Japanese comics, or "manga" have become quite popular around the world, but it is safe to say that few people have heard of what, in Japan at least, may be the most famous newspaper comic strip of all—Sazae-san.

Sazae-san was created by Hasegawa Michiko in 1946, when it ran in a local Kyushu newspaper. It was then serialized [daily] in the Asahi Shimbun newspaper from 1949 until 1974, and it achieved something rare among strips—it became so woven into the national fabric of life that nearly everyone identified with it. Families read and enjoyed it together, and it was so charming that even the most vociferous critics of manga never hesitated to recommend it to young people and even to foreígners. Yet precisely because Sazae-san was so linked to Japanese culture and to post-war life, it has always been a difficult candidate for translation.

Hasegawa was born in 1920, and at the age of sixteen she began working as an apprentice to Suiho TAGAWA, the great pre-war children’s cartoonist, but she soon charted her own course. Tagawa’s best-known work, Norakuro, or "Black Stray," was serialízed in multipage format in a monthly magazine (and after the war it was sometimes regarded as "politically incorrect" because it featured a little dog who joined the Imperial Army). Hasegawa’s postwar strip was serialized in a daily newspaper. It was usually only four panels in length, it was for families, and it was rarely controversial. It was groundbreaking, however, in that it starred a female--Sazae--and in that it was created by one. Hasegawa, who became rich and famous, was Japan’s first successful manga woman artist. [She died in 1992, age 72.]

Sazae was an ordinary young woman with no superpowers or superintelligence or erotic charms, but she had a big heart and a quirky sense of humor, and she used the latter to cope with the trials and tribulations of postwar life. She was the daughter of an ordinary couple, married an ordinary white-collar worker, and had a child. All the members of her extended family, including herself, have amusing names of sea plants or creatures—"Sazae" means a "turbo," an edible shellfish. In a way, Sazae was a Japanese version of Chic Young’s Blondie, a sort of "Everywoman" of her age and culture. Whether during the food shortages of early postwar, impoverished Japan, or during the stress-filled go-go years of the sixties in a much more successful Japan, Sazae reassured her readers with her spirit and good humor.

Because of its huge popularity, Sazae-san quickly became far more than an ordinary newspaper comic strip. It was compiled into a series of sixty-eight paperback books, and it was made into an animated television series, as well as a series of nine wildly successful live-action theatrical films, marring Chiemi ERI. For years, the books were published by Hasegawa’s own publishing company, Shimaisha (“Sisters,” because she ran it with her sisters). Today, in addition to Kodansha’s pioneering English-language edition, the books are also issued in Japanese bunkobon, or "small paperback format books," by the Asahi Shimbun newspaper. As of 1997, over 62 million copies of Sazae-san have been sold.

The world of Sazae-san—the cozy old neighborhoods with friendly families living a relaxed pace of life—is quite different from the hectic high-tech Japan of today, but it still holds dear nostalgic values for its readers, and lives on vividly in their collective imagination. To read Sazae-san is not only to read an interesting comic strip but also to share in this world, and to better understand the Japan of today.

Frederik L. Schodt, introduction to Hasegawa Machiko, the Wonderful World of Sazae-san (Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1997), vol 1.