Keisuke Itagaki

Long before Baki’s fighters chased the title of strongest on Earth, Keisuke Itagaki was chasing it himself. Born on April 4, 1957, in Kushiro, Hokkaido, he earned a second-degree black belt in Shorinji Kempo and, at 19, joined the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force, serving for about five years in the 1st Airborne Brigade, the force’s elite paratrooper unit. He also took up boxing and competed at Japan’s National Sports Festival.

At 21, Eikichi Yazawa’s autobiography Nariagari set him on a different path. Asking himself which talent could earn him a living, he settled on drawing, something people had praised him for since childhood. He spent five years teaching himself, then entered Kazuo Koike’s Gekiga Sonjuku manga school and debuted two years later with Make-Upper in 1989.

In 1991, he launched Baki the Grappler in Akita Publishing’s Weekly Shonen Champion, the first installment of the landmark martial arts series Baki. Celebrated for its larger-than-life fighters and ferocious artwork, the series marked its 35th anniversary in 2026 and has more than 100 million copies in print.