Uchida Shungicu

Uchida Shungicu (born Aug. 7, 1959, Nagasaki, Japan) is a Japanese singer, dancer, author, and cartoonist known for her titillating manga (Japanese cartoons), which used subversive themes and flouted social propriety to keep her audience engaged.

Shungicu’s father deserted the family when she and a younger sister were in primary school. Sometime later, her mother, a dance teacher and bar hostess, began living with a fellow dance instructor. When Shungicu was forced to sleep with her stepfather, her mother did not interfere. One of Shungicu’s happiest memories from those unhappy days was receiving a ream of rough paper from her fourth-grade teacher after revealing that her dream was to become a manga-ka (cartoonist).

Shungicu dropped out of high school in her second year and found work in a restaurant, a bar, a printshop, and as a domestic. At times she slept under a bridge. Five years later she left Nagasaki for Tokyo with her beloved manga and $7,000 in savings.

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Shungicu’s first collection of manga, entitled Shungicu, was an instant hit when it appeared in 1984. Blending sex with what she described as “gag nonsense” that did not offend readers, she won a huge following matched by few others in the crowded field of Japanese manga-kas. One of Shungicu’s most popular works was Minami-kun no kobito (“Minami’s Girlfriend”), a manga portraying an amiable girl, Chiyomi, who suddenly shrinks to the size of a doll but continues to develop normally. From her place inside her friend Minami’s pocket, she accompanies him everywhere he goes. She talks to him from the palm of his hand and sleeps on his pillow beside his head. They fall in love, but she is fatally injured when he is struck by a car and she is thrown to the ground. The romantic fantasy was made into a popular television drama in 1994.

Between 1984 and 1994, Shungicu produced more than 60 books, including three collections of essays. Her manga books include Hen na kudamono (“Strange Fruit”), Maboroshi no futsū shōjo (“The Elusive Ordinary Girl”), and Shīrakansu romansu (“Coelacanth Romance”). In 1994 Shungicu won Japan’s version of the French literary prize Prix des Deux Magots for two best sellers. The first, Fatherfucker, is a titillating yet disturbing autobiographical novel that sold 300,000 copies after its appearance in late 1993. By July 1994 it had gone into 18 printings, and the following year it was made into a film, released under the title The Girl of Silence. Shungicu’s other award-winning novel, Watashitachi wa hanshoku shite iru (“We Are Reproducing”), consists of a series of manga on pregnancy, birth, and bringing up an illegitimate baby.

In 2009 two of Shungicu’s books were adapted for the screen: Kyūketsu shōjo tai shōjo Furanken (“Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl”) and Yami no manimani (“At the Mercy of the Darkness”). She also acted in a number of films, including Kao (“Face”; 2000), Bijita Q (“Visitor Q”; 2001), and Yami no manimani.