Masashi Kishimoto

Masashi Kishimoto is a Japanese manga artist born in Okayama Prefecture. He has an identical twin brother, Seishi Kishimoto, who is also a manga artist. Kishimoto was inspired to pursue manga after seeing promotional artwork for the film Akira, which led him to study the work of Katsuhiro Otomo and Akira Toriyama.

His first successful manga pilot, Karakuri, earned an honorable mention in Shueisha's Hop Step Award in 1996. A one-shot version of Naruto appeared in Akamaru Jump in 1997, and the full serialization began in Weekly Shonen Jump in 1999. The series ran for 15 years, concluding in 2014 with 72 collected volumes.

Naruto has sold over 250 million copies worldwide in 46 countries and has been adapted into multiple anime series, films, and video games. After completing Naruto, Kishimoto worked on the science fiction manga Samurai 8: The Tale of Hachimaru, serialized in Weekly Shonen Jump from 2019 to 2020.