Toyo Kataoka means "Katoka of the Eastern Sun." In his manga, however, Japan typically rises late, hungover, and homeless. Since his first appearance in Garo in the early 90s, his manga have been exclusively about the vanishing urban shitamachi (lower city) with its squalid timber structures and plucky poor. Though ostensibly set in the present, his is a world redolent of early postwar hardships. His drawing style is analogous. Panels are both packed and packed in, a warren of hatch marks and texture strokes with little open space. All is hand-drawn, down even to fields of middle tone, and (rare in manga), the lettering. For his detailed handicraft, Kataoka has been likened to a tatami maker with his numberless small stitches of straw. Three different films have been made of his work and he is an occasional guest on television programs dealing with the popular and folk arts.