Year 24 Group mangaka Keiko Takemiya receives the Persons of Cultural Merit award

Keiko Takemiya, one of the most influential manga creators and a member of the Year 24 Group, is one of the recipients of this year’s prestigious Persons of Cultural Merit award, as reported by Nippon TV.

The Persons of Cultural Merit award is annually awarded to people who have made considerable contributions to Japanese culture in their respective fields, such as arts, science, and sports. This year, 21 people were selected to receive the merit and among them are the voice actor behind Goku of Dragon Ball, Masako Nozawa, the architect Shigeru Saka, and others.

To the uninitiated, Year 24 Group refers to certain female manga artists who were active in the 1970s. The term wasn’t coined by the artists themselves but by critics and academics, and the artists grouped under this title are creators who not only transformed shojo manga, meaning comics targeted to young girls, but also reshaped the art of manga altogether, leaving an important mark and influencing future artists, one of them being Berserk‘s Kentaro Miura. Some of the well-known names among Year 24 Group are Moto Hagio, who was also a recipient of the Persons of Cultural Merit award, Yasuko Aoike, The Rose of Versailles‘ Riyoko Ikeda, and Yumiko Ooshima. It is also important to note that the earliest attendees of Comiket, one of the biggest events, were shojo manga readers in the 70s, highlighting the strong bond the readers have with the demographic.

Year 24 Group not only played with conventional forms, emotional expressions, and themes and were innovative, but also gave birth to a now-highly popular genre, Boys’ Love. To quote Mark McLelland and James Welker‘s excellent chapter “An Introduction to ‘Boys Love’ in Japan” in Boys Love and Beyond: History, Culture, and Community in Japan:

The emergence of shōnen’ai manga is most closely associated with Hagio Moto and Takemiya Keiko. In the December 1970 issue of Bessatsu shōjo komikku (Girls’ comic extra), Takemiya published the short narrative “Snow and Stars and Angels and . . .” (Yuki to hoshi to tenshi to), later reissued as “In the Sunroom” (Sanrūmu nite), a narrative that might be considered the very first example of the new manga genre. Hagio followed eleven months later in the same magazine with “November Gymnasium” (Jūichigatsu no gimunajiumu). Both works feature schoolboys in romantic relationships with other schoolboys in historical European settings.

Compared to Hagio, Takemiya’s works weren’t as fortunate in finding a place on the English-language manga shelves. Only two of her works are available in English: Toward the Terra and Stories of Andromeda Galaxy. Both of these series are a delicate mix of political intrigue, human drama, and romance, placed in science-fictional worlds.

The award was given to Takemiya for her contributions to “advancing the status of manga,” and the ceremony for the merit will be held on November 3, 2025.

Source: Nippon TV

Image Credit: The Art Archive