Born 5th December 1959 in Hirosaki-shi, Aomori, Nara, after graduating from local high school, studied painting in Musashino Art University, Aichi Prefectural University of Fine Arts and Music and the graduate school of the same university. He moved to Germany in 1988, studied in Kunstakademie Dusseldorf, in Dusseldorf, under A. R. Penck, starting his creative activities based in Cologne. In the summer 2000, he moved his base to Japan. His characters, such as a girl with an accusatory look and a dog, got suddenly very popular under 'Kawaii (cute)' boom. Not only illustration books and photography collections but also character items such as T-shirts and soft toys are selling like hot cakes, making him busy indeed. The differences between the personal characters are evident when his works are placed side by side with that of Takashi Murakami, who exploited the popularity of figures so well, however their works remind us of the 60s American Pop Art.
Those children in his works are portraits of himself, who tried to forget his loneliness, left alone at home as a child, absorbed in drawing and reading mangas. They are cute of course, but in an unsettling way, far from innocent childlike smiles, but remind us of the Enfant Terrible of Jean Cocteau.

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