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The Changeling Shōjo Manga's Shio Satō Passes Away (Updated)
posted on by Egan Loo
Shio Satō, the pioneering shōjo and science-fiction artist best known for One Zero, The Changeling, and other literary works, passed away in a Tokyo hospital on April 4 at 9:51 p.m. due to a brain tumor. She was 57.
Satō was born in Miyagi Prefecture with the given name Chiyoko, but she adopted the pen name Shio Satō as a wordplay on "sugar salt" (pronounced "Satō Shio" in Japanese). She made her professional debut in 1977 and soon focused on contemplative science-fiction stories such as One Zero and Yume-miru Wakusei.
The North American manga publisher Viz released Satō's The Changeling in its Four Shōjo Stories manga anthology — one of the first attempts to translate and print shōjo manga into English.
Source: Yomiuri Shimbun
Update: More background information from Jiji Press added.
Update: Satō was 59 by the traditional Japanese age reckoning, which counts each calendar year separately. She was 57 by modern age reckoning. Thanks, Matt Thorn and Jenna Roberts.
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