Machiko Hasegawa (長谷川町子, Hasegawa Machiko, January 30, 1920 – May 27, 1992) 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. Source: Wikipedia (en)