Makoto Kawai is a Japanese manga artist and illustrator, recognized as the original creator behind the anime and manga series Gourmet Girl Graffiti, known in Japan as Happy Cooking Graffiti or Kōfuku Graffiti. Kawai began their professional career in 2011, making a debut with the one-shot manga Rainbow Song, which was published in the inaugural issue of Houbunsha's Manga Time Kirara Miracle! magazine in March of that year.

Kawai is best known for creating the four-panel comic strip manga Gourmet Girl Graffiti. The series was serialized in Manga Time Kirara Miracle! from January 2012 to September 2016. The story follows Ryo, a middle school girl living alone who uses her cooking skills to form friendships. The complete manga was compiled into seven tankōbon volumes released between January 2013 and September 2016. The series was adapted into a twelve-episode television anime produced by the studio Shaft, which aired in Japan from January to March 2015.

Following the conclusion of Gourmet Girl Graffiti, Kawai launched another manga series, I Want to Be With You on Days I Want to Be Spoiled. This work was serialized in Houbunsha's Manga Time Kirara magazine from April 2017 to May 2019 and was collected into three volumes.

Beyond their own serialized manga, Makoto Kawai has contributed illustration work to various other projects. This includes providing ending illustrations for several television anime series, such as Hidamari Sketch x Honeycomb, the Monogatari series, Sakura Trick, Is the Order a Rabbit?, and Nisekoi. Kawai has also illustrated light novel covers, contributed to official illustration collections for series like Bakemonogatari, and provided character design and supervision for the mobile game Kirara Fantasia. This body of work places Kawai as a creator firmly within the creative circles of Houbunsha's manga publications, contributing to the aesthetic and storytelling traditions found in that sphere.