days in detention, though the Ueda family did not learn of his death until three years later. Upon returning to Japan in 1946, Ueda was hired by
NHK, Japan's
public broadcaster, where she worked under the Civil Information and Education (CIE) department of the
Supreme Allied Command. Simultaneously, she worked as an illustrator and manga artist, publishing and in the magazine
Shōjo Romance in 1949.
Shōjo Romance folded in 1951, and she resigned from NHK after the broadcaster asked her to relocate to the United States for work. During this time she also married, but was unable to accept her new role as a housewife, and divorced shortly thereafter.
Return to manga and later life (1951–2008) By the early 1950s, an increasing proportion of manga artists were women, allowing Ueda to return to the career as a full-time profession. In 1951 she published the manga series in the magazine
Shōjo Book, followed by in the magazine
Ribon from 1955 to 1961; the popularity of the latter series was such that its heroine became the magazine's mascot for the duration of its serialization. From 1957 to 1962, Ueda published the manga series
Fuichin-san in the magazine
Shojo Club, which would become her best-known work; the protagonist of the story was similarly the mascot of the magazine for the duration of its publication run. The success of
Boku-chan and
Fuichin-san allowed Ueda to contribute frequently to
shōjo magazines and the general press, though she remained generally less successful than her colleague and
shōjo pioneer Machiko Hasegawa. Beginning in 1973, Ueda began to focus solely on serializing the manga series in the magazine
Ashita no Tomo, a lifestyle magazine for older women. On March 7, 2008, Ueda died from
heart failure at her home in Tokyo at the age of 90. She was still actively serializing
Ako-Bāchan at the time of her death. ==Style==