MANGA curation

Kentaro Miura

Born in Chiba, Kentaro Miura. In 1988, he published the manga ‘Berserk’ in the monthly ComiComi (Hakusensha). He died suddenly of acute aortic dissection in 2021. In 2002, the manga won the Tezuka Osamu Cultural Award for Manga Excellence, and has since been made into several Anime Series . The film is currently being continued by the studio staff left behind by Miura, under the supervision of his close friend, manga artist Tsuneji Mori.

Hitoshi Iwaaki

Hitoshi Iwaaki was born in Tokyo 1960. He debuted in 1985 with ‘Gomi no Umi’, which was published in the Morning Open supplement. In 1993, he won the 17th Kodansha Manga Award for ‘Parasyte’, serialized in Afternoon. His representative works include ‘Parasyte’, ‘Tanabata no Kuni’ and ‘Heureka’. He is currently serializing ‘Historie’ in Afternoon. It won the grand prize in the manga division of the 14th Japan Media Arts Festival and the ‘16th Osamu Tezuka Cultural Prize Manga Grand Prize’.

Junji Ito

Junji Ito was born on July 31st, 1963 in Nakatsugawa, Gifu Prefecture. After graduating from high school, he entered dental technician school and entered the work force. However, when the ‘Monthly Halloween’ (Asahi Sonorama) newcomer manga award the ‘Umezu Award’ was established, he submitted his work with the single-minded desire to have it read by Kazuo Umezu. In 1986, he received an honorable mention for his contribution ‘Tomie’. This was his debut work and became his best-known title. Three years later, he quit his job as a dental technician to concentrate on his manga career. In 1998, he began serializing ‘Uzumaki’ in Weekly Big Comic Spirits (Shogakukan). Since then, he has continued to publish one-of-a-kind works. He has won ‘The Will Eisner Comic Industry Award’, one of the world's most prestigious awards for manga artists, four times in total, and in 2023 received the ‘Special Honors Award’ at the Angoulême International Manga Festival in France, as well as the ‘Inkpot Award’ at San Diego Comic-Con in the USA.