Takehiko Inoue

Okay, let me just say it: this is the guy who drew Slam Dunk, and honestly that alone makes him a quiet menace, because he single-handedly stuffed basketball courts across Japan with kids. But here's what gets me about Takehiko Inoue. He could've coasted forever on that sports-manga glory, and instead he went and started Vagabond, a samurai epic he renders in these jaw-dropping ink-brush panels that look like museum pieces. Then there's Real, his wheelchair-basketball story, which somehow hits even harder. The man can draw sweat, doubt, and silence with a single pen, and he's not afraid to vanish mid-serialization for ages. I genuinely love that we get to live in his era and just wait for whatever he does next.

This take was written by generative AI, one per person, from publicly reported facts (editorial policy). It is a reading of the record, not reporting.

Takehiko Inoue (born January 12, 1967 in Isa, Kagoshima) is a Japanese manga artist whose basketball series SLAM DUNK, serialized in Weekly Shonen Jump from 1990 to 1996, became one of the best-selling manga of all time and is widely credited with sparking a basketball boom in Japan. He followed it with Vagabond, a sweeping historical drama about swordsman Miyamoto Musashi serialized in Morning since 1998, and Real, a manga about wheelchair basketball serialized in Weekly Young Jump since 1999. In 2022 he wrote and directed the animated film THE FIRST SLAM DUNK, his debut as a filmmaker.

Name (English)

Takehiko Inoue

Name (Japanese)

井上雄彦

Reading

いのうえ たけひこ

Real name

成合雄彦

Born

January 12, 1967 (age 59)

Origin

Isa, Kagoshima, Japan

Occupation

Manga artist / Film director / Screenwriter

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Capricorn / Goat

Blood type

B

Active years

1988–present

High school

Kagoshima Prefectural Oguchi High School

University

Kumamoto University

Debut

1988 — manga debut with "Kaede Purple," selected for the 35th Tezuka Award (published under his real name Takehiko Nariai)

Awards & achievements

• 1988 35th Tezuka Award — Selected Entry (Kaede Purple)
• 1995 40th Shogakukan Manga Award (SLAM DUNK)
• 2000 4th Agency for Cultural Affairs Media Arts Festival — Manga Division Grand Prize (Vagabond)
• 2001 5th Japan Media Arts Festival — Manga Division Excellence Award (Real)
• 2002 6th Osamu Tezuka Cultural Prize — Grand Prize (Vagabond)
• 2012 Nara Heijo-kyo 1300 Asia Cosmopolitan Award — Culture Prize

Timeline

1. 1967Born in Oguchi, Kagoshima (now Isa)
2. 1988Manga debut — "Kaede Purple" selected for the 35th Tezuka Award
3. 1989Serialized "Chameleon Jail" in Weekly Shonen Jump
4. 1990Began serializing SLAM DUNK in Weekly Shonen Jump; adopted pen name Takehiko Inoue
5. 1995Won the 40th Shogakukan Manga Award for SLAM DUNK
6. 1996SLAM DUNK serialization concluded (31 volumes total)
7. 1998Began serializing Vagabond in Kodansha's Morning
8. 1999Began serializing Real in Shueisha's Weekly Young Jump
9. 2002Won the Osamu Tezuka Culture Award Grand Prize for Vagabond
10. 2012Received the Asia Cosmopolitan Award for Culture

Hobbies

• Basketball
• Calligraphy
• Painting

Specialties

• Manga creation
• Sumi-e (ink wash painting)

Filmography / notable works

• Official sitehttps://itplanning.co.jp/
• Instagramhttps://www.instagram.com/inouetake88/
• Xhttps://x.com/inouetake
• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E4%BA%95%E4%B8%8A%E9%9B%84%E5%BD%A6
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q459911

Tags

• Manga artist
• SLAM DUNK
• Vagabond
• Real
• Kagoshima
• Shueisha
• Kodansha
• Basketball

Last updated

November 2, 2026

Only publicly available facts are listed; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. Base data was compiled from Wikidata from June 2026 onward; ages are recalculated daily and deaths are checked against Wikidata on an ongoing basis. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.