About Keishi Tokura
Keishi Tokura is a Tokyo based manga artist and writer whose work blends literary storytelling, urban research, and character-driven drama.
Educated in New York, she draws from cross-cultural experiences to explore community, identity, and the structures that shape contemporary life.
Rooted in both literary sensibility and documentary practice, Tokura approaches each project with the dual perspective of a storyteller and a field researcher―walking cities, conducting interviews, and collecting the textures of real places before transforming them into narrative form.
Alongside her commercial work, she produces independent ZINEs and web manga that draw from urban research, personal history, and on-the-ground fieldwork in Shibuya and New York. She is currently expanding her practice toward projects set in Brooklyn’s journalism and community landscapes.
Biography
Keishi Tokura was born in Chiba, a prefecture bordering Tokyo, and moved to the United States at the age of eighteen. She studied piano and vocal music at the Conservatory of Music at Brooklyn College (CUNY). Her years in Brooklyn were formative, shaping not only her artistic sensibilities but also her long-standing interest in urban life, local journalism, and community-based narratives—threads that would later become central to her work as a manga artist.
After returning to Japan, she did not pursue a path as a performer or educator. Instead, she entered the field of editorial and media work, spending several years in music publishing, advertising, and editorial production while also freelancing as a writer.
During this period, she collaborated with musicians, actors, and filmmakers in theater and independent film projects, integrating musical sensibilities, narrative structure, and visual practice. These experiences—journalistic curiosity, editorial discipline, and cross-disciplinary collaboration—would later converge to form the foundation of her narrative approach as a manga artist.
Tokura made her commercial debut in 2020 and launched her first long-form serialized series in 2025. Her cross-disciplinary background continues to inform her storytelling, particularly in projects that intersect journalism, urban life, and contemporary social issues.
Selected Themes
- Alternative forms of community and support networks
- Minority experiences and dual identity across Japan and the United States
- Faith, prayer, and the symbolic language of light and shadow
- Urban life, gentrification, and socio-spatial structures
- Fieldwork-based storytelling and documentary sensibility
- Emotional realism and psychological nuance
Awards & Recognitions
- Excellence Award, 28th MANGA OPEN (Kodansha) ― Screenplay
- Honorable Mention, 12th Monthly Manga One Award (Shogakukan) ― Original Story
- Honorable Mention, 2nd Bible Light Novel Newcomer Award (The Christ Weekly) ― Fiction