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Machiko Satonaka

Japanese manga artist

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 30, 2026
Entity authorityQ3776935
Source-derived summary

Machiko Satonaka (里中 満智子, Satonaka Machiko; born 24 January 1948) is a Japanese manga artist. She made her professional debut in 1964 during her second year of high school with the one-shot Pia no Shōzō ("Portrait of Pia"). She has since created nearly 500 manga in a variety of genres. Two of her most notable works are Ashita Kagayaku ("Tomorrow Will Shine"), which won the 1974 Kodansha Publishing Culture Award, and Karyūdo no Seiza ("Constellation of the Hunter"), which won the 1982 Kodansha Manga Award. In addition to creating manga, Satonaka teaches at the Osaka University of Arts as the head of the Character Creative Arts Department and serves on the board of various manga-related organizations in Japan.

Early life

Machiko Satonaka was born on 24 January 1948 in Osaka, Japan. As a child, her elementary school banned students from reading manga such as Astro Boy because of its violent and unscientific content; her teachers even burned manga in front of her class. Satonaka—who admired the works of Osamu Tezuka, Shotaro Ishinomori, Tetsuya Chiba, and Hideko Mizuno—was filled with a desire to "protect manga" and to "contribute to raising its status" in society by becoming an artist herself.

Career

In 1964, during her second year of high school, Satonaka made her professional debut with the one-shot Pia no Shōzō ("Portrait of Pia"), published in Kodansha's Shōjo Friend magazine; for this, she received the inaugural Kodansha New Faces Award. The editorial staff of Shōjo Friend subsequently advertised Satonaka as "a genius girl".

Editorial summary

“Machiko Satonaka” enters the record as japanese manga artist. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Machiko, Satonaka and Japanese can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA productive starting point for separating a subject’s documented career from later reputation and commemoration. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1948, 1964, 1974, 1982—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1948-01-24. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Machiko, Satonaka and Japanese.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Machiko Satonaka” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Machiko, Satonaka and Japanese provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3776935. VIAF identifies the subject as 197183560. The Library of Congress control number is nr96023301. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1948, 1964, 1974 and 1982.

Critical limits

A concise life account rarely captures disputed attribution, private networks or the changing language used to describe a career. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Machiko Satonaka”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Machiko Satonaka primary sources, Machiko Satonaka archive and Machiko research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Machiko Satonaka”?
  2. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
  3. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Machiko Satonaka” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.