FURUYA Usamaru

Japanese Name: 古屋兎丸

Gender: Male

Information for Authors: Furuya Usamaru's path to manga was unusual. He studied sculpture and abstract three-dimensional figures in art school, and afterwards even became involved with butoh dance. For a while he worked as a high-school art teacher. He made his debut as a manga artist with the ground-breaking four-panel "gag" strip Palepoli, which was serialized in the legendary avant-garde comics magazine Garo in 1994. Since then he has gone on to publish in major weekly magazines in Japan, such as Young Sunday (where Short Cuts was first serialized). In English, his work has appeared in PULP: The Manga Magazine and Secret Comics Japan. His self portrait is of a crabby (?) rabbit, which is a gag on the first kanji of his given name "兎", which means "rabbit". Former assistant of Erichin.