Yasuhisa Hara

is a Japanese manga artist and the creator of the series Kingdom.

With more than 100 million copies in circulation worldwide, Kingdom is one of the best-selling manga in history. In 2013, Hara won the Grand Prize of the 17th Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize for his work on Kingdom.

Early life Hara was born in the town of Kiyama in Saga Prefecture and attended Tomeikan High School. He would later be appointed first ambassador of his hometown.

Hara then enrolled at Kyushu Institute of Design where he graduated with a Bachelor's degree in 1998 and a Master's degree in 2000. He enrolled at the university with the intention of becoming a film director but learnt it was difficult to make a living in the film industry. In this third year at university, he decided to become a manga artist because he could do everything by himself such as directing, writing scripts and drawing.

During his time at university, Hara had drawn a lot of storyboards but never drawn manga. In 1997, he submitted his first work, Ueda-kun's Theory of Degeneration which won the Anticipation Award in the 36th edition of Young Magazine's Tetsuya Chiba Awards. In 1999, his work Ousamatsu won the runner-up grand prize at the 40th Tetsuya Chiba Awards He was assigned to an editor at Young Magazine where several of his one-shot stories were published but were never brought up at serialization meetings. At that point Hara gave up becoming a manga artist.

Around this time, he became captivated by Records of the Grand Historian which he had started reading for his studies. This was the origin of the creation of Kingdom.

In 2003, Hara won the Encouragement Award at the 23rd Young Jump MANGA Grand Prix for his one-shot manga, Ha to Sen.

In 2013, Hara won the Grand Prize of the 17th Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize for his work on Kingdom. In July 2021, Kojima revealed they had broken up.

On August 15, 2019, Hara attended a roundtable discussion with Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and D. B. Weiss. He revealed he had been following the show since its fourth season. In the 2019 live action film of Kingdom, Hara insisted that Chengjiao draw inspiration from Joffrey Baratheon.

Awards

1997: Anticipation Award for Ueda-kun's Theory of Degeneration at 36th Tetsuya Chiba Awards

Works Manga

One-shot Otomatsu (1999) Senshiki (2001)

Kingdom Kingdom (2006–present) Kingdom Highlights Volume 1 (2012) Kongo (2003) Horse and Liquor for 300 Soldiers (2004) Kingdom Highlights Volume 2 (2012) Li Mu (2004) Meng Wu and Chu Zi (2005)

Live action films Kingdom (2019) – screenplay Kingdom 2: Far and Away (2022) – screenplay Kingdom 3: The Flame of Destiny (2023) – screenplay Kingdom 4: Return of the Great General (2024) – screenplay