Kei Aoyama was a Japanese manga artist. He graduated from the Department of Visual Communication Design at Musashino Art University. He made his professional debut in 2003 with the one-shot "Chaban Geki", winning Monthly Ikki magazine's Ikiman award for rookie artists. On October 9, 2011, an employee of Aoyama's publisher Kodansha called the police because they had not been able to contact him for several days. The police broke into Aoyama's Tokyo apartment and found him dead in a suicide by hanging. Two days later on October 11, 2011, Kodansha published the last completed chapter of his manga series Yoiko no Mokushiroku in Evening magazine. On February 23, 2012, Shogakukan released a collection of Aoyama's early works titled The Dog Race: Aoyama Kei Shoki Sakuhin-shū. The volume contains eight one-shots, including Aoyama's university graduation project and several previously unreleased manga.