Chihiro Iwasaki

[2] In 1936, Iwasaki graduated from high school, and the next year, at the age of eighteen, she began to learn how to draw Japanese calligraphy with inkstick and ink brush.

[2] That year, she received the Juvenile Culture Award of the Shogakukan Publishing Co. for her illustration works for children's books and magazines.

In 1966, Iwasaki moved to a cottage with studio in the Kurohime Highlands, near Lake Nojiri, Nagano Prefecture.

She loved the Kurohime Highlands and spent much time making illustrations for children's books in this cottage every year.

Senka no Naka no Kodomo-tachi (Children in the Flames of War), published in 1973, won the bronze medal of the Leipzig International Book Fair the following year.

Seven years after her death, in 1981, Totto-Chan: The Little Girl at the Window, written by Tetsuko Kuroyanagi, was published with selected illustrations by Iwasaki.

Her main illustrations were watercolors, but some of her works included traditional Japanese and Chinese ink painting techniques.