Shojo manga pioneer Masako Watanabe, creator of 'The Glass Castle,' dies at 97

Drawing romance for generations of girls ... a 97-year career that helped establish 'Japanese shojo manga'

Masako Watanabe, a pioneer of Japan's 'shojo manga' genre and the artist behind 'The Glass Castle,' died at age 97 on the 3rd. Kyodo News reported the death on the 13th, highlighting the cultural legacy she left behind.

Watanabe, a native of Tokyo, began making a major impact in the 1960s. She captivated readers with a succession of works, including 'The Girl with the White Horse' and 'Mother,' which explored in depth the close bonds and conflicts among mothers and daughters and between sisters. She earned widespread critical acclaim for helping lead the revival of 'shojo manga,' delicately portraying girls' romantic dreams and love stories against settings in Western societies.

In 'The Glass Castle,' she explored the good and evil within human nature — and never stopped creating

Often regarded as Watanabe's signature work, 'The Glass Castle' was published in the early 1970s and caused a major sensation. The work earned acclaim for moving beyond a simple romance to portray in three dimensions the good and evil coexisting within a girl's inner world. Although it was never officially published in South Korea, numerous pirated editions circulated there at the time, leaving a deep impression on Korean manga fans.

Her creative vision never settled into one formula and continued to evolve. She later broke new ground in the unfamiliar field of suspense horror with 'St. Rosalind,' while 'The Golden Lotus,' her reinterpretation of the Chinese classic of the same name, ran in a manga magazine for 18 years, from 1993 to 2011, winning fans across generations.

In recognition of her contributions, Watanabe won the Shogakukan Manga Award in 1971 for 'The Glass Castle' and received the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Award from the Japan Cartoonists Association in 2002. In 2006, she became the first Japanese woman manga artist to receive the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold and Silver Rays, cementing her place in history as a living legend of Japanese manga.