is a Japanese manga artist.

Biography

During elementary school, Furuya enrolled in the Osamu Tezuka Manga Correspondence Course and by the time he reached high school he had discovered a darker, more underground style. He graduated from

Tama Art University or is a private art university located in Tokyo, Japan. It is known as one of the top art schools in Japan. History The forerunner of Tamabi was Tama Imperial Art School (多摩帝国美術学校, Tama Teikoku Bijutsu Gakkō) founded in 1935. ...

, where he majored in

oil painting Oil painting is the process of painting with pigments with a medium of drying oil as the binder. It has been the most common technique for artistic painting on wood panel or canvas for several centuries, spreading from Europe to the rest of ...

and developed an interest in

sculpting Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. Sculpture is the three-dimensional art work which is physically presented in the dimensions of height, width and depth. It is one of the plastic arts. Durable sc ...

and

Butoh is a form of Japanese dance theatre that encompasses a diverse range of activities, techniques and motivations for dance, performance, or movement. Following World War II, butoh arose in 1959 through collaborations between its two key founde ...

dance. During college his work evolved from figurative to eventually dealing more with abstract shapes. In 1994, Furuya published his debut series ''Palepoli'' in the renowned

alternative manga Alternative manga or underground manga is a Western term for Japanese comics that are published outside the more commercial manga market, or which have different art styles, themes, and narratives to those found in the more popular manga magazin ...

magazine ''

Garo Garo may refer to: People and languages * Garo people, a tribal people in India ** Garo language, the language spoken by the Garo tribe Places * Kingdom of Garo, a former kingdom in southern Ethiopia * Garo, Colorado * Garo Hills, part of the Ga ...

''. After graduating from college, he initially planned to work as a full-time artist while doing illustrations on the side, but his success in manga shifted his focus. Soon after, he published the gag manga Short Cuts in the mainstream seinen manga magazine ''

Weekly Young Sunday was a weekly manga magazine published by Shogakukan in Japan since the first issue on March 27, 1987. It replaced '' Shōnen Big Comic'' in Shogakukan's lineup of shōnen titles, and many of the titles in ''Shōnen Big Comic'' were continued in ...

''. He was a regular contributor to the alternative manga magazine ''Manga Erotics F'' from its beginnings in 2001 on. For this magazine he created the manga ''

Lychee Light Club , also commonly known as ''Litchi Hikari Club'', is a Japanese horror manga series written and illustrated by Usamaru Furuya and based on a play with the same name. It was serialized in Ohta Publishing's '' Manga Erotics F'' magazine between ...

'', based on a stage play, about a group of middle school buys aiming to build an AI with cruel tactics has been adapted into a TV anime series. Otherwise, since the 2000s, he has published in mainstream seinen and shōnen manga magazines of different publishers like Kodansha,

Shogakukan is a Japanese publisher of dictionaries, literature, comics ( manga), non-fiction, DVDs, and other media in Japan. Shogakukan founded Shueisha, which also founded Hakusensha. These are three separate companies, but are together called the H ...

Shueisha (lit. "Gathering of Intellect Publishing Co., Ltd.") is a Japanese company headquartered in Chiyoda, Tokyo, Japan. The company was established in 1925 as the entertainment-related publishing division of Japanese publisher Shogakukan. The foll ...

and

Shinchosha is a publisher founded in 1896 in Japan and headquartered in Yaraichō, Shinjuku, Tokyo. Shinchosha is one of the sponsors of the Japan Fantasy Novel Award. Books * Haruki Murakami: '' Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World'' (19 ...

, but also drew a

yonkoma , a comic strip format, generally consists of gag comic strips within four panels of equal size ordered from top to bottom. They also sometimes run right-to-left horizontally or use a hybrid 2×2 style, depending on the layout requirements of ...

series for the daily newspaper ''Yomiuri Shimbun'' and made a manga biography about Emperor

Akihito is a member of the Imperial House of Japan who reigned as the 125th emperor of Japan from 7 January 1989 until his abdication on 30 April 2019. He presided over the Heisei era, ''Heisei'' being an expression of achieving peace worldwide. B ...

's life for the weekly magazine '' Shūkan Post''.

Reception

Furuya's manga have been translated, among others, into English, French, German, Italian and Spanish. While Furuya has not won any major manga awards so far, he was nominated or selected several times:

Works

Manga

Illustrations

* ''Flowers''

Films/plays

* ''ZOO'' (Screenplay, storyboards, character design) * (Man in coffee shop) * (Original work) * (Original work) * (Miyanishi)

References

External links

*
Usagi Hitori Club (Usamaru Furuya's Blog)
*

1968 births Living people Manga artists from Tokyo People from Tokyo Tama Art University alumni {{manga-artist-stub