is a Japanese manga artist. She published manga mostly in the 1980s and 1990s in the magazine Bessatsu Margaret. She was commercially successful; her series Hot Road (1986–1987) was one of the best-selling shōjo manga of the 1980s. Tsumugi developed a specific style within the visual and narrative grammar of shōjo manga to convey the emotional depth of her characters. Her storytelling techniques and play with form got attention by manga scholars and critic. Life and career Tsumugi does usually not accept interviews and there is only little known about her personal life. She was born in Yokohama in 1964. Growing up, her mother forbade her from reading manga and both of her parents were drawing in their freetime; her father drew landscapes. She was 17 years old, when she started her career as a professional manga artist. Her first published work was the short story "Machibito" ("Waiting"), which appeared in 1982 in the manga magazine Bessatsu Margaret. She became a regular contributor to the magazine and wrote short stories. From 1984 until 1985, she drew her first series with Tsukue wo Stage ni. Her most successful series was Hot Road, which she published in Bessatsu Margaret between 1986 and 1987. The story revolves around a highschool girl with family issues who falls in love with a juvenile delinquent who is part of a motorcycle gang. The four tankobon volumes had 7 million copies in print, which made it one of the best-selling shōjo manga of the 1980s. Her next series ("Without Blinking") was her longest; it ran from 1987 until 1990 and depicts the love story between two high school students in a small town. She became friends with fellow Bessatsu Margaret contributors Fusako Kuramochi, and Kaoru Tada. In 1995, she stopped her career. She only published a manga again in 2007 with My Gardener. Apart from that, she released a picture book compiled of watercolor panels from previous manga of hers in 2014 and supervised the script of the 2014 live-action film adaptation of Hot Road. Style Storytelling She uses inner monologue in form of a stream of consciousness narration and her storytelling is considered documentary-like realistic. Tsumugi's storytelling has a focus on conveying emotions like pain, anxiety and the eventual healing from them. Themes like mental health and grief appear in Kanashimi no Machi ("Town of Sorrow), the short story "Yokohama, 14-sai, Yūko" deals with a 14-year-old