Katsuji Matsumoto

Japanese illustrator and shoujo manga artist. Matsumoto's 16-page The Mysterious Clover is recognized as a pioneering work in the field of manga, but he is best known for his shoujo manga Kurukuru Kurumi-chan.

His illustrations were popular from the 1930s through the 1950s, and he contributed illustrations to numerous popular girls' novels by some of the period's most famous authors, including Yasunari Kawabata and Nobuko Yoshiya. He was also a prolific illustrator of children's books and created merchandise for babies, small children, and girls.The Gallery Katsuji Matsumoto in Tokyo is managed by his surviving children.

Matsumoto was born in Kobe, Hyōgo Prefecture, Japan; Katsudi moved to Tokyo with his family when he was 8 years old. At the age of around 13 years and still in school, he first began working for a magazine. After dropping out of the same junior high school at the age of 18, he went to Kawabata Design School and studied painting techniques by himself, and began illustrating for numerous magazines such as New Youth, Girl World and Shonen World. In the wake of the big blow to the publishing industry following the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, Katsudi decided to hone his skills in Paris.

His first stop was Shanghai, where he started to contribute illustrations in the Shanhai nichinichi shinbun (上海日日新聞, "Shanghai Daily Newspaper") to fund his living and the expenses to travel on to Europe. Still in Shanghai, he was forced to return to Japan to join the draft for WWII but was rejected due to being flat footed.

Back in Tokyo, he debuted as a illustrator for a shoujo magazines. His work soon gained popularity among young girls, and he ventured out into the world of manga, serializing his masterpiece Kurukuru Kurumichan which had been published for 35 years in total. Katsudi Matsumoto became one of the most influental Japanese illustrators in the early and mid 20th century and had been named a Pioneer of Kawaii.