Kouji Kiriyama

Birth place: Suginami, Tokyo, Japan

Real name: 桐山 浩二 (same reading)

183 cm tall and left-handed, his favorite hobby is baseball. Kouji Kiriyama is a Japanese manga artist, best known for the "Ninku" (忍空) series which was serialized in Shueisha's Weekly Shounen Jump manga magazine between 1993 and 1995, and was adapted into an anime series and films. A second manga titled "Ninku: Second Stage - Etonin-hen" (忍空 -SECOND STAGE 干支忍編-) ran from 2005 to 2011 in the seinen magazine Ultra Jump. His works inspired artists such as Masashi Kishimoto, who used to copy Kiriyama's drawings in his studying to become a manga artist.

Kouji Kiriyama began his career as a manga artist in 1991 with the short baseball series "Sengoku Koushien - Kyuukenshi Densetsu" (戦国甲子園〜九犬士伝説〜), published in Shogakukan's Weekly Shounen Sunday manga magazine and "concluded" in six volumes with a cliffhanger, as the last chapters of the manga were never published in a tankoubon format for unknown reasons. Shortly after, he moved to Weekly Shounen Jump, where he debuted his biggest and only hit, "Ninku", which gave him video games, plushies, toys, trading card games and three anime adaptations by Studio Pierrot.

In the same year that the Ninku anime premiered, Kouji Kiriyama chose to end the manga abruptly, as according to some rumors, he was unable to deal with the sudden success and popularity of his work, returning to his activities as a manga artist only in 2005. While working, he likes to listen to Deep Purple, Rainbow, White Snake, Glenn Hughes, Cozy Powell and Ritchie Blackmore.

Hiroyuki Takei, Takeshi Konomi, Akitsugu Mizumoto, Hajime Kazu and Daisuke Higushi were his assistants during "Ninku" first serialization.