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Japanese manga artist
Fumi Yoshinaga (よしなが ふみ, Yoshinaga Fumi; born 1971) is a Japanese manga artist known for her shōjo and boys' love works.
Fumi Yoshinaga was born in Tokyo, Japan in 1971. She discovered amateur manga, doujinshi, in junior high school, when a friend showed her a doujinshi depicting a romantic relationship between two male characters of Captain Tsubasa. While still in school, she hid from others that she was an otaku in order to avoid bullying.[1]
She attended Keio University in Tokyo.[citation needed] While at university, she joined a manga club in order to be able to talk to others about manga. When she read the popular manga series Slam Dunk, she was inspired to create a gay love story based on the characters of Kogure and Mitsui. She continued making doujinshi throughout her time as a student and participated in doujinshi conventions.[1][2]
Her professional career started as an addition to her activities as a doujinshi artist. She made her professional debut as a manga artist in 1994 with The Moon and the Sandals, serialized in the newly-founded boys' love magazine Hanaoto.[citation needed] The editor of the magazine was a friend of hers that she had met through doujinshi.[1]
She continued working for boys' love magazines, but eventually switched to mainstream magazines, as boys' love magazines had policies that artists had to include sex scenes, which she found difficult.[1]
Most of her romantic works center male-male romance. At a young age, she read shōjo manga depicting homosexuality, such as Patalliro!, Kaze to Ki no Uta and Hi Izuru Tokoro no Tenshi. Yoshinaga explains that she is not passionate about normative romantic storylines: "However, I can easily broaden my imagination as to stories starting from 'comradeships,' 'master-slave' relationships or the kind of friendship that becomes too passionate and then turns into romance."[1] When she creates gay storylines, she keeps in mind that gay people might read them. With her series What Did You Eat Yesterday?, she wanted to depict the daily life of a middle-aged gay couple without focusing on romance, instead putting the difficulties of living together as a couple and cooking at the center of the plot.[1]
Yoshinaga’s work often challenges traditional gender roles. She creates female characters who behave with emotional clarity and rationality, and male characters who are openly emotional or irrational, reversing stereotypical portrayals. Her manga convey a “gallant” or graceful tone (isagiyoi), balancing emotional restraint with sharp insight into human behavior. In Ōoku: The Inner Chambers, Yoshinaga imagines a matriarchal Edo-period Japan, using the gender-reversed premise to critique societal norms and highlight feminist themes.[3]
In an interview, she said that "I want to show the people who didn't win, whose dreams didn't come true. It is not possible for everybody to get first prize. I want my readers to understand the happiness that people can get from trying hard, going through the process, and getting frustrated."[2]
Outside of her work with Japanese publishers, she also self-publishes original doujinshi on a regular basis, most notably for Antique Bakery. Yoshinaga has also drawn fan parodies of Slam Dunk, Rose of Versailles, and Legend of Galactic Heroes.
Yoshinaga’s manga are characterized by a unique use of pacing and panel composition, drawing on formal techniques traditionally associated with shōjo manga. Natsume Fusanosuke identifies her use of ma (temporal beats or pauses) and mahaku (white or blank space) as central to her narrative style. These techniques help her create emotional resonance, whether in moments of dry humor or intense pathos. Yoshinaga often depicts scenes using minimal background detail, focusing instead on facial expressions and timing. This approach allows jokes to “land” with a delay and emotional scenes to linger subtly across multiple panels. According to Natsume, this minimalist and expressive technique reflects both Yoshinaga’s artistic shyness and her formal innovation.[3]
Manga critic Natsume Fusanosuke views Yoshinaga’s approach as a sophisticated extension of shōjo manga expression, while other scholars such as Hikari Hori have emphasized her feminist and deconstructive storytelling.[3]
Of Yoshinaga's many works, several have been licensed internationally. She was also selected and exhibited as one of the "Twenty Major Manga artist Who Contributed to the World of Shōjo Manga (World War II to Present)" for Professor Masami Toku's exhibition, "Shōjo Manga: Girl Power!" at CSU-Chico.[4]
She has received several awards for her works:
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