WMaki Asakawa was a Japanese jazz and blues singer, lyricist and composer. She was an important voice of the Japanese urban counterculture.
WYukie Chiri was a Japanese transcriber and translator of Yukar.
WAyumi Hamasaki is a Japanese singer, songwriter, record producer, actress, model, spokesperson, and entrepreneur. Through her entire career, she has written all her lyrical content, and has sometimes composed her music.
WSaori Hara is a former Japanese AV idol, model and actress who has also used the name Mai Nanami and most recently Miyabi Matsunoi or Miyavi Matsunoi .
WHasegawa Shigure was a Japanese playwright and editor of a literary journal. Hasegawa was the only woman to be featured in three volumes of the Meiji bungaku zenshū, a collection published by Chikuma Shobō, and she had the title joryū bundan no ōgosho ; Barbara Hartley, author of "The space of childhood memories: Hasegawa Shigure and Old Nihonbashi," cited these facts when describing Hasegawa as "a major literary figure" of the era prior to World War II.
WSugako Hashida was a Japanese scriptwriter. She is known particularly for writing the NHK Asadora Oshin, and was considered Japan's most successful TV drama scriptwriter. She established Hashida Cultural Foundation. Her real name was Sugako Iwasaki .
WMiyuki Hatoyama is the wife of former Prime Minister of Japan Yukio Hatoyama. Originally an actress by profession, Hatoyama later worked as a stylist, interior designer and cookbook author.
WHiratsuka Raichō was a writer, journalist, political activist, anarchist and pioneering Japanese feminist.
WYumiko Igarashi is a female Japanese manga artist. She illustrates the series Candy Candy.
WAi Iijima was a Japanese media personality, writer, activist and actress who was an AV idol early in her career, starring in more than 100 films. She later became the hostess on the nighttime television program, Gilgamesh Night, and transitioned away from AV work. After ending her career in adult videos, Iijima released a musical single Naisho DE Ai! Ai! in July 1993 and soon became a regular on daytime TV talk shows. Iijima became involved in campaigns to educate the public about HIV/AIDS, a cause that few Japanese celebrities were willing to undertake.
WEtsuko Sugimoto , also known as Etsu Inagaki Sugimoto, was a Japanese American autobiographer and novelist. She was born in Nagaoka in Echigo Province in Japan, now part of Niigata Prefecture. Her father had once been a high-ranking samurai official in Nagaoka, but with the breakdown of the feudal system shortly before her birth, the economic situation of her family took a turn for the worse.
WSatoko Ishimine is a Japanese female singer-songwriter. She rose to fame in 1992 when she won the grand prix of the 16th annual Nagasaki Singing Festival at the age of 16, which resulted in her receiving a recording contract with Toshiba EMI.
WMichiko Ishimure was a Japanese writer and activist.
WItō Noe was a Japanese anarchist, social critic, author and feminist. She was the editor-in-chief of the feminist magazine Seitō. Her progressive ideology challenged the norms of the Meiji and Taishō periods in which she lived. She drew praise from critics by being able to weave her personal and political ideas into her writings. The Japanese government, however, condemned her for challenging the constructs of the time. She became a martyr of the ideology in which she believed during the Amakasu Incident.
WMineko Iwasaki , birthname Masako Tanaka , is a Japanese businesswoman, author and former geisha. Iwasaki was the most famous geisha in Japan until her sudden retirement at the age of 29. Known for her performances for celebrity and royalty during her geisha life, Iwasaki was the heir apparent to her geisha house while she was just a young apprentice.
WShidzue Katō , also published as Shidzue Ishimoto, was a 20th-century Japanese feminist and one of the first women elected to the Diet of Japan, best known as a pioneer in the birth control movement.
WKazuyo Katsuma is a Japanese businesswoman and author of several best selling books, with sales numbers in the tens of millions. She writes mostly about self management, work–life balance, gender equality and how women can become more successful. She concentrates especially on optimizing thought processes and increasing productivity.
WRisa Kimura , better known by her pen name Yun Kōga is a Japanese manga artist. She is married to fellow manga artist Tatsuneko, from whom he took the name of Risa Yamada . She is a graduate of Mita Senior High School, Tokyo. She currently lives in Setagaya, Tokyo with her husband and daughter.
WMarie Kondo , also known as Konmari (こんまり), is a Japanese organizing consultant, author, and TV show host.
WAsa Matsuoka was a Japanese philanthropist and cultural ambassador best known as the founder and first chairman of the UNICEF National Committee for Japan. She was born in Kyōbashi-ku, Tokyo, on July 11, 1893, and was the first Japanese woman to earn a PhD from an American university.
WFujiwara no Michitsuna no Haha was a waka poet in the Mid Heian period. She was in her mid-thirties when she began to write her journal Kagerō Nikki a journal written in a combination of waka poems and prose. Her diary gave access to a woman's experience of a thousand years ago, with poems she recorded which vividly recall the past. These poems conveyed the life of a noblewoman during the Heian Period. She is one of the Nihon Sandai Bijin. Her true name is unknown to history.
WMihiro Taniguchi , real name Hiromi Yamase , is a Japanese actress, singer, fiction writer, TV entertainer and former adult video (AV) actress.
WKazuya Minekura is a Japanese manga artist widely known for the Saiyuki series.
WAnna Ogino is a Japanese author and professor of literature at Keio University. She has won the Akutagawa Prize, the Yomiuri Prize, and the Itō Sei Literature Prize.
WNanase Ohkawa is a member of the all-female manga-creating team Clamp. She is the director of the team and is primarily responsible for writing the stories and scripts for Clamp's various works.
WJudy Ongg is a Taiwanese-Japanese singer, actress, author, and woodblock-print artist. Born in Taipei, she graduated from Sophia University in Tokyo, Japan, and after which, she became a naturalized Japanese citizen. Her career has spanned more than four decades.
WNina Revoyr is an American novelist and children's advocate, best known for her award-winning 2003 novel Southland. She is also executive vice president and chief operating officer of Children's Institute, Inc., which provides clinical, youth development, family support and early childhood services to children and families affected by trauma, violence and poverty in Central and South Los Angeles.
WMana Sakura is a Japanese AV idol, gravure model and novelist. Originally debuting as a model, she transitioned to AV in 2012, becoming an exclusive performer for Soft On Demand and starred over 140 adult films since her debut. Sakura is considered one of the most popular and recognizable contemporary AV idols as she managed to crossover into mainstream entertainment with regular appearances in television, films and even video games as well. She also became an accomplished author, publishing several novels, magazine essays and running columns.
WAki Shimazaki is a Canadian novelist and translator. She moved to Canada in 1981, living in Vancouver and Toronto. Since 1991 she has lived in Montreal, where she teaches Japanese and publishes her novels in French.
WMayu Shinjo is a Japanese manga artist. She debuted in 1994 in Shogakukan's Shōjo Comic with "Anata no Iro ni Somaritai". She continued writing for Shogakukan until 2007, with her works appearing in both Shōjo Comic and their other magazine Cheese!. She left the company to go freelance citing a dispute over working conditions and abusive treatment by her editor.
WArina Tanemura is a Japanese manga artist, illustrator, and character designer. She made her professional manga debut in 1996 with the short comic The Style of the Second Love in the shōjo manga magazine Ribon Original and later published her first series, I.O.N, in 1997, in the main Ribon magazine. She gained mainstream popularity from the late 1990s to mid-2000s with her series Phantom Thief Jeanne, Full Moon o Sagashite, and The Gentlemen's Alliance Cross.
WWada Ei was a textile worker and memoirist during the Meiji Era in Japan, daughter of samurai from Matsushiro, Shinano Province. She is known for writing a memoir called the "Tomioka Diary" in which she chronicled her life among the female workers in the Tomioka silk mill.
WMaureen Crane Wartski was a naturalized American author She wrote many novels for children and young adults. Wartski's Eurasian heritage and her deep connection to the natural world inspired many of her novels which address such issues as racism, identity and bullying.
WYamakawa Kikue was a Japanese essayist, activist, and socialist feminist who contributed to the development of feminism in modern Japan.
WThe Year 24 Group is a grouping of female manga artists who heavily influenced shōjo manga beginning in the 1970s. While shōjo manga of the 1950s and 1960s largely consisted of simple stories marketed towards elementary school-aged girls, works by members of the group significantly developed shōjo manga by expanding it to incorporate new genres, themes, and subject material. Narratives and art styles in shōjo manga became more complex, and works came to examine topics such as psychology, gender, politics, and sexuality. Manga produced by the Year 24 Group brought the shōjo category into what scholars have described as its "golden age".