Hiroki Azuma (born May 9, 1971) is a Japanese cultural critic, author and lecturer. A graduate of the prestigious Tokyo University, he received his doctorate in philosophy in 1998. He has been a Research Fellow at Stanford University's Japan Center. One of the youngest literary critics in Japan today, he is a contemporary and co-conspirator with many of Japan's brightest modern talents in art, film, and literature. He is an associate of Takashi Murakami and the Superflat movement. Azuma launched his career as a literary critic in 1993 with a postmodern style influenced by leading Japanese critics Kojin Karatani and Akira Asada. In the late 1990s, Azuma began examining various pop phenomena, especially the emerging Internet/video game/nerd culture, and became widely known as an advocate of the thoughts of a new generation of Japanese. Azuma has published seven books and in 2000 he won the Suntory Literary Prize, as the youngest writer to ever win that prize.