Born in 1960 in Tokyo, Urasawa Naoki belongs to the generation of people who spent their childhood during the period of high economic growth in Japan. Many of the protagonists in his mangas are featured in a setting that is contemporary to Urasawa.  Being greatly influenced by Tezuka Osamu, he aimed to build his career as a manga cartoonist. Since his debut in 1983, he has produced many well-known works such as Yawara!, MONSTER, MASTER KEATON, 20th Century Boys, and PLUTO. PLUTO, in particular, attracted attention by featuring “The World’s Strongest Robot,” originally portrayed in Tezuka Osamu’s Astro Boy. The work displayed in this current exhibition, 2０th Century Boys, is a feature-length Sci-Fi manga series published from 1999 to 2006. It depicts the process in which the events such as the Armageddon, a secret hideout, a gigantic robot, and so on, first imagined by the protagonist and his friends in their childhood in the 1970s, gradually turn into reality, leading to a dystopian near future. The Expo ’70 in Osaka, a vision of the future for the children at the time, holds importance in this story, which subsequently unfolds to suggest social issues of the 1990s, such as new cult religions and sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway, and a new surge of terrorism after 2000. Furthermore, Urasawa incorporates names of existing musicians and other renowned figures to create subtle layers of the real and the fiction.   Urasawa has won many awards and prizes, including the 48th New Manga Artist Award of Shogakukan, the 25th Manga Award of Kodansha, the 6th Media Arts Festival Award for Excellence and the Awards for Best Comic Books in the Angouleme International Comics Festival.

浦泽直树（浦沢直樹，Urasawa Naoki）1960年生于东京，属于在少年期经历日本高速经济发展的那一代人。他的漫画中的许多主人公都生活在与浦泽同时代的环境里。他受到手塚治虫 (Tezuka Osamu) 极大的影响，立志要成为一名漫画家。自1983年出道以来，他已发表多部广为人知的作品，如“柔之道!”（Yawara!）、“怪物”（MONSTER）、“奇顿大师”（MASTER KEATON）、“20世纪少年” （『20世紀少年』，20th Century Boys）、“冥王”（PLUTO）。尤其是“冥王”，因为塑造了“地上最大的机器人”的角色而倍受注目，这一角色最早出现在手塚治虫的“铁臂阿童木”（『鉄腕アトム』，Astro Boy）。此次展出的作品“20世纪少年”是一部发表于1999年至2006年的长篇漫画连载。它描述了主人公和他的朋友们早在1970年代的少年期所想象的世界灭亡、秘密基地、巨大机器人等事件逐渐变成现实、并在不久后的将来发展成为反乌托邦的过程。1970年的大阪世博会对当时的青少年来说是对未来的一种描绘，在故事中占据重要的位置。此后故事的展开暗示了1990年代的社会问题，例如新兴宗教和东京地铁沙林毒气攻击事件，以及2000年以后新恐怖主义的涌现。此外，浦泽引入了现有音乐家和其他著名人物的名字，创造出现实与虚构社会的微妙层次。浦泽赢得过众多的荣誉和奖项，包括第48届小学馆新漫画艺术家奖，第25届讲谈社漫画奖，第6届文化厅媒体艺术节优秀奖，昂古莱姆（Angouleme）国际漫画节最优秀长篇奖。