D+Q has acquired World English rights to My Picture Diary by Fujiwara Maki. We’re so proud to share the book’s cover today! In stores Spring 2023. Acquiring editor Tom Devlin. Translated by Ryan Holmberg.
Fujiwara was the wife of the celebrated mangaka Yoshiharu Tsuge. In My Picture Diary, she documents a year of their lives together with her own artistry.
“I wanted to record our family’s daily life while our son, Shosuke, was small,” says Fujiwara, “but as 8mm cameras were too expensive and we were poor, I decided on the picture diary format instead. I figured Shosuke would enjoy reading it when he got older.”
Drawn in a simple, personable style, and covering the same years fictionalized in Tsuge’s final masterpiece The Man Without Talent, Fujiwara’s journal focuses on the joys of daily life amidst the stresses of childrearing, housekeeping, and managing a depressed husband.
This edition sheds light on Fujiwara’s life, her own career in art, writing, and underground theater, and her extensive influence upon her husband’s celebrated manga.
“As is usually the case, I hear about manga history through Ryan Holmberg or Asakawa Mitsuhiro. In this case, Ryan had posted and translated a couple pages from this diary on his instagram. I knew it existed but had no idea the artistry nor the important period it covers. Like so much of the interesting manga we’ve published, which usually begins with Tracy Hurren or me saying to Ryan, ‘WHAT IS THIS? Is it something we should publish?’ the answer was obvious. I’m very excited to introduce this diary to the English-speaking fans and I hope there is more to come.”—Executive Editor Tom Devlin
Fujiwara Maki (1941-99) was an artist, actress, and writer. After growing up poor during and after World War II, Fujiwara moved to Tokyo in the ‘60s and became a leading actress in the underground theater scene. In 1969, she met manga artist Tsuge Yoshiharu; they got married after their son Shosuke was born in 1975. She began drawing and writing in the early ’80s, completing her first and best-known work, My Picture Diary, in 1982.
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