Chapter Commentaries 8

Uno, who came from a background in graphic design, was good at both design and illustrations, a perfect balance of creative skills for publishing.

After retiring from Nippon Design Center, Uno, Yokoo and others established Studio Irufuiru in 1964. He and Ikko Tanaka planned a graphic novel titled Nihon minwa graphic (Japanese Folk Story Graphic], for which he illustrated Urashima Taro (text by Kiyoshi Terada). The following year, Uno was in charge of art direction for the launch of the "For Ladies" series from Shinshokan. He designed the layout and series logo, as well as the binding. The series, which included Hitori-botchi no anata ni [For Lonely You, 1965] by Shuji Terayama, was enormously popular among young girls.

In the 1970s, Uno's style had turned to the surreal, a brand-new genre. He began designing book covers in this style, including Chonoryoku SF: mutant no koshin [Supernatural SF: Parade of the Mutants, 1973). In the late 1980s, Uno began illustrating a large number of novels serialized in magazines and drawing the cover illustrations for a wide range of pocket-edition paperbacks. In 1983, he and Yoshitomo Imae worked together on the cover for Bon bon [The Young Master]. Uno's latest work came out in 2023: Goshiki no fune (The Five-colored Boat] by Yasumi Tsuhara. Uno's exquisite illustrations beautifully contain the pathos of the novel.

While Uno provided just the illustrations for some of the books he was involved with, he added to many others his creative expression in the form of bookmaking and binding. Uno has a great love of books, and this is a field that continues to stimulate his creative appetite.