Below are translated pieces of the child history of Masashi Kishimoto. They were found on the sides of his manga. There are a total of ten pieces of information, most of it regarding different experiences.
Chapter 1
I was born in Okayama Prefecture in Showa Year 49 (1974) as the older twin brother. I was born prematurely and was immediately put into an incubator. Without it I would have died. It was a victory of science.In my small village there was a weird ceremony where on a child's first birthday they wear a rice cake on their back and have three objects placed in front of them. It is said that based on what objects they choose, their future career can be learned. My parents placed in front of my brother and me, an abacus, paint brush, and money. It seems my brother took a moment and then took the brush. And I went straight for the money. I was an evil child... Though I may have started out interested in money, I soon began to show interest in drawing, as did my brother.
At my parent's home, there are two brown stains on one of the walls. One time I became interested and asked what it was. 'Oh that? When you two were babies, one day you used your poop and started drawing on the wall. We tried over and over to wash it off but it left a stain....'
.... At that moment I thought that I was interested in drawing since the time I was born.
Chapter 2
When I attended Pre-school I began gaining interest in many things. Insects, the flow of the river water, if I started looking at these I had the habit of freezing and just staring at them for a long time. I hear that my Pre-school teacher and mom would often have trouble finding me.And that habit was the same at home. I had incredible concentration when watching TV and when my Dad wanted to talk to me he would spin me away from the TV and say "Hey!! Maabo!! (my nickname)." But even though my head wasn't facing the TV anymore my eyes still would be. My father, who was jealous of the TV, said my face would look quite scary when this would happen.
During these years I loved watching TV shows. One of my favorite was 'Doraemon.' For some reason I was really into that show and I was always drawing pictures of it. All my pre-school friends were also into "Doraemon" and would draw it too but there was one thing I just could not forgive. That had to do with Doraemon's eye area (check the lower pictures). Everyone would incorrectly draw it like Picture #2 and I would say "No!! The eye area is like this!!!" and draw it like Picture #1 to them, but they rarely understood and I got into many fights over this. Now that I think about it, I sure was an annoying kid.... I was also an idiot who went around saying the Doraemon drawing song was wrong.
Chapter 3
In elementary school I filled my notebooks with doodles. Even when I was outside playing hide and seek I would start drawing Doraemon on the ground as I waited to be found.But one day I was watching TV and saw an incredible show. "What's this?!!! So cool... and the art rules!!!." That show was Mobile Suit Gundam. After that I used my notebooks to draw the mobile suit robots. Zaku, Gifu, Domi, Jimu, Dozuruzabi, I was always drawing many of the Gundam characters.
But one day I once again saw an incredible show. "W..Wow!! The art is super duper good!!!!" That show was "Dr. Slump, Arale-chan." After that I would always draw pictures of Arale-chan. I even submitted a crayon drawing of Arale for the elementary school contest. One time my mom said "Arale-chan is a girl so she should have lipstick." and suddenly drew red around Arale-chan's lips, I still remember this well. I also remember that it was the first time in my life that I got really pissed.
Chapter 4
During my Elementary School days, because of Dragon Ball becoming an anime I really got into Manga and Shonen Jump. A little earlier my brother and I were crazy over another Jump anime, Kinnikuman. We often played around trying to think up our own Chyo-Jins. My brother thought up a Bug Chyo-Jin named Beetleman. I thought up ones like Wasabiman, Mustardman and ones based on condiments. With the introduction of a character called Curry Cook, I saw that it was alright to create ones based on a food products so I just opened the refrigerator and thought up a bunch of names. And condiments have some pretty cool sounding names. Not that I think about it, I was an idiot. (But I was serious about it at the time.)Around that time I learned about The Hokuto No Ken Anime (Fist of the North Star) and got really into that. At school we would have to clean our own classrooms and taking out the steel trash cans was really tiring. So I would poke one of my friends and say "I have hit one of your pressure points. You will now pick up the trash and take it out." But my friend would say he poked the same pressure point on me and it would go back and forth as we both took out the trash. Jump Anime was really great.
Chapter 5
So in late Elementary School, I was a strictly Dragonball Boy. I was so obsessed with it that Toriyama Akira Sensei was like a god to me. I was constantly drawing characters that appear in Dragonball. At that time I had a friend who would show me Shonen Jump so I could read Dragonball. I received no allowance, and didn't even have the money to buy the 190 Yen Jumps.At first I only read Dragonball in Jump but I started noticing the other great Manga series like Jojo, Saint Seiya, Kimengumi. I started reading all of them and got obsessed with Jump itself.
At this point I started thinking "Manga sure is great." and I also started wanting to become a Mangaka. I soon had the impossible dream of "I want to be in Jump." Around this time the young dreamer Kishimoto began creating manga. I still remember that my first creation was a manga called "Hiatari-Kun"; about a shadow ninja boy.
Chapter 6
So many things happened during my last year in Elementary School. I was so into Toriyama Akira Sensei's art that soon my drawings looked exactly like his. Then I was looking at the video game info section in Jump and I spotted a picture that looked exactly like Toriyama Sensei's."What's this game!? Awesome!" is what I was thinking, and when I found out that it was actually done by Toriyama Sensei, I got even more excited. That was was "Dragon Quest!" I really wanted to play, but that was just a dream for me because at the time I did not own a Famicon, which every other kid in my class seemed to own.
I couldn't ask my parents for one. My dad didn't like things like that, and when he'd hear the word "Video Game," he'd just tell me to go study.
My twin then came up with the brilliant plan of getting one from someone else. So we went through all our friends that owned one. We thought that a person willing to give away something worth 10,000 Yen couldn't exist... but he did!!! At that time I was so happy that I view this friend as a god.
Chapter 7
After begging my dad over and over I finally got Dragon Quest. It was the first game I ever owned. It was also the first time I ever played the RPG genre and I was clueless even after reading the booklet.After I defeated a slime, a window popped up saying "You learned Hoimi!" but I had no idea how to use it. When I looked it up in the book, it said "Magic: The Hoimi spell will recover your HP." I still didn't understand.
My brother, as if he had a stroke of genius, grabbed the second controller, turned the microphone on and with an unbelievably weird voice, said, "Hoimi!!" Yes.. he said the spell into the second controller microphone!!
It's now obvious that the window system was based off the commands, but at the time, since it was the first time I had seen Dragon Quest, I didn't understand well. However, by the time we have become able to use "Hoimi" and had already perfectly understood the system and had satisfied ourselves with about 4 hours of Dragon Quest, our father appeared in front of us two stupid brothers, who were going to turn the game off without learning the revival spell, and said something I remember well, "Let me do it too."
After that, father and children stayed up all night playing Dragon Quest, which is now a good memory. Our father, who had no interest in games at all, had shown a considerable reaction to Dragon Quest. At that time it was mysterious, but now I can approve of that.
Dragon Quest become an incredibly popular game, and now Dragon Quest 7 is out already. Recently, after calling my real home for the first time in awhile, my father picked up and we talked. He had apparently beaten Dragon Quest 7.
Chapter 8
In Junior High School, I focused on baseball and didn't draw very much, I played the games on Saturday and practiced in the early morning everyday. I also studied a lot and was much busier then in Elementary School, I had no time for drawing anymore.As I passed each day thinking "Am I too old to draw now?" an unbelievable turning point occurred. I still haven't forgotten how the intensity of that day. This was when I saw a poster to a certain movie, as I walked home from school, I happened to see the poster for Ootomo Katsuhiro's movie "Akira." 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.
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."
I thought it was so cool, how the character was, his bike, how he stood on the ground, everything just seemed so real. The bike was so cool too, how the cracked ground had a few stones scattered about. The are was so great and something I had never seen before, it lit the fire to draw in me once again. Since then I have drawn continuously in hopes of getting close to that picture.
Chapter 9
After I learned of "Akira" my approach of drawing changed dramatically. I studied to understand the style of drawings of the creator of "Akira", Ootomo Sensei but couldn't. At that point I thought that this was a totally original style with nothing else like it. I hadn't been this blown away by art since Toriyama Sensei.I couldn't understand what was so attractive about the art of Toriyama Sensei and Ootomo Sensei. But there was two things that I could understand. That to me both were original and both had great style. The effects, designs, every small detail was different from other artists. So basically I began thinking that an attractive picture is one that is original, and learning how to copy other artists was pointless.
I then tried creating something original but I would always end up copying someone. It wasn't working so I decided to look at as much art by different people as possible. I looked to see if there was amazing art from people besides those two.
I then realized that while many people used similar styles as those two, finding a completely original style was very rare. So with my belief that Ootomo's style was unbeatable, I started copying him.
As I entered my third year of Junior High I would buy up all the "Akira" art books and anime comics and copy them all as much as possible. As I did this I also did my best to come up with original drawings. During Junior High I was simple and this was the best I could do. I would soon encounter drawings from two other artists with great style and originality.
Chapter 10
I was able to make a 31 page manga in the 11th Grade, but I couldn't tell if it was any good. So I showed it to my brother. "Great, isn't it?!!" is what I was thinking as I waited for the answer but he said "This Sucks!!." But since he's my brother and I can't trust him, I showed it to my dad, "This is no good" the same thing. I had been really excited about submitting my first ever 31 page mange for a Jump Magazine Award but after that I lose the nerve and that crappy manga will sit in the bottom of my desk drawer forever.Anyway, I was a simple, blind, and stupid young man who thought "I want to win the contest so I just need to keep creating mangas." While my thinking was stupid, now that I think about it, it was good practice, plus I was young, it couldn't be helped.
After a few more manga projects and being told over and over that they were no good, I snapped, "Why aren't my mangas any good!! Damn it!! What's different about my and other mangakas, idiot!!"
I revealed all the stupidity I had and graduated High School without figuring out anything. Due to always drawing manga, my class rank was 38th out of 39. It became obvious that I wasn't going to get into any college. No good at manga, no good at school. And love, much much much much worse! This was my High School life.
Anyway, this is a time when everyone has trouble. You can face many tough situations, I'm sure the students will understand what I mean. Life isn't easy, well that's obvious. But I didn't give up!! Actually I was the type that didn't think about things too deeply. "Well, things will work out!!" is about the limit of my thoughts. Thank god for being stupid!!
