Yuji Tsuji (1977) was born in Aichi prefecture, Japan. He now lives in the city of Toyohashi. He has kept a ‘picture diary’ since he started secondary school in a specialised institution and now does subcontract work in a sheltered workshop for the intellectually handicapped. When he goes home, at exactly the same time every day, he settles himself by the window and sets to work on his compositions, with no preparatory sketches.
He produces bird’s-eye views of urban environments, drawn in minute detail with a black pen. It takes him two months to finish a drawing. He does the roof tiles first, before the outline of the building. He likes to draw houses and roads with lines of tiny cars, but no people. Several drawings include dense forests, outlined in a way that separates them clearly from built-up areas. Apart from a few recognisable buildings or crossroads, Yuji Tsuji’s cities are purely imaginary.