After working as a civil servant, Ichikawa debuted with "Tears of the White Flower" in 1972, which was published in Bessatsu Margaret magazine. After a career in shoujo manga, she moved to Office YOU in the mid-1980's. She focuses on historical stories from the female perspective, and has written stories that center around a wide-variety of time periods from the Heian period to the modern day.

She is married to fellow mangaka [Masahiro Shibata](https://anilist.co/staff/99329/Masahiro-Shibata).