Yan Gao

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Gao Yan is a Taiwanese manga artist and illustrator based in Tokyo since 2022, working across the cultural landscapes of Taiwan and Japan. A graduate of the Visual Communication Design department at the National Taiwan University of Arts, she also completed a short-term painting study abroad program at the Okinawa Prefectural University of Arts. She cites Osamu Tezuka's Astro Boy as her primary early influence. It was during her time in Okinawa, at age 22, that she encountered two works which pushed her to pursue manga seriously: Kyouko Okazaki's Rivers' Edge and Youko Kondou's Miharashigaoka nite: Kanzenban.

Her artistic breakthrough came after attending Haruomi Hosono's 2017 performance in Taiwan. Deeply moved, she self-published a 32-page zine, <i>The Song about Green</i>, in 2018 in a limited run of 600 copies, which sold out quickly. Although released only in Taiwan, it unexpectedly reached Takashi Matsumoto, drummer of the legendary Japanese band <i>Happy End</i>, who shared it with Hosono. This led to Gao being invited to Hosono’s concert and featured in the NHK documentary <i>No Smoking: A Haruomi Hosono Documentary Movie</i>. The narrative of <i>The Song about Green</i> is deeply steeped in Japanese culture, drawing from "New Music" (the 1970s-80s Japanese folk and rock movement), the cinema of Shunji Iwai (notably <i>All About Lily Chou-Chou</i>), and the literature of Haruki Murakami.

The year 2019 was a turning point. Gao Yan participated in a joint exhibition with artists from South Korea and Hong Kong in Tokyo, where an editor from <i>Monthly Comic Beam</i> (KADOKAWA) discovered her work and offered her a serialization. In 2020, she represented Taiwan at the Angoulême International Comics Festival and Around the same time, her illustrations in an artist catalogue published by Genkosha and Shoeisha were noticed by Haruki Murakami's book designer. Murakami subsequently invited her to create the cover and 13 interior illustrations for his biographical essay <i>Abandoning a Cat: Memories of my Father</i> (2020), making Gao the first Taiwanese artist to collaborate with the novelist. Their collaboration continued in 2025 when she provided illustrations for a special edition of Murakami's early short stories <i>On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning</i> and <i>The Mirror</i>.

Her expanded, full-length debut The Song about Green: Gather the Wind was serialized in <i>Monthly Comic Beam</i> from May 2021 to April 2022, and published simultaneously in Japan and Taiwan in May 2022. Her second major series, Sukima, noted for being a more intimate and politically conscious narrative, was serialized in the same magazine from April 2023 to May 2025. The series shares its title with a 64-page self-published zine Gao Yan released in 2019, though the author considers the connection between the two works mostly thematic. Born from her own experience as an exchange student and her involvement in social movements, Gao has described the work as her "awakening as a Taiwanese person," aiming to help the world see, understand, and recognize the situations facing both Taiwan and Okinawa. Based on her own experience as an exchange student, the story explores themes of grief, love, LGBTQ+ identity, and political awakening against the backdrop of Okinawa's complex history, the Sunflower Student Movement, and the 2018 Taiwanese same-sex marriage referendum. Gao has described her political awareness as inseparable from her creative identity, rooted in the fragility of life in a democratic Taiwan facing external pressure: "If that land asks me for help, there's no way I would stay silent." In 2026, she launched her latest series, Hyakunichi Coffee, on KADOKAWA's new digital platform <i>COMIC BEAM:Q</i>. Her work has earned acclaim from filmmakers and fellow manga artists, including Hirokazu Kore-eda, Hisashi Eguchi, and Inio Asano, among others.

Beyond manga, Gao designed the international poster for Hiroshi Okuyama's film <i>My Sunshine</i> (2024) and provided cover illustrations for novels including <i>The Cat Who Saved Books</i> by Sosuke Natsukawa and <i>Higanbana ga saku shima</i> by Li Kotomi.

Awards and Accolades:

• <i>The Song about Green: Gather the Wind</i> — Ranked 9th in the 2023 Kono Manga ga Sugoi! guidebook (Male category); Ranked 2nd in Freestyle Magazine's "The Best Manga 2023"; Nominated for the 14th Taiwan Golden Comic Award (2023).
• <i>Sukima</i> — Ranked 2nd in the 2026 Kono Manga ga Sugoi! (Female category); Ranked 2nd in Freestyle Magazine's "The Best Manga 2026"; Nominated for the 30th Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize (2026); Winner of the Manga Kingdom Tosa Award at the 55th Japan Cartoonists Association Awards (2026).