Natsu Hyūga

Hyūganatsu, credited in English as Natsu Hyuuga or Natsu Hyuga, is a pseudonymous Japanese novelist from Fukuoka Prefecture and the author of The Apothecary Diaries (Kusuriya no Hitorigoto), a light novel series about Maomao, a young apothecary in an imperial palace. She has said the pen name is a single word rather than a given name and surname.

She began serialising The Apothecary Diaries in October 2011 on the user-submitted fiction site Shōsetsuka ni Narō under the pen name Uribō; the name Hyūganatsu, suggested by an editor, comes from a citrus fruit she likes. A single-volume print version appeared from RayBooks in 2012, and in 2014 the publisher Shufunotomo relaunched the story as a light novel series under its Hero Bunko imprint, illustrated by Touko Shino; sixteen volumes had appeared by May 2025. Two separate manga adaptations began in 2017, one from Square Enix and one from Shogakukan, and a television anime by Toho Animation Studio and OLM began in October 2023. The franchise had more than 57 million copies in circulation by August 2026. Her other novels include King of Tonelico (2013 to 2014), Nazotoki Iseki Hakkutsubu (2018 to 2019) and The Failure at God School (from 2022).

In English, J-Novel Club publishes the light novels digitally in a translation by Kevin Steinbach, and Square Enix issues them in print.

For collectors

The Japanese originals are the first editions: the 2012 RayBooks volume and the Hero Bunko light novels from 2014. English editions from J-Novel Club and Square Enix are translations published years later and are not first editions of the work.