Leiji Matsumoto Wife: Who Is Miyako Maki?

Miyako Maki is the wife of late manga artist Leiji Matsumoto.

The couple tied the knots in 1961.

Maki is also a Japanese manga artist, who began in the 60s and made contributions to the development of shōjo manga (for girls).

She also produced manga for adults, such as gekiga and redikomi.

Maki did some collaborative work with her husband, Matsumoto.

For her works, she won “the Japan Cartoonists Association Award, the Montreal International Comic Contest prize, and the Shogakukan Manga Award.”

Who Was Leiji Matsumoto?

Leiji Matsumoto was a Japanese manga artist, and “creator of several anime and manga series” including Captain Harlock.

Born on January 25, 1938, in Kurume, Fukuoka, Matsumoto started drawing at age six until he embraced full manga artistry as a teenager.

Matsumoto’s first public expression was in 1954, with Mitsubachi no bōken in the magazine Manga Shōnen, under the name Akira Matsumoto.

He became famous when he created the series, Otoko Oidon, and this was followed by “the mature-themed dark comedy Western seinen series Gun Frontier for Play Comic magazine in the 70s.”

Matsumoto celebrated six decades of his career in 2014, with the unveiling of the manga Captain Harlock, illustrated by Kōichi Shimahoshi, in the pages of Akita Shoten’s Champion Red magazine.

It “retells the story of the original 1978 Space Pirate Captain Harlock manga”, and is now licensed in the United States by Seven Seas.

Matsumoto died on February 13, 2023, at the age of 85.

He passed on in Tokyo, following an acute heart failure.