Nobuyuki Fukumoto

Nobuyuki Fukumoto is a Japanese manga artist well known for his unique and original gambling ideas, deep psychological analyses of characters, and distinct artstyle. Yakuza and gambling are recurring themes in his manga. In English-speaking countries, he is known best as the author of Akagi, a mahjong-related manga. In 1998, he won the Kodansha Manga Award for Gambling Apocalypse: Kaiji. An onomatopoeia "zawa", meaning an uneasy atmosphere, appears frequently in his comics and is considered Fukumoto's trademark.