Machiko Kyo

Machiko Kyo (今日マチ子) is a manga artist and illustrator born in Tokyo. She studied in the first intake of the Department of Inter-Media Art at Tokyo University of the Arts and at Setsu Mode Seminar. In 2004 she began posting Sennen Gahou, a one-page manga, on her blog; it was selected for the inaugural Hobonichi Manga Award in 2005 and jury-recommended at the Japan Media Arts Festival in 2006 and 2007.

Kyo's manga pair a soft, poetic line with subjects from school life to war. cocoon (Akita Shoten, 2010), which follows schoolgirls during the Battle of Okinawa, was staged by mum & gypsy in 2013, published in French as Cocon (IMHO, 2023) and in English by Viz Media (2026), and adapted as an animated film by Studio Sasayuri, broadcast by NHK in 2025. The short Pigtails (Production I.G), based on her Mitsuami no Kamisama, won a Platinum Remi Award at WorldFest-Houston in 2016. Kyo received the Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize New Creator Prize in 2014 and the Japan Cartoonists Association Award Grand Prize (cartoon division) in 2015.

During the pandemic Kyo posted a drawing a day under the hashtag #stayhome, collected in three volumes by rn press; the last, From Tokyo, was launched with a show at 9DAYS GALLERY in Shibuya, Tokyo, in 2023. Machiko Kyo's work is presented in Europe by Tokiol.

Selected exhibitions

2024 Watashi no #stayhome Nikki: Ise Houmonki, Geku Sando Gallery, Ise
2023 From Tokyo, 9DAYS GALLERY, Shibuya Modi, Tokyo
2023 Watashi no #stayhome Nikki 2020–2023, Machida City Museum of Literature, Tokyo