Hasegawa, one of postwar Japan’s most famous creators of manga or cartoons, began her student apprenticeship in the late 1930s and became an independent artist in the early years of Occupied Japan. She was the creator of a cartoon strip named Sazae-san, featuring a young woman named Sazae and her family-father, mother, and younger brother. Not only was Hasegawa able to survive and gain fame as a woman cartoonist in a male-dominated profession, but her leading cartoon character was also female. Sazae was at first portrayed as a young unmarried elder sister but later became a young housewife with her own family and salaryman husband. The name Sazae means cuttle fish; she and all of the other characters were named for products of the sea.

The strip, first published in 1946, was picked up by a leading mass circulation newspaper, Asahi, in 1949, guaranteeing exposure to a wide public. It was a huge success at the time and for many years to come. Although the strip was a warm-hearted celebration of family life in the new Japan, one in which husband and wife were legally equals under the Constitution and Civil code, Hasegawa herself never married. By the time of her death in 1992, her work had appeared in books, film, and television. Twelve volumes of her cartoons have been also recently been published in English. Moreover, by the 1990s, many younger woman had joined the ranks of successful manga artists, though not without a struggle. A museum has been established in Setagaya ward in Tokyo for the exhibit of Hasegawa’s original drawings and memorabilia.

The examples which appear here are taken from the early postwar period and gently illustrate the reconstruction of family life in a time of foreign occupation and domestic social reform. The viewer is welcome to judge whether or not Sazae is indeed, as sometimes suggested, a counterpart to "Blondie" in the famous American comic strip created by Chic Young in the early 1930s (and still running in 2007), or even "Harriet" in the postwar radio and television series, "Ozzie and Harriet," or is distinctively Japanese in an era of suburban housewife confronting changing meanings of the ideal, "good wife/wise mother."