Masashi Kishimoto is the legendary manga artist behind the quarter-of-a-billion-selling series Naruto. Based on the story of a young ninja, Naruto, who dreams of becoming the leader of his village, it ran for 15 years and 72 volumes, becoming one of the best-selling manga series ever published. It also won a prestigious Quill Award, and spawned a media franchise that includes two anime series, multiple films, and a dozen video games. Kishimoto’s other work includes the Hop Step Award-winning one-shot manga, Karakuri, and Samurai 8: The Tale of Hachimaru. Since 2020, he has been one of the writers of the million-selling manga, Baruto: Naruto Next Generations.

Kishimoto was born in Nagi, Japan, in November 1974. He showed artistic promise from an early age and was particularly keen on drawing his favourite characters from some of the classic anime series of the early 1980s, such as Dr Slump and Doraemon. During his time at university, he began entering manga competitions, and his perseverance paid off soon after graduating when his Kakuri manga which was published in 1995 and won him a Hop Step Award (a prize given to promising artistic talents in manga).

Naruto arrived in 1999, debuting in Shonen Weekly Jump. Today, nearly 25 years later, it has sold more than 300 million copies worldwide, with audiences in Japan and the United States being its biggest fans. In 2015, he began work as a supervisor on the spin-off series, Baruto, and in November 2020, he became its lead writer, continuing to lead a franchise that has become a manga institution.