Sakumi Yoshino

was a Japanese manga artist and literary critic. She became known for her shōjo manga in Bouquet magazine in the 1980s and 1990s. In the late 1990s, she also started drawing seinen manga and publishing essays on film, manga and literature.

Life and career Yoshino was born in 1959 in Osaka. She developed a passion for drawing while in elementary school and became an avid manga reader, becoming especially fond of shōjo manga and artists from the Year 24 Group such as Moto Hagio, Ryoko Yamagishi and Yumiko Oshima. Initially, Yoshino did not aspire to become a manga artist or work for a company after high school. When a classmate of hers began a career as a professional manga artist, however, she decided to give it a try as well.

Yoshino had an independent start in the industry, occasionally providing temporary assistance to other manga artists but not regularly, and did not attend art school. Her first work as a professional manga artist was the short story "Utsu Yori Sō ga Yoroshii no!", which appeared in the January 1980 issue of Bouquet. A few years into her career, she developed a passion for drawing rather than just seeing it as a way to make ends meet and moved to Tokyo to fully focus on her career in 1985. She was one of the most prominent artists working for Bouquet in the 1980s and 1990s, creating series such as Shōnen wa Kōya wo Mezasu and Juliet no Tamago for the magazine.

When the editorial team of Bouquet changed and the magazine was eventually shut down at the end of the 1990s, Yoshino switched from Shueisha to publishing with Shogakukan. With Shogakukan, she drew short stories and series both for the magazine Petit Flower and its successor Flowers, both of which had a similar target group of young women as the magazine she previously worked with, and the seinen manga magazine Big Comic Spirits, which had adult men as its main target group. In 2002, she created the cover illustration for the first issue of Flowers. She also became an active film and literature critic, publishing essays and predictions of horse racing.

Style Yoshino considers manga artists Yumiko Oshima and Moto Hagio as her greatest influences.

Yoshino preferred drawing short stories and episodic series such as Itaike na Hitomi over continuous series as she was fatigued by committing to character development and solving issues coming up in the story line. Her preference for short stories was also due to their capacity to incorporate sudden and violent breaks in storytelling, which allowed her to conclude a manga abruptly the need for extensive justification.

While her work for female readers features an irregular panel layout, she arranges panels in separate squares in her work for seinen magazines.

Legacy Yoshino's work has been translated into Chinese and Korean and was translated into French in 2024. Her short story Kioku no Gihō was adapted into a live-action film in 2020. Gekka no Ichigun (月下の一群) 1982–1983 Serialized in BouquetPublished by Shueisha in 3 vol. Happy Age 1984–1985 Published by Shueisha in 2 vol. Shōnen wa Kōya wo Mezasu (少年は荒野をめざす) 1985–1987 Serialized in BouquetPublished by Shueisha in 6 vol. Juliet no Tamago (ジュリエットの卵) 1988–1989 Serialized in BouquetPublished by Shueisha in 5 vol. La Masquera 1990 Published by Shueisha in 1 vol. Itaike na Hitomi (いたいけな瞳) 1990–1993 Serialized in BouquetPublished by Shueisha in 8 vol. Eccentrics 1993–1994 Published by Shueisha in 4 vol. Boku Dake ga Shitteiru (ぼくだけが知っている) 1994–1998 Serialized in Bouquet and Bouquet DeluxePublished by Shueisha in 5 vol. Renaiteki Shunkan (恋愛的瞬間) 1996 Serialized in BouquetPublished by Shueisha in 5 vol. Yoshino Sakumi Gekijō (吉野朔実劇場) 1996–2016 Essay mangaSerialized in Hon no ZasshiPublished by Hon no Zasshisha in 11 vol. Period 2003–2014 Serialized in Monthly IkkiPublished by Shogakukan in 5 vol. Tōmei Ningen no Shissō (透明人間の失踪) 2003 Serialized in FlowersPublished by Shogakukan in 1 vol. Short story collections

Short stories