Born in Osaka in 1932. She began painting in oil when she was in high school, and upon graduation from high school, she exhibited in the Dokuritsu Art Association’s Independent Exhibition. Under the tutelage of Shigeji Mishima, who later became her husband, she initially painted still lifes and other figurative works, but gradually shifted to abstraction and eventually to mixed media, using collage and silkscreening together.

In the late 1960s, when she saw newspapers that she used to collage in her paintings rolled up and lying on the floor of her studio, the idea of newspaper sculptures came to her, and after experimenting with several techniques, including resin, she began working in earnest to create newspaper sculptures in ceramic. She liked the gap between the tension of ceramics, which can break if dropped, and the existence of newspapers, which are consumed and discarded every day. We receive newspapers daily that contain large amounts of information, which we consume and forget when we throw them away. On the other hand, newspapers used for her ceramics will always exist. Mishima said that she wanted to use this work to illustrate her fear of massive amounts of information, what would happen if it were to continue to exist forever, and how humans should confront information.