Keiko Takemiya

Keiko Takemiya (竹宮 惠子, Takemiya Keiko, born February 13, 1950) is a Japanese manga artist and the current president of Kyoto Seika University. She is included in the Year 24 Group. She resides in Kamakura, Kanagawa Prefecture. The year 24 group was a group of female authors in the early 1970s who helped change shoujo manga from being created by male authors to being created by female authors. As part of this group, Takemiya pioneered a genre of girls' comics about love between young men; in December 1970 she published a short story, "In the Sunroom", in Bessatsu Shōjo Komikku, which is possibly the first shōnen-ai manga published and contains the earliest known male-male kiss in shōjo manga.

Takemiya cites her influences as being shonen manga, the work of Shotaro Ishinomori, films, and documentaries. In 1972, after publishing Sora ga Suki!, Takemiya travelled to Europe so that she could find out more about life there as research for Kaze to Ki no Uta. After that, she travelled to different parts of Europe on an almost annual basis.

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 shōjo manga and shōnen 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 shōjo and shōnen 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. She served as Dean of the Faculty of Manga from April 2008 until March 2013. She has been President of the university since April 2014. Her term as President ends in March 2018. From 2009 to 2014, she served as a member of the selection committee for the Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize.

In 2014 she was awarded the Medal of Honor with Purple Ribbon by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications of Japan for her contributions to Manga.