Masashi Kishimoto (岸本 斉史, Kishimoto Masashi, born November 8, 1974[1]) is a Japanese

manga artist. His best known work, Naruto, was in serialization from 1999 to 2014 and has sold
over 250 million copies worldwide in 46 countries as of May 2019.[2] The series has been
adapted into two anime and multiple films, video games, and related media. Besides the Naruto
manga, Kishimoto also personally supervised the two canonical anime films, The Last: Naruto
the Movie and Boruto: Naruto the Movie, and has written several one-shot stories. In 2019,
Kishimoto wrote Samurai 8: The Tale of Hachimaru which ended in March 2020. From May
2016 through October 2020 he supervised the Boruto: Naruto Next Generations manga written
by Ukyo Kodachi and illustrated by Mikio Ikemoto. In November 2020 it was announced that he
had taken over as writer on the series, replacing Kodachi.[3]

A reader of manga from 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 shōnen manga for Weekly Shōnen Jump magazine
which he was a fan of.[4]