Masashi Kishimoto

Who is Masashi Kishimoto?

Masashi Kishimoto is a Japanese manga artist, well known for creating the manga series Naruto which has been in serialization since 1999. Naruto has sold over 131 million copies as of February 2013 alone in Japan. Besides the Naruto manga, Kishimoto also participated in the making of the film Road to Ninja: Naruto the Movie and has written several one-shots.

A reader of manga ever since a young age, Kishimoto showed a desire to write his own manga, citing authors Akira Toriyama and Katsuhiro Otomo as his main inspirations. As a result, Kishimoto spent several years working to write his own shonen manga for the Weekly Shonen Jump which he was a fan of. His younger twin brother, Seishi Kishimoto, is also a manga artist and creator of the manga series 666 Satan and Blazer Drive. During the publication of Naruto, Kishimoto married in 2003 and became a father.