She was born in Taishidō [ja], Setagaya, Tokyo as Mitsuko Yamada, on September 5, 1948.
[3] She attended Fujimigaoka High School [ja], beginning in 1963, and played in a band, "Weeping Love Strings," with four men/boys.
She returned to Garo in 1978 and also started publishing essays, illustrations and poetry in literary magazines.
[9] From 1981 until 1984, she published the feminist manga series Talk to My Back in Garo, which dealt with being a housewife, a failing marriage and the pressure of raising children.
[1] Yamada ran for a seat in the 1989 Japanese House of Councillors election as part of the Chikyū Club political organization.
[7] Frederik L. Schodt regarded her work as particularly important because of the feminist message, rare in shōjo manga.
[7] The three of them were referred to as the "Three Garo Girls" (ガロ三人娘 Garo san'nin musume),[15] translated by Ryan Holmberg (translator of Talk to My Back) as "three daughters of Garo"; Holmberg argued Yamada's age and motherhood made the moniker "highly misleading", and that while male artists are not usually distinguished by gender, the moniker does so for the female artists and implies that women are inherently bound to families.