Mangaka Eiichi Muraoka - born in 1949 in a small town in Tohoku - was best known for being an early pioneer of mahjong and gambling manga. From 2015 onwards, he intermittently published chapters of an autobiographical manga, "Kyonen no Yuki" (Last Year's Snow) on pixiv, retelling episodes from his life from his youth to his days as a manga-ka. After a stroke left him paralysed on his right hand side in May 2021, he was unable to complete all of the proposed chapters, but his daughter Shiho Muraoka (then-editor of Young King magazine at Shounen Gahousha) assisted him in having the six complete chapters collected into a single volume, published in 2023.
