Yokos Bio

The lyrical illustrations of Yoko Mitsuhashi seem as fresh today as when the gifted young Japanese artist began her career nearly fifty years ago. Born in Tokyo in 1936, Yoko studied art and design at the Women's College for Fine Arts there. Following graduation in 1959, she worked at the Nippon Design Center, and in 1962 moved to New York where she joined her sister Ayako, who was established as a successful designer of women's couture clothing.

Yoko quickly gained visibility as a free-lance children's book illustrator and versatile graphic designer, working for prestigious clients such as NBC, Scholastic, Sesame Street, New York Magazine, McCall's, Good Housekeeping, Kodansha, and Doubleday. Her work garnered numerous awards from the Society of Illustrators and AIGA, and was the subject of a solo exhibition at the J. Walter Thompson Gallery in 1963-64. She also contributed regularly to An An,  a popular Japanese magazine, with stories and pictures describing her wonderful  experiences in the city.

"Decorative, graphically appealing, informative, detailed and brilliantly colored," wrote Print Magazine in an article devoted to her work a few years later, "Yoko Mitsuhashi's illustrations of New York typify her radiant style and optimistic point of view as well as her feeling for both oriental and western design traditions...these monthly reports on life in New York cover a variety of topics from Halloween and Valentine's Day to the wedding of a friend and a visit with Paul Davis. " It pronounced her illustrations for children's books "unsurpassed."      

Yoko’s last major exhibition, "New Yoko," took place at the Ayoama Design Space in Tokyo in 1990. Since her untimely death of cancer in 1993, Yoko Mitsuhashi's work is becoming increasingly collectible and has influenced the style of a new generation of illustrators in both New York and Japan.