Reiko Okuyama was born in 1935 in the city of Sendai in Miyagi Prefecture (Note). In 1957, following her graduation from Tohoku University’s School of Education, she began working at Toei Dōga (now known as Toei Animation) as a temporary employee. The wages of temporary workers were half of that of the permanent employees, and, on top of that, the wages of female temporary workers were lower than that of their male counterparts. She participated in the production of Toei Dōga’s first feature length theatrical release, Panda and the Magic Serpent, also known in English as The White Snake Enchantress (Hakujaden, 1958), as an inbetweener. Although the work environment was intense, she was able to distinguish herself and was successfully promoted to a key frame animator. Okuyama animated key frames for The Little Prince and the Eight-Headed Dragon (Wanpaku Ōji no Orochi Taiji, 1963), as well as played a central role in the production of Isao Takahata’s directorial debut, The Great Adventure of Horus, Prince of the Sun (Taiyō no Ōji Horusu no Daibōken, 1968), alongside Hayao Miyazaki, Yasuo Ōtsuka, and Yōichi Kotabe. She worked as the animation director for the 1975 release, Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid (Anderusen Dōwa: Ningyo-hime), making her the first female animation director to be listed unaccompanied by a co-director in the credits for an animated film. She worked as both an animation director and character designer alongside Kotabe on 1979’s Taro the Dragon Boy (Tatsu no ko Tarō).
She enthusiastically participated in the labor union movement and contributed to the reformation of working conditions and the promotion of the status of women at Toei Dōga. Though female employees were required to submit a contract when onboarding at the company stating that they would retire from Toei Dōga upon becoming married or pregnant, Okuyama continued to work after both her marriage to co-worker Kotabe in 1963 and the subsequent birth of their child, opening up the path for other women at Toei Dōga to be employed even after marriage or childbirth. While it was customary for married women to change their surname to that of their husband in various professional documents, she consistently used her maiden name.
She started working as an instructor at an animation school in 1986. While encouraging the development of the next generation of young animators, in 1988, she also started practicing the art of copperplate engraving, beginning her career as an engraver. Her experience as an engraver shines in her contribution to the film Winter Days (Dir: Kihachirō Kawamoto, 2003), which compiled the animation of thirty-five animators into the form of collective poem. She passed away at the age of seventy in 2007.
In 2019, the NHK aired the morning television series Natsuzora about the struggle of a fictional women animator, Natsu Okuhara (Suzu Hirose), during the early days of the Japanese animation industry loosely based on the life of Okuyama.