Keiko Takemiya

Keiko Takemiya (竹宮 惠子) is a Japanese manga artist. She is included in the Year 24 Group. She resides in Kamukura, Kanagawa Prefecture. Takemiya was one of the female authors who in the early 1970's pioneered a genre of girls' comics about love between young men; in December of 1970 she published a short story, "In the Sunroom", in Bessatsu Shojo Komikku, which is possibly the first shonen-ai manga published and contains the earliest known male-male kiss in shōjo manga.

Among her most noted works are the manga Toward the Terra and Kaze to Ki no Uta, which are noted for being pioneering series of the 1970s and 1980s. She received the 1979 Shogakukan Manga Award for shoujo manga and shonen manga respectively for Kaze to Ki no Uta and Terra e..., and the prestigious Seiun Award for science fiction manga in 1978 for Terra e.... She is regarded as "one of the first successful crossover women artists" to create both shoujo and shonen manga. Many of her series have been adapted into anime, including Terra e... in 1980 and 2007, Natsu e no Tobira in 1981, and Kaze to Ki no Uta in 1987. In 1983, she served as special designer to the Sunrise theatrical film Crusher Joe: The Movie, alongside other noted manga artists Yumiko Igarashi, Fujihiko Hosono, Rumiko Takahashi, Hideo Azuma, Hisaichi Ishii, Katsuhiro Otomo, Miki Tori, Shinji Wada and Akira Toriyama.

Since 2000, Takemiya has taught at Kyoto Seika University's Faculty of Manga and is its current dean. In 2009, she was a member of the selection committee for the Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize.

Selected bibliography

 * Ringo no Tsumi (りんごの罪)
 * In the Sunroom (サンルームにて)
 * Natsu e no Tobira (夏への扉)
 * Kaze to Ki no Uta (風と木の詩)
 * To Terra... (地球へ…) (published in English by Vertical)
 * Andromeda Stories (アンドロメダ・ストーリーズ) (published in English by Vertical, Story by Sci Fi author Ryu Mitsuse)
 * Tenma no Ketsuzoku (天馬の血族)