Yuji Aoki (1945–2003) was a Japanese manga artist and social commentator. After working for a railway company, a municipal office, restaurants, and other businesses, he established a design company that later collapsed because of financial difficulties. Drawing on that experience, he began serializing his breakthrough work, "Naniwa Kin’yūdō," at the age of forty-five. The manga follows Tatsuyuki Haibara, who loses his job when his employer fails and joins Teikoku Finance, a consumer-loan company in Osaka. Through personal guarantees, dishonored bills, asset seizures, and aggressive debt collection, the series depicts both lenders and borrowers being controlled by money, contracts, and legal procedures. It received the 16th Kodansha Manga Award and an Excellence Prize at the second Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize.