About the Author

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.