Riyo Akatsuka

**Riyo Akatsuka** (赤塚リヨ, ? 1911-August 20, 1970), nee **Riyo Terato** (寺東リヨ), was the mother of Fujio Akatsuka.

## Life

### Early Life and World War II

Although little is known about Riyo's early life, she was born in Yamatokoriyama, Nara Prefecture in 1911. At some point in her early childhood, she lost her right eye due to an accident where an umbrella struck and gouged it out, requiring her to wear a glass prosthesis in addition to the eyeglasses she already had to wear due to her poor sight.

She first met her future husband Toshichi at a banquet, but would reunite with him fatefully when they'd both wound up in Manchukuo. Although she had a past as a geisha, to the point where a previous lover's name had been tattooed on her arm, Toshichi did not judge her and accepted her for who she was. The two would marry in December 1933, and later have six children in total, through their years in the country:

* Fujio (September 14, 1935- August 2, 2008)
* Sumako (1938- )
* Yoshio (1940-?)
* Nobuhiro (1941-)
* Ayako (1944-1945)
* Ayako (1945-1946)

At the close of the war on August 16, 1945, Riyo and her family were smuggled out of a bloodbath in Mukden when Chinese citizens began to slaughter and drive out the Japanese that had occupied the city. One of Toshichi's Chinese subordinates in the military police, along with others grateful for his lack of brutality, ordered the family to wear clothing to look like natural citizens and sent them away in a fire truck to a railway station.

Unfortunately for Riyo, Toshichi was soon detained by the arriving Red Army and sentenced to four years in Siberia for his part in the Imperial Army. She thus had to deal with raising her children on her own, and seeing to it that she could find a way for them to get back to their home country. One daughter, Ayako, had already died of diptheria in their stay in Manchuria, while Yoshio was reluctantly adopted out to another family in hopes of giving him a more fortunate life.

### Return to Japan

In 1946, Riyo and her remaining children, including the youngest daughter named Ayako in the previous one's memory, headed out on foot through China in search of a boat that could take them to Japan.

During their travels, the family had to experience seeing death and destruction all around them, as well as treacheries by Red Army soldiers who could do harm to them. Ultimately, they made it home to Japan by June 15th via large boat, overseen by Soviet military police, and arrived in Yamatokoriyama by train. Sadly, Ayako would take her last breath shortly after arrival, having suffered from malnutrition. Riyo, however, had no time or energy to cry, and merely hugged her daughter.

After settling down in Nara, Riyo would take a job as a seamstress at a factory while sending her remaining three children off to school. The children would experience discrimination for having lived as "Manchu", but Riyo would learn of her eldest son's talents and aspirations for getting into manga and accompany him to Osaka in an attempt for him to pitch his sci-fi manga "Diamond Island". Though his pitch failed, he was encouraged to continue building his skills.

In the fall of 1949, it became difficult for Riyo to earn enough money at her job to feed her family, so she sent the children off to live with relatives in Niigata. It was at the end of the year that the children would reunite with Toshichi, who was finally released from Siberia, yet they quickly found that the effects of prison had left their father severely changed as a man.

Around 1958, with her son having since started a career in manga, Riyo came to room and visit at Tokiwa-so, often encouraging him to marry his neighbor Hideko Mizuno. Yet when it came to marriage, Akatsuka would instead take a fondness in a girl named Tomoko Inao, meeting her in the spring of 1961 and settling down with her later that year. Even after he left Tokiwa-so, Riyo and Toshichi would come to stay there until 1964.

### Later Years and Death

In 1968, Riyo, sparked by seeing her husband undergo a life-threatening bout of tuberculosis, opted to get her geisha tattoo professionally removed as to prove her ultimate devotion to him.

Unfortunately, in March of 1970, the two would be caught in an accidental gas explosion at their home. Though both appeared to recover fine at first, Riyo had in fact retained internal injuries from shock and would wind up experiencing a subarachnoid hemorrhage months later. She was re-admitted to the hospital and went through a steep decline in health, ultimately dying on August 20th of the same year.

Her death impacted her son greatly, and was one of many factors that lead to him openly drinking to deal with what he felt was his social inadequacy around others. Her funeral service was also the event that had lead to the creation of the story **Oh! Great Jailbreak**, as Akatsuka could not work for the week and his assistants were left to entirely fill in for him.