Kazuichi Hanawa

is a Japanese manga artist. Afterwards, he worked on the manga Doing Time, recalling his detention, for which he was nominated for the 2001 Osamu Tezuka Cultural Prize and the 2006 Angoulême International Comics Festival Prize for Scenario. This autobiographical work became a bestseller and received a film adaptation in 2002 under the direction of Yoichi Sai. Masanao Amano describes how the "outstanding realism" of the work is almost overwhelming to the reader: "Due to the documentary-like style without any sense of desire and political message [the reader] is completely sucked into the work."

His 2014 horror short story collection Juso ("Curse") was a Jury selected work at the 2015 Japan Media Arts Festival.

Style and themes Hanawa is sometimes considered the successor to Yoshiharu Tsuge. At the beginning of his career, he dedicated himself to the ero-guro style and created erotic-grotesque works like Red Night, about a samurai who rejects his thoughts of revenge and is driven to suicide by his wife, and Niku Yashiki . Many of these works were parodies of militarism and the traditional values of Japanese culture. From the beginning of the 1980s, his manga were spiritually influenced by Buddhism and were located mainly in the Japan of the Edo and the Meiji periods and in a futuristic setting. The faces of his characters are reminiscent of Ukiyo-e; his drawings are detailed and dark.

Legacy Manga artist Gengoroh Tagame cites Hanawa's depictions of extreme violence as an influence for his work.

His work has been translated into English, Spanish, Portuguese, French and Italian.

Selected works (one-shot in Garo, 1971) (1984, published in English by Breakdown Press) (1984–1986) (1991) (serialized in Monthly Afternoon, 1992–1994) (serialized in AX, 1998–2000) (2000) (serialized in Horror M, 2000–2007) (2002–2007) (2014)