Girl, 14, set to make professional debut as manga artist

By KAZUYA MIKI / Staff Writer

NIIGATA--Sato Ito is still a teenager, yet she is on the cusp of making her professional debut as a manga artist.

Ito, 14, and a ninth-grader at junior high school, created a manga titled "Toaru Neko-kaburi Shonen no Himitsu" (Secret of a boy wearing cat headgear) that will be published in the December issue of Nakayoshi, a long-running monthly comic anthology published by Kodansha Ltd. It will be released Nov. 2.

Her work first came to the attention of a Nakayoshi editor who sat on the jury of the Niigata Manga Competition hosted by the city government. Ito won the top prize three years in a row, starting in 2009.

She is the youngest person to win the competition and have her work featured in a commercial publication, according to officials of the city government's cultural policy section.

Ito lives in the city's Higashi Ward. She won an encouragement prize in the junior high school division with a manga titled "one season." She submitted the title for the competition in 2011.

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