Usamaru Furuya

He is a Japanese mangaka, writer and illustrator. 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.