Masashi Kishimoto is a well known Japanese manga artist. He is best known for creating the popular manga Naruto. Masashi has a twin brother who is also a Japanese manga artist named Seishi Kishimoto, who is known for creating 666 Satan and Blazer Drive.

Masashi Kishimoto's first created manga was known as Karakuri which was submitted to Shueisha in 1995. Karakuri would win Masashi Weekly Shonen Jump's monthly "Hop Step Award" which is granted to a promising new artist. Masashi would later create his most popular anime known as Naruto. Naruto is still an ongoing series, and currently has 45 volumes and over 450 chapters. Naruto has sold nearly 100 Million copies world wide. The series also was responsible for 10% of Viz Media's sales in 2006. Volume 7 would be the first manga ever to win the Quill Award for "Best Graphic Novel" in 2006. Masashi says that most of his inspiration for Naruto came from the Dragon Ball series created by Akira Toriyama.

You can view an interview between Shonen Jump and Masashi Kishmoto here.