Ueda's time in Manchuria, from her idyllic childhood to the arrest and execution of her father during Japanese repatriation, was a significant influence on her manga.

[2] Ueda grew up in Harbin, where she lived with her parents, an older sister, a younger brother, and a servant, and learned to speak both Japanese and Chinese.

[5][6] At the time, manga artistry was a male-dominated profession; it was thus an unusual career for a woman to pursue, and one that Ueda's father did not approve of.

This makes Ueda one of the earliest published female manga artists, preceded by Machiko Hasegawa, who made her debut two years earlier in 1935.

[4] Upon the conclusion of Buta to Kūnyan, Ueda joined a yōga (western-style painting) workshop to develop her artistic technique,[6] where she studied with painters Junkichi Mukai and Conrad Meili.

Ueda and her family returned to Japan, though her father was imprisoned after being accused of economic war crimes as part of his work with the South Manchuria Railway Company.

[3][6] Simultaneously, she worked as an illustrator and manga artist, publishing Okinu-chan (お絹ちゃん) and Meiko Hogaraka Nikki (メイコ朗らか日記) in the magazine Shōjo Romance in 1949.

She reported frequently reading newspapers, spending time shopping, and talking to people in order to discover potential subjects for her manga.

[7] Fuichin-san, Ueda's most popular work, is set in Manchuria during the Japanese occupation, and depicts the region as bright, prosperous, and cosmopolitan.

Japanese literature scholar Yoriko Kume sees Fuichin-san as an attempt by the author to transcend reality by depicting an idyllic world where conflict between nations and the ills of colonialism do not exist.

[7] Yoshitomo Nara argues that the series is an expression of humanism, depicting a world of children who are not yet aware of racial and ethnic prejudice.

[10] Ueda was nonetheless an influential shōjo manga artist of the 1950s and 1960s, with Fuichin-san enjoying a popularity similar to that of Princess Sapphire by Osamu Tezuka in the late 1950s.