Portal:Speculative fiction/Selected biography/63

Rumiko Takahashi (高橋 留美子, Takahashi Rumiko, born October 10, 1957) is a Japanese manga artist. With a career of several commercially successful works, beginning with Urusei Yatsura in 1978, Takahashi is one of Japan's most affluent manga artists. Her works are popular worldwide, where they have been translated into a variety of languages, with over 200 million copies in circulation. She has twice won the Shogakukan Manga Award: once in 1980 for Urusei Yatsura, and again in 2001 for Inuyasha.

Takahashi's professional career began in 1978. Her first published work was the one-shot Katte na Yatsura, for which she was awarded the Shogakkan New Comics Award. Later that same year, she began her first serialized story in Weekly Shōnen Sunday: Urusei Yatsura, a comedic science fiction story. She had difficulty meeting deadlines to begin with, so chapters were published sporadically until 1980. During the run of the series, she shared a small apartment with two assistants, and often slept in a closet due to a lack of space.