Shichinohe Masaru, born in 1959, studied in the Musashino Art University College of Art and Design majoring in Architecture, and worked in an architectural firm straight after graduation for three years. When he lost his passion for the industry, he devoted his attention and talent to becoming an illustrator, and published several illustrated books, namely Campanella: the mechanical boy and the magic bugle and Hako-Shonen (Box-Boy). With this initial trigger, his career as a painter slowly took off in the subsequent years, and has not waned in the least.

Although his contemporaries and the art market were heavily steeped in the Superflat movement and Japanese manga anime when he first began his ar...