The author received his Ph.D. from the University of Tokyo in 1992. He has taught at Yamagata University, Hiroshima University, and is currently a Professor at Kyushu University, Japan.
From the reviews of the first edition: The book is a systematic summary of the author's research done in the past decade ... . The book is undoubtedly a milestone in global singularity theory of smooth maps of negative codimension: a very promising research topic. This clearly written and nicely illustrated volume is suitable for anybody in the field from graduate students to researchers. (Richard Rimanyi, Zentralblatt MATH, Vol. 1072, 2005)