Who Is Yoshiaki Kawajiri?

Yoshiaki Kawajiri was born on 18 November 1950 in Yokohama, Japan. He graduated from high school in 1968 and went straight into animation as an animator at Mushi Production, Osamu Tezuka’s studio. When Mushi closed in 1972, he became one of the four co-founders of Madhouse, the studio he has been attached to ever since.

He spent the 1970s rising to animation director, then co-directed his first film, Lensman (1984), with Kazuyuki Hirokawa, designing the characters as well. The turn came in 1987: his segment The Running Man, made for the anthology Neo Tokyo, showed a director in love with shadow, speed and adult subjects. That same year he made his solo directorial debut with Wicked City, and from 1987 onward he wrote his own scripts.

The four films this shelf is built around followed: Wicked City (1987), Demon City Shinjuku (1988), Ninja Scroll (1993) and Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust (2000). Around them sit the cult OVA series Cyber City Oedo 808 (1990), the television series X (2001), his segment Program in The Animatrix (2003) and Highlander: The Search for Vengeance (2007).

His second career is quieter and longer: for decades now Kawajiri has been one of Japanese animation’s most hired storyboard artists, and his name turns up in the credits of productions as recent as One Punch Man and Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End. In 2026 he supervised the 4K restoration of Ninja Scroll, closing a circle that opened in a video store more than thirty years earlier.