My Picture Diary

Fujiwara Maki (1941 1999) was an artist, actress, and writer. After growing up poor during and after World War II, Fujiwara moved to Tokyo in the 1960s and became a leading actress in the underground theater scene. In 1969, she met the manga artist Tsuge Yoshiharu; they got married after their son, Shosuke, was born in 1975. She began drawing and writing in the early 1980s, completing her first and best-known work, My Picture Diary, in 1982. Her other publications include the children s book Guess What Kind of Shop This Is (1985) and the painting collection Candy Store (1994). After cameoing in movie adaptations of Tsuge s manga in the early 1990s, Fujiwara died of cancer at the age of fifty-seven.

“A charming and at times heartbreaking read.” —Malaka Gharib, NPR“[My Picture Diary presents] universally empathetic glimpses of a wife and mother increasingly overwhelmed by home life, suffocating under sexist expectations.” —Booklist, Starred Review“Decades after it was drawn, this glimpse behind the curtain of a troubled artistic relationship remains vital and resonant.” —Publishers Weekly“[My Picture Diary is] a vessel for internal processing—the documented venting of a woman whose surroundings are constraining to the point of alienation.” —The Comics Journal“A charming and at times heartbreaking read.” —NPR Books We Love“Maki ends up giving a voice to countless women who feel stifled and trapped by roles pushed on them by society.” —Otaku USA“My Picture Diary provides more context and insight into Tsuge’s work but also shows Fujiwara as an artist in her own right.” —Manga Bookshelf“The diary entries portray both a simple story of family life... and a powerful critique of the patriarchal systems that Maki struggled against.” —Book Riot“[An honest] example of domestic life portrayal in Japan in the early 1980s.” —Graphic Medicine“Unvarnished… Fujiwara documents what it’s like living with depression in a frank manner.” —Comics Beat