The latter of the volume picks up the stroy of the 8th Shougun and what is happening with her family. Excellent job! Even now, reading my notes on the volume makes me tear up. The first half of the volume dealt with endings - of Tsunayoshi, of Emmonosuke, her Shogunate and others - all of which made me so sad. Perhaps it was that mellowness that comes with the realisation of your age and history with people that gave the volume this melconhony which I both loved and made me cry.

A number of years have passed since Volume 5 and both she and Emmonosuke are visibly older - and more mellow. This volume sees Tsunayoshi near the end of her life and due to that we see her loss and her popularity plummets. Such an excellent job - one I have seen rarely done for women characters especially. The author did a fabulous job with this character - making her both unlikable (dare I say evil at times) but also making her real character with flaws, personality and angst. Tsunayoshi was an awful person - callous, sybaritic and so lonely in the end.

Volume 4 - 6 form a trilogy of sorts following the stages of life for Tsunayoshi and one which I did not expect to love as much as I did. So in this volume we approached the end of the Tsunayoshi arc - and my heart broke which I was not expecting. Yoshinaga has also drawn fan parodies of Slam Dunk, Rose of Versailles, and Legend of Galactic Heroes. Outside of her work with Japanese publishers, she also self-publishes original doujinshi on a regular basis, most notably for Antique Bakery. 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. Of Yoshinaga's many works, several have been licensed internationally. She debuted in 1994 with The Moon and the Sandals, serialized in Hanaoto magazine, but was previously a participant in comic markets. She mentions that her favourite operas are those by Mozart in the author's note of Solfege.

I want my readers to understand the happiness that people can get from trying hard, going through the process, and getting frustrated.' It is not possible for everybody to get first prize. In an interview, she said that 'I want to show the people who didn't win, whose dreams didn't come true. She attended the prestigious Keio University in Tokyo. Fumi Yoshinaga (よしながふみ Yoshinaga Fumi, born 1971) is a Japanese manga artist known for her shōjo and shōnen-ai works.įumi Yoshinaga was born in Tokyo, Japan in 1971.

Ooku fumi yoshinaga