is a Japanese writer and engineer. He is known for writing mystery novels – particularly his debut work The Perfect Insider, which won him the first Mephisto Prize in 1996 – but he considers himself to be a researcher as well as craftsman. He insists his name to be written and called "MORI Hiroshi," family name first and uppercased, regardless of the language when romanized. Biography Mori as a craftsman Since childhood, Mori was an avid model craftsman, making all kinds of models from race cars to locomotives to airplanes. He started out with a model locomotive that his father bought him as a birthday gift and was soon attracted to the process of making a miniature world of his own. Tools and materials for model making were readily available since his father ran a construction shop, and when Mori was in fifth grade, he built a manpowered car by putting two bicycles together. Unlike most boys, Mori never grew out of this hobby; instead, his love for model crafts grew stronger as he became older. His interest moved on to radio control airplanes and he has so far constructed and flown over forty of them, some of which span about ten feet. Furthermore, he recently constructed a five-inch (127 mm) gauge railway in his garden. Mori confesses that one of the reasons for becoming a novelist was that he wanted to make more money to extend the miniature garden railway. Mori as a manga artist Starting from high school years, Mori was also engrossed in manga. When he was hospitalized in the second year of high school, he came across a work by Moto Hagio, author of several well-known shōjo manga series, which struck him deeply and made him realize the artistic beauty of manga. Indeed, Mori says that Hagio is the only artist whom he adores and that she was the one who inspired him to write not only manga but other literary works as well. After joining a manga club at the university, Mori began to write and self-publish under the pen name Mori Muku. He also produced drawings and illustrations, and it was in the second year of university that he met Subaru Sasaki, an amateur artist with the same interests, who became both his wife and professional illustrator. Although Mori does not write manga anymore, he still claims to be a better manga artist than