Married manga artists tell story about life with disability

Extract from Kyodo

November 28 2023

TOKYO – Spending an adult life without detecting disabilities is not uncommon and can pose varied difficulties.

And a Japanese couple offers clues for how to approach one such case and a hint at a remedy as well from the perspective of people who are living the experience.

Manga artists Eri Nanato, 43 and Satoshi Kameyama, 41, have brought the issue of adult developmental disorders to the fore via the pages of a manga series that conveys the challenges they face in real life.

Eri was diagnosed with a developmental disorder when she was in her mid-30s. She met Satoshi, who was also an aspiring cartoonist, and had been married one year when she got the news. Before this, the couple’s everyday life had been “like a war” with fights and quarrels lasting until dawn almost daily, she recalled.

The series is titled “My Wife is Developmentally Disabled” for publication in a monthly magazine.

The manga series began in Monthly Comic Bunch, published by Shinchosha Publishing Co., in 2020. The story is about the daily life of Chika, a developmentally disabled woman working at an apparel shop, and her husband Satoru, an assistant to a manga artist.