Masashi Kishimoto

Born 1974 (Okayama Prefecture, Japan)
Japanese author, illustrator

Masashi Kishimoto catapulted himself to fame with the publication of his first manga series, Naruto, which debuted in Japan in 1999. (In simple terms, manga are Japanese comics. Japanese manga and American comics both tell stories using a combination of drawings and words. However, Japanese manga read from right to left, just the opposite of American comics, and Japanese manga also tend to emphasize mood and characterization more than American comics.) Naruto follows the adventures of a young orphan named Naruto as he trains to become a ninja. Naruto hopes to become the greatest ninja of all time, but he has many obstacles in his way: he is excluded by his village, he has trouble in school, and a ferocious demon is trapped inside him. As Naruto and his classmates, Sasuke and Sakura, are tested by teachers and confronted by villains, they grow as ninjas and mature as people. Kishimoto balances Naruto's action-packed adventures with endearing insight into his characters. More than simply a good story, Naruto is also noted for its art. Kishimoto created compelling compositions for his pages, altering perspectives and paying close attention to details. By the time Naruto was introduced to the United States in 2002, sales of the manga in Japan had topped forty million copies. Although the market in the United States remained a small fraction of that in Japan, Naruto quickly built a strong fan base in translation.

"Creating manga isn't just about drawing well, but writing a good story. Keep the art and the story real, and you can't lose."

Drawn to details

Masashi Kishimoto was born the oldest of twin boys in 1974 in the Okayama Prefecture, a region of Japan. Kishimoto quickly developed a fascination with the world around him and would stare for long periods with great concentration at anything that interested him, including bugs, rivers, and television. As he stared, he absorbed the smallest details about how these things looked. He soon started translating what he saw into pictures, carrying sketch-books with him and doodling whenever he had the chance. He even fit drawing into his childhood games, finding great hiding places while playing hide-and-seek so that he could sit and draw in the dirt while everyone else ran around, as he remembered in Naruto 7. He patterned his drawings after his favorite animated characters. Among his favorites were those on the popular anime, or animated manga, television shows Doraemon, Mobile Suit Gundam and Dr. Slump: Arale-Chan.

Best-Known Works

Graphic Novels

(With Jo Duffy) Naruto 1: The Tests of the Ninja (2003).

Naruto 2: The Worst Client (2003).

Naruto 3: Bridge of Courage (2004).

(With Jo Duffy) Naruto 4: The Next Level (2004).

Naruto 5 (2004).

(With Nobuhiro Watsuki and Jo Duffy) Naruto 6 (2005).

Naruto 7 (2005).

Naruto 8 (2005).

Kishimoto remembered taking his drawings very seriously. With his keen eye for detail, he worked to perfect his pictures. The art of Akira Toriyama (1955–), the creator of Dr. Slump and later Dragonball and Dragonball Z, especially influenced Kishimoto. He strove to copy Toriyama's unique artistic style. Kishimoto scrutinized his own work but was just as exacting when critiquing the artwork of his friends and classmates. He remembered getting into many fights over the "right" way to draw certain characters. When he noticed an error in the instructions for drawing Doraemon characters in a popular song (there was a Japanese song about drawing Doraemon characters), he grew angry and criticized anyone who drew characters according to the song's lyrics. He did not, however, take criticism of his own work lightly. He remembered the first time he ever "completely lost [his] temper" in Naruto 7, describing when his mother looked at one of his drawings and said, "'If this Arale-Chan is a girl, then you have to put lipstick on her,' and just like that, she added red lipstick to my drawing." In hindsight, Kishimoto admitted that he was an "annoying" child, as quoted on the Naruto Central Web site.

Although Kishimoto's love of art first developed from watching anime, he soon started reading manga in the weekly Shonen Jump magazine, Japan's most popular manga magazine. Unable to afford the weekly, Kishimoto asked to read his friends' copies. At first he just borrowed the magazine to read new issues of Dragonball, but he quickly started reading the magazine from cover to cover and began dreaming of becoming a manga creator.

Finds great inspiration

In high school, Kishimoto spent a lot of time playing baseball and studying. He wondered if he had outgrown drawing. He described the day he saw a poster for Katsuhiro Ootomo's Akira (1988) as the "turning point" that revived his determination to be an artist. "I don't know why but seeing this poster had an intense emotional effect on me, for some reason I spent about an hour just staring at it," Kishimoto remembered according to Naruto Central. "The poster has the main character Kaneda walking towards his bike, the angle was from above, it was a very difficult composition. 'How can this person draw such a difficult composition? I've never seen a person who could do that."' The poster "lit the fire to draw in me once again. Since then I have drawn continuously in hopes of getting close to that picture," Kishimoto remarked. Ootomo's style of art also marked a turning point in manga art, according to Kishimoto. He explained in Shonen Jump that "I consider Akira to be the first Japanese anime to use the 'fresco' style of art. Unlike the other works during that time, the character designs, lines, and sense were very realistic, as was the manga itself. Even the buildings were very detailed, and the sheer amount of information that the art conveyed was incredible. It was a very cool science fiction manga. I think it's also the reason anime became so popular in the U.S. I got a bunch of storyboards for Akira when I was 14, and I remember constantly copying them," as quoted on the Narutokun Web site.

Inspired, Kishimoto dove into his artwork, experimenting with styles to create his own manga. Though he had finished one by the eleventh grade, Kishimoto was not pleased with his work. Neither his brother nor his father liked his manga. Nevertheless, Kishimoto kept trying, focusing on his manga more than his studies. He graduated second from the bottom of his high school class, so low that he had little hope of being accepted into college. But for all his efforts on his artwork, he seemed unable to create a manga that his family or friends liked. Undaunted about his future prospects, Kishimoto found an art college to attend and kept working toward becoming a manga creator, thinking simply, "Things will work out," according to the Naruto Fan Web site.

Things did work out. In 1995, Kishimoto submitted a manga called Karakuri about a World War II (1939–45; war in which Great Britain, France, the Soviet Union, the United States, and their allied forces defeated Germany, Italy, and Japan) squadron to Shonen Jump and won the "Hop Step" amateur manga artist award. Kishimoto quickly followed this with his first single version of Naruto in 1997 in the manga magazine Akamaru Jump, and by 1999 he had begun weekly publication of Naruto in Shonen Jump.

Creates Naruto

The Naruto series is about the adolescence of an orphaned boy who aspires to become the greatest ninja. The boy, Uzumaki Naruto, lives in the small rural village of Konohagakure, a place once devastated by the ferocious fox demon Nine-Tails, a powerful supernatural being. Though Naruto does not know it, when he was an infant the spirit of the Nine-Tails was locked inside his body by the greatest ninja Hokage in order to save the village. Knowing the evil spirit dwells in Naruto, the villagers shun the boy, and he has grown up acting out in order to get attention.

Training in the Ninja Academy, Naruto pursues his dream. He dives into his training with vigor, learning ninjutsu, the way of the ninja, including ninja hand signals, fighting techniques, and how to think like a ninja. But his obnoxious antics and lack of study skills threaten his advancement; he fails his tests numerous times. When he learns of the evil spirit trapped within him, Naruto comes to understand why he is treated differently. Nevertheless he remains committed to his dream of becoming a ninja master, and hopes to one day win the respect of his village and eventually find someone who can shed more light on the consequences of having the spirit within him. Teamed with classmates Uchiha Sasuke and Haruno Sakura and instructed by the master ninja, Hatake Kakashi, Naruto faces challenges that teach him about friendship, cooperation, and the difference between right and wrong. Naruto offers stories that reflect the ideals of hard work and sincerity, for in the series victory is ultimately had by the virtuous.

A New Look for Ninjas

Naruto looks much different from other ninja mangas. Instead of the masked ninjas dressed in black, Kishimoto draws the Naruto characters in lively, colorful outfits. Naruto wears an orange outfit with a hooded jacket trimmed in white. Sasuke, the smartest boy in the academy, wears long shorts with straps tied around his calves. Sakura, a teenage girl ninja-in-training, wears a variety of simple, brightly colored robes with shorts and long, flowing tops. All three students wear a headband with a symbol called the black leaf, which stands for their village, Konohagakure. Other ninjas in the series wear headbands with symbols relating to their place of origin, status, or affiliated group, such as the musical note on the headband of the Sound ninja who attempt to destroy Sasuke in Naruto 7. The villains within the series stand out from the heroes with their elaborate outfits; the Sound ninja, for example, wear such elaborate items as boldly patterned shirts, fur capes, and even a mummy-like wrap on one ninja's face. Other villains wear dark makeup to outline their eyes or to mark their faces with designs or symbols. The design elements and alternating perspectives that Kishimoto uses in the series also make it stand out among other manga.

When Kishimoto began weekly publication of Naruto in 1999, the market for manga in Japan was truly enormous. Shonen Jump enjoyed a readership of nearly three million, according to Home Media Retailing, and manga made up almost 40 percent of the printed material in Japan by 2002, according to the Seattle Times, making it a $4 billion business. Within that time span, Naruto became Japan's most popular manga. In 2003, Viz Communications began publishing Naruto in monthly installments in the English-language magazine Shonen Jump. The manga quickly gained fans, the first manga to do so without the support of a corresponding anime program, and began to be published in longer graphic novel form. Since 2003, Naruto graphic novels have consistently ranked among the most popular manga in the United States. Sales for the manga only increased when the anime version of Naruto began airing on the Cartoon Network in 2005.

The international popularity of Naruto placed such pressure on Kishimoto to maintain a blistering pace of production that he had to hire a staff to help him publish Naruto. While early volumes were hand drawn and lettered, publication of Naruto 7 marked the full transition of Naruto to digital production. Kishimoto and his staff created characters and backgrounds entirely on computers. Special software enabled them to pose characters in different positions and manipulate the picture composition in almost any way imaginable. Kishimoto explained in Naruto 7 that "Our methods will probably continue to change as the technology evolves … but there's one thing that won't ever change: the need to invent good stories!" Kishimoto's consistent focus on the detailing of both the visual and textual content of his stories boded well for the future of Naruto.

For More Information

Periodicals

De La Cruz, Edwin. Video Store Magazine (Duluth, MN) (February 27–March 5, 2005): p. 16.

De La Cruz, Edwin. "Viz Media Launches Shonen Jump Label." Home Media Retailing (Duluth, MN) (August 14–August 20, 2005): p. 14.

"Ninja Master Kishimoto." Shonen Jump, vol. 6 (June 2003): pp. 3–7.

Rahner, Mark. "Manga Collectors, Get Ready to Do Some Back Flips." Seattle Times (December 3, 2002): p. E1.

Web Sites

"Interview with Masashi Kishimoto." Naruto-kun (reprinted from Shonen Jump, vol. 6). http://www.naruto-kun.com/naruto+manga/masashi+kishimoto.html (accessed on May 3, 2006).

"The Man Behind the Shadows." Naruto Fan.http://www.narutofan.com/index.php/content-masashi%20kishimoto,biography (accessed on May 3, 2006).

"Naruto." Viz.http://naruto.viz.com/site_1024.html (accessed on May 3, 2006).

"News and Content." Naruto Central.http://www.narutocentral.com/index.php?page=content/info/childhistory.html (accessed on May 3, 2006).

"Uzumaki Naruto Artbook: Kishimoto Masashi Interview, Translated by Pazuzu." Redbrick: Dublin City University Network Society.http://www.redbrick.dcu.ie/%7Epazuzu/uzumaki.txt (accessed on May 3, 2006).