SUMMARY

Eiichiro Oda’s wife, Chiaki Inaba, cosplayed as Nami at Jump Festa, leading to their eventual meeting and marriage in 2004.
Nami is a beloved character in One Piece , known for her cunning nature, loyalty, and skills as a navigator for the Straw Hat Pirates.
Cosplaying allows fans to express their appreciation for their favorite characters and shows, as seen through Chiaki Inaba’s portrayal of Nami.

Not a lot is known about One Piece creator Eiichiro Oda. Like most mangaka, he keeps his personal life under wraps and rarely comments on anything unrelated to his work. However, fans know a little about the mangaka’s family life. It turns out Oda’s wife is a real-life version of Nami, one of his most popular characters. It has been revealed that Chiaki Inaba, Oda’s wife, cosplayed as Nami at Jump Festa in 2002 and 2003.

In One Piece, Nami is the navigator of the Straw Hat Pirates. When she meets Luffy early in the series, she becomes the third member of the crew, insisting it will only be a temporary partnership. Initially, she comes across as stingy and manipulative, but she has a noble goal — buying her friends and family out of slavery. Eventually, she joins the Straw Hats properly. Nami consistently performs well in character popularity polls and is One Piece‘s most iconic heroine, inspiring fan art, memes, and more. She’s known for being cunning, loyal, and a prodigious navigator.

Update on June 10, 2024, by Natasha Elder: While Eiichiro Oda is a famed mangaka, not much is known about his wife and family due to the secrecy surrounding his home life. What little is known, however, is interesting given her past as a cosplayer. As One Piece is approaching its ending, we thought it pertinent to dive into the life of Chiaki Inaba again, revealing new facts.

Eiichiro Oda Met Wife Chiaki Inaba at Jump Festa

Cosplaying Changed the Lives of Both Inaba and Oda

Chiaki Inaba is a former cosplayer, model, and race queen. At Jump Festa 2002, Inaba was cosplaying as One Piece‘s Nami, the navigator for the Straw Hats, for a One Piece stage show. Jump Festa is an annual Japanese convention that celebrates Jump manga and anime. Started in 1999, Jump Festa runs for two days in December and attracts hundreds of thousands of attendees. It was at Jump Festa 2002 that Chiaki Inaba ran into Eiichiro Oda, the creator of One Piece, and the two hit it off. They dated for a couple of years and married in 2004. Today, the two are still together. While Oda lives separately because of his rigorous work schedule drawing the One Piece manga, they still see each other often.

Jump Festa is organized by Shueisha, Japan’s largest publishing company.
While the main purpose of Jump Festa is to advertise Shueisha’s Jump properties, gaming companies such as Square Enix have announced games at the event, as well.

When Oda and Inaba’s story emerged, fans were quick to point out that the mangaka had married a real-life lookalike of his character. Indeed, Nami is a popular cosplay character, but Inaba certainly stands out from the rest. She resembles Nami very closely — especially the pre-time-skip version of the character (before Nami grew her hair out). Inaba even returned as Nami at Jump Festa 2003, showing her dedication to the character and her continued resemblance. Oda and Inaba’s love must go beyond aesthetic attraction, however, given that Inaba has remained Oda’s wife for the past twenty years.

Oda Married a Real-Life Nami, but They Keep Their Life Private

Little Is Known About Oda and Inaba’s Relationship

With how private mangaka tend to be, stories about their personal lives don’t circulate very often. When they do, it’s often for negative reasons. For example, in 2016, Oh My Goddess! creator Kōsuke Fujishima also married a cosplayer. Her name was Nekomu Otogi, and she was 20 years old. Since there was a 30+ year age difference between Fujishima and Otogi, this became a major talking point, along with claims that the relationship was problematic.

One Piece creator Eiichiro Oda was born on January 1, 1975.
Oda’s biggest influence was Akira Toriyama, the creator of Dragon Ball.

Oda and Inaba’s marriage has been subject to no such controversy, though. They live privately and have had two daughters, one in 2006 and the other in 2009. What little is known about the couple indicates their continued happiness, as they have found a balance that allows them each to keep pursuing their individual work without taking away from the care that they hold for each other. Hopefully, One Piece creator Eiichiro Oda and his wife will remain together for a long time.

Who Is Nami in One Piece?

As One of the Earliest Straw Hats, She Has Had a Significant Impact

Nami is one of the first major characters who ever appeared in Eiichiro Oda’s ongoing One Piece saga, though the exact details vary between different versions. She made her debut in the East Blue saga not long after Roronoa Zoro the swordsman appeared, and she was presented as a master thief who hated pirates but, ironically, was better at plundering treasure than any of them. At first, Nami was a troubled and secretive person. She wasn’t the loyal crewmate that protagonist Monkey D. Luffy thought she was. However, it was eventually revealed that Nami was preoccupied with her personal mission to buy back her native village from Arlong the pirate, who had captured it and turned it into his private kingdom during Nami’s childhood. Nami was ready to betray the Straw Hats to complete her mission, albeit while feeling conflicted, only for Arlong to double-cross her. Cornered, Nami embraced Luffy as a genuine friend with her plea “Help me.” She has been a loyal, lovable Straw Hat ever since.

Around the time Eiichiro Oda met his future wife in 2002, when the latter cosplayed as Nami, it wasn’t yet clear what Nami’s overall story arc would be like. The One Piece manga had only been running for five years, and the anime had only been running for around three years. In the anime, the Alabasta saga had just ended. Nami was at her strongest in the narrative, and her thrilling adventure in Arlong Park was still fresh in fans’ minds. She finally learned to fight for real in Alabasta, getting the glow-up that fans had been hoping for. Nami’s character had a lot of momentum as the sole female member of Luffy’s heroic crew at the time, which may have inspired Chiaki Inaba to cosplay that character. Unfortunately, Nami’s character arc has lost momentum in the years since, hitting a plateau as the same person she’s always been, though she is still impressive in her usual capacity as Luffy’s invaluable navigator.

Nami’s goal is to chart the world’s currents.
Nami’s birthday is July 3, since the numbers “7” and “3” can be derived from the kanji that makes up her name.

More recently, the live-action One Piece series on Netflix made Nami’s character fresh and exciting all over again thanks to actor Emily Rudd’s outstanding performance. Netflix did Nami’s character a few much-needed favors this time around, such as making her a combat-ready character from the start, fighting off Marine grunts with a wooden staff and keeping pace with Luffy and Zoro. In addition, this series introduced Nami earlier, giving her more than just a cameo in the Romance Dawn arc as opposed to the original One Piece anime.

Nami was a major player right away and met Luffy around the same time Roronoa Zoro did, which gave Nami more screen time while also giving her a chance to interact with Zoro before either of them became fellow Straw Hats. The live-action Nami and Zoro were in the same boat, literally and otherwise, and their on-screen chemistry benefited from that. Nami and Zoro traded verbal barbs between their individual selves before their relationship became defined by their shared Straw Hat status, and they vaguely bonded over rejecting Luffy’s offer to be a crew together. On a cosmetic level, live-action Nami’s character was more tasteful than ever, wearing comfortable and practical outfits as a beautiful young woman while not being reduced to fan service, as she was in many arcs in One Piece‘s anime. Nami was best defined by her personality, skills, and backstory, not being “the girl” or fan service fodder, and that made her more cosplay-worthy than ever before for any One Piece fan.

Cosplaying Has a Deeper Meaning

Cosplaying Offers Expression and Appreciation

Cosplaying is one of the ways that fans express their appreciation for a specific show, movie, book, or video game character. By dedicating their time to putting together elaborate costumes, cosplayers are able to demonstrate their love for their favorite character in a tangible manner. Similar to wearing a Halloween costume, cosplaying also allows the wearer to escape from reality for a brief time by enjoying being someone else. Ultimately, cosplaying is another method with which to dive deeper into valued media sources.

Cosplaying was originally known as fan costuming and originated at science fiction conventions in 1939.
Cosplay came from the Japanese word “kosupure” in 1984.

In the case of One Piece, the main Straw Hat crew has been cosplayed numerous times — but it is not just the main characters who are chosen. There are cosplays of favorite side characters, such as Vivi Nefartiti and Donquixote Rosinante, as well as minor characters. At conventions, it is clear to see how much One Piece is loved by its fans through the number of people dressed like their favorite characters. In the same way as fans, Chiaki Inaba was showing her appreciation of One Piece‘s Nami through her cosplay of the character. Although most cosplayers don’t meet and marry the creator, the art of cosplay opened up new opportunities in her life, as well as in Oda’s.