Fumi Yoshinaga was born in Tokyo, Japan in 1971. She discovered amateur manga, doujinshi, in junior high school, when a friend showed her a doujinshi depicting a romantic relationship between two male characters of Captain Tsubasa. While still in school, she hid from others that she was an otaku in order to avoid bullying.[1]
She attended the prestigious Keio University in Tokyo.[citation needed] While at university, she joined a manga club in order to be able to talk to others about manga. When she read the popular manga series Slam Dunk, she was inspired to create a gay love story based on the characters of Kogure and Mitsui. She continued making doujinshi throughout her time as a student and participated in doujinshi conventions.[1][2]
Her professional career started as an addition to her activities as a doujinshi artist. She made her professional debut as a manga artist in 1994 with The Moon and the Sandals, serialized in the newly-founded Boys' Love magazine Hanaoto.[citation needed] The editor of the magazine was a friend of hers that she had met through doujinshi.[1]
She continued working for Boys' Love magazines, but eventually switched to mainstream magazines, as Boys' Love magazines had policies that artists had to include sex scenes, which she found difficult.[1]
Most of her romantic works center male-male romance. At a young age, she read shōjo manga depicting homosexuality, such as Patalliro!, Kaze to Ki no Uta and Hi Izuru Tokoro no Tenshi. Yoshinaga explains that she is not passionate about normative romantic storylines: "However, I can easily broaden my imagination as to stories starting from 'comradeships,' 'master-slave' relationships or the kind of friendship that becomes too passionate and then turns into romance."[1] When she creates gay storylines, she keeps in mind that gay people might read them. With her series What Did You Eat Yesterday?, she wanted to depict the daily life of a middle-aged gay couple without focusing on romance, instead putting the difficulties of living together as a couple and cooking at the center of the plot.[1]
In an interview, she said that "I want to show the people who didn't win, whose dreams didn't come true. It is not possible for everybody to get first prize. I want my readers to understand the happiness that people can get from trying hard, going through the process, and getting frustrated."[2]
Of Yoshinaga's many works, several have been licensed internationally. She was also selected and exhibited as one of the『Twenty Major Manga artist Who Contributed to the World of Shōjo Manga (World War II to Present)』for Professor Masami Toku's exhibition,『Shōjo Manga: Girl Power!』at CSU-Chico.[3]
^The Japanese Association of Feminist Science Fiction and Fantasy. "Gender-SF 2005 SoG Awards: YOSHINAGA Fumi". The Japanese Association of Feminist Science Fiction and Fantasy Official Website (japanese). Retrieved 2009-05-11.
