Michiko Matsuda

Her birth name is Michiko. Her father was a member of the Liberal Democratic Party and served as the head of the supporters’ association for a former prime minister. She studied at the Nihon Gakuen Women’s Junior College, and during her English studies she won first prize in a competition. After graduating, she became the host (MC) of the Shin Shin’yū Theatre Troupe. In May 1971 she met Yūsaku Matsuda, and from June they began living together in Setagaya, Tokyo.

Using the stage name Hori Mayumi, she appeared on TBS in TV novels and dramas; her notable works include the POLA TV Novel and The Road of the Sunflower, both aired in 1971. She married Yūsaku Matsuda on September 21, 1975, and after marriage she stopped acting.

On December 25, 1976, she gave birth to their eldest daughter. Because Matsuda had an affair with actress Kumagai Miyuki, they divorced on December 24, 1981. After the divorce, their daughter’s name remained Matsuda as Matsuda requested; she continued to work under the Matsuda surname, with Michiko as her birth name.

After the divorce, she pursued writing as a screenwriter and a nonfiction writer, and also did ghostwriting for a famous author. In interviews she has said that becoming a writer stemmed from a continuing interest in writing. When she completed her first novel, Eternal Provocation, she received affirmation and encouragement from Matsuda. In 1994, after publishing The Associate Professor’s Incomplete Crime, she began shifting toward crime nonfiction, using real cases as material. Her representative work The Abduction of a Female High School Student was adapted into a film. In 1997, under the pen name Amamiya Saki, she published the novel Discharge and subsequently launched a related series.

In terms of publishing, she has maintained long-standing relationships with multiple publishers. Her works span both nonfiction and fiction, covering crime-related and humanistic themes. Her writings have remained in publication, including both real-case-based nonfiction and fiction series. Her career as a writer and publisher began in the early 1990s and continued into the late 2000s, forming a relatively steady creative and publishing trajectory. The bibliography includes several works issued between 1991 and 2009, such as Eternal Provocation, Love in the Dark, The End of the Storm, An Associate Professor’s Incomplete Crime, The Abduction of a Female High School Student, the Discharge series, and others like The Boundary, The Forgotten Village, Foreboding, and more.