Yūichi Yokoyama

Yuichi Yokoyama (横山裕一, Yokoyama Yūichi, born April 3, 1967) is a Japanese manga artist, illustrator and painter. Trained in oil painting, Yokoyama transitioned from fine art to manga in the mid-1990s, seeking a more suitable medium to explore concepts of time, space, and motion, and had his breakthrough as an artist in the 2000s. His works are characterized by abstract environments, mechanical repetition, minimal dialogue, and immersive use of onomatopoeia, challenging traditional manga conventions and described as "neo manga". Internationally acclaimed, Yokoyama's work has been published and exhibited, among others, in France, the United States and South Korea.

Life and career Yokoyama was born in 1967 in Miyakonojō in Miyazaki Prefecture. While growing up, his family moved frequently, from Kyushu to Hokkaido to the Kanto region, due to his father's work.

In 1986 he enrolled in Musashino Art University in oil painting.

Eventually, he gave up on art exhibitions and shifted his expression towards manga. He found it difficult to work with color and preferred black and white aesthetics, as typical in manga, and he found it easier to express time through serial pictures rather than single pictures. Yokoyama completely shifted his artistic focus to manga in 1995. He made his official debut as a manga artist in 2000 with "Pet" in the magazine Cyzo. The editor of the annual alternative manga magazine Comic Cue approached him and published several of his works in the 2000s.

In 2010, he held his first solo exhibition at Kawasaki City Museum. His manga have been published and gained a following in Japan, the United States and France.

In parallel with his work as an author, he has undertaken a variety of projects: decorating a Toyota Prius for the Aichi Triennale in 2013, designing costumes for the Italian theater company Dewey Dell in 2013, and creating a window display for Hermès in Shinjuku in 2014. In 2021, as part of a project during the long-term renovation of the Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, newly drawn manga panels by Yokoyama were displayed on signs and roadblock fences within Hijiyama Park.

Style and themes Yokoyama’s manga are widely recognized as avant-garde manga and experimental. He described his distinct aesthetic as “neo manga” due to its radical departure from traditional storytelling and visual conventions. His works prioritize abstract, rhythmic compositions over narrative coherence, frequently eschewing character development, emotional expression, or human drama to create a sense of universality and detachment.

Themes Recurring themes in his manga include infrastructure, travel, sound, and mechanical repetition. In New Engineering, Yokoyama depicts large-scale construction work without context or explanation, using the visual language of manga to emphasize motion, structure, and transformation. In Travel, he illustrates an aimless train journey across stylized landscapes, completely devoid of dialogue or onomatopoeia, heightening the sense of disorientation and detachment. Iceland features abstracted interactions in an ambiguous setting.

Yokoyama asserts that the massive structures and landscapes within his stories "simply exist," and that he does not imagine any architects or creators behind them. The characters frequently pose questions that remain unanswered, reflecting Yokoyama’s belief that fiction does not require rational explanation. He describes this absence of resolution as more natural than the imposition of interpretive clarity, inviting readers to imagine their own meanings without the guidance of an overarching logic or authorial intention. Travel (トラベル) 2006 Serialized in Comic CuePublished by East Press in 1 vol.Published in English by PictureBox Baby Boom (ベビーブーム) 2009 Serialized in Comic CuePublished by East Press in 1 vol.Published in English by Breakdown Press Outdoor (アウトドアー) 2009 Published by Kodansha in 1 vol.Published in English by Breakdown Press Color Engineering 2011 Paintings published by PictureBox in 1 vol. Iceland (アイスランド) 2017 Published by 888Books in 1 vol.Published in English by Retrofit Comics Plaza (プラザ) 2019 Published by 888Books in 1 vol.Published in English by Living the Line, LLC. Moeru Oto (燃える音, "Burning Sound") 2020 Published by 888Books in 1 vol.