His works have sold more than 20 million copies in Japan spread across more than 280 titles and adapted into a variety of formats including feature films, television shows, movies and comic books.

He's been nicknamed "the artisan of violence" due to one of his popular martial arts novel series, Shishi no Mon (獅子の門, Gate of Fierce Lions).

In 1975, he visited Nepal for the first time; the region would become host to one of his most popular works, The Summit of the Gods, which was adapted into the French animated film Le Sommet des Dieux in 2021.

A typographic experiment story titled Kaeru no Shi, dubbed as "Typografiction", was published in Neo Null and received a great deal of attention within the industry; it was reprinted in the science fiction magazine Kisou Tengai, which became his first appearance in commercial magazine.

Over the span of his career, Yumemakura worked with a wide range of historically important figures in the Japanese art scene.