Ochazukenori

Ochazukenori was born in Kawasaki in 1960. He began reading manga from rental bookstores as a child, later he read Weekly Shōnen Sunday and Weekly Shōnen Magazine and drew manga inspired by Satoru Ozawa's Submarine 707. In his youth and while attending Rissho University in Tokyo, he drew doujinshi together with friends. When he wanted to start his career as a professional manga artist, he had to send money to his parents to convince them of his career decision, as they wanted him to take over their hardware store. His doujinshi anthology Pen Touch gained a following for its obscure content. In parallel, he worked as an assistant first for manga artist Nasubi Fujitaka His pseudonym Ochazukenori is the name of a rice dish with green tea and dried algae. He chose it, because it is similar to his birth name and because another manga artist suggested it to him and he like it. He published only little new work in the 2000s, but became more active again in the 2010s. He focused on drawing web manga. == Style ==

He is known for an aesthetic of splatter and gore. The center of his stories is often mental illness, with depictions of bloody corpses, fratricide and torture. Ochazukenori keeps drawing by hand; he says "If you draw with a pen tablet, the manuscript will not remain. So if there is a power outage, you won't be able to read it". == Legacy ==

Manga artist Yoshiki Takaya calls Ochazukenori an early influence, as Takaya was contributing to his doujinshi anthology Pen Touch. He recalled: "The kind of stories that Nori was drawing weren't what you'd call 'popular.' Our fanzine was the only place where he could create his own ideal manga." Singer Kyōko Koizumi is a fan of his manga, letting him write the lyrics for her song Kōri no Toshi (凍りの都市) from the album Hippies and make a manga based on it. She also wrote the recommendation on the obi of Kyōfu Terebi TVO: Ochazukenori Jisenshu (恐怖テレビ（TVO）御茶漬海苔自選集), saying ''Ochazukenori's horror is like a fairy tale. Pure, beautiful and so, so scary.'' Ochazukenori has gained some international recognition for his manga. His work has been translated into French. The Japan Foundation in Sydney exhibited his work as part of the exhibition Retro Horror: Supernatural and the Occult in Postwar Japanese Manga from 2019 until 2021. == Works ==