Machiko Hasegawa

was a Japanese manga artist and one of the first female manga artists. She started her own comic strip, ''Sazae-san'', in 1946. It reached national circulation via the ''Asahi Shimbun'' in 1949, and ran daily until Hasegawa decided to retire in February 1974. All of her comics were printed in Japan in digest comics; by the mid-1990s, Hasegawa's estate had sold over 60 million copies in Japan alone. Provided by Wikipedia