Kaiu Shirai

Kaiu Shirai (白井 カイウ) is a pen name of a Japanese mangaka who debuted in 2015 with Ashley Gate no Yukue on the Shonen Jump+ website. Shirai first worked with Posuka Demizu on the one-shot Poppy no Negai, which was released in February 2016. Shirai is currently known for writing the story for The Promised Neverland.

History
Kaiu Shirai was doing Kabuki at a young age and then after graduating from university, Shirai gained employment at a normal company, but later resigned. Aiming to become a professional manga artist, he began to submit manuscripts to editors and magazines.

On 21 June 2015, Kaiu Shirai published his first professional work, a standalone piece called, The Location of Ashley-Gate, in Shōnen Jump+, a digital imprint of Shueisha, with art by Kyousuke Maruyama. Again, in the same magazine, he published his second work, another standalone piece called, Poppy's Wish, in collaboration with artist Posuka Demizu on 18 February 2016.

After that, Shirai created a serialized work based on drafts written while he was still an amateur. This work, The Promised Neverland, (with art by Posuka Demizu) started its run in the 35th issue of Weekly Shōnen Jump on 1 August 2016 and finished in the 28th issue of the magazine on 15 June 2020. Along with manga artist Posuka Demizu, Shirai published two one-shots in 2020 and 2021. The first one, Spirit Photographer Saburo Kono was published in the combined issue No. 36 – No. 37, 2020 of Weekly Shōnen Jump; the second one is titled DC3, published in the same magazine in issue No. 35 of 2021. On 3 September 2021, Kaiu Shirai x Posuka Demizu: Beyond The Promised Neverland was published, which included works and one-shots in combination with Posuka Demizu.

After graduating from a university, Kaiu Shirai worked in a company that had no connection with the manga. Before The Promised Neverland was developed, he tried to create several stories, but all were rejected. He thought of giving up, telling himself that he had no talent like Mangaka, but ended up trying one last time, making a story called "Neverland," just to know if his story was good or bad, like the ones he had prepared before. Since he had not been able to summarize it, he ended up preparing 300 pages, a gigantic amount.

Takushi Sugita, the current editor of the series, was on the project with Kaiu, before Posuka Demizu entered. The editor was also responsible for joining the duo, testing them together with a One-Shot called Poppy's Wish. According to him, "the two fell in love with each other." Posuka met with Kaiu, she read the entire script in one go. Posuka used to get rather bored while reading scripts, but she said that all 300 pages were so interesting that she could not stop.

Shirai fell in love with Posuka's artwork, just as Posuka fell in love with Shirai's writing. The author already knew the art of the designer before that and explained what he liked best in her art, and was very happy when she designed his one-shot story because the result was better than he expected.

At that time, Shirai was a complete stranger. So it was difficult to convince Jump to give the pair a chance, but Demizu relied on her partner's talent. From that time on, the author planned to let someone else draw, for even if he could draw alone, the editors felt that his drawings did not do justice to the plot he had prepared and that he could not make a good series by taking care of both the script and the art. The Promised Neverland was not something planned for Weekly Shonen Jump, so it was difficult to decide together with the publisher which parties should stay and which ones should leave. Some parts of the story did not fit into Weekly Shonen Jump, but Shirai did not want to take them at all. When the one-shot reception came out, being reasonably accepted, he was able to keep up with his vision.

A collaborative exhibition titled Miroirs manga meets Chanel by Kaiu Shirai, Posuka Demizu and Chanel was held at Chanel Nexus Hall Ginza, Chūō, Tokyo, from 28 April to 4 June 2021. The manga Miroirs, written and illustrated by the duo, was inspired by the Chanel brand. In this exhibition, scenes from Miroirs are exhibited alongside precious works from Chanel. The manga was published by Shueisha on 30 April 2021. In 2022, Shirai participated as a judge at Shōnen Jump+'s 7th Stokin Pro Garyokin 2022, to discover new talented manga artists.

Inspirations

 * Shirai loves movies and says they are a big influence on him. He says he likes a particular movie, a 1993 American film The Good Son.
 * Coincidentally, there are several characters in The Promised Neverland series who have the same names as characters from The Good Son, including Mark, Susan and Conny.
 * In the first page of Chapter 91, in Mister's flashback, he was seen holding his dead friend Dina in his arms with a terrified look on his face―this is a reference to Ilya Repin 's famous painting "Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan on November 16, 1581", or simply "Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan".
 * In Issue 28 of Shounen Jump Manga, Shirai commented how he views the painting as "damaged" and loves it, inspired by the painting's expressiveness, he hence included the painting's pose into Chapter 91 of the Manga.
 * For The Promised Neverland, Shirai was inspired by children's folklore books from all over the world and video games like Final Fantasy for the series' setting creation, while for the horror elements, he said that he only used his imagination because he did not like horror films. He also mentioned that part of the story came from some nightmares that he had as a kid, especially after having read Hansel and Gretel, stories about children being eaten, and a manga focused on spirits that made him ask himself if the monsters could solve their problems if they raised humans like cattle. Shirai said: "All these fears, ideas, influences, have come together. This is how the story of The Promised Neverland was born".
 * Shirai commented that he was influenced by manga artists Osamu Tezuka, Naoki Urasawa, Yoshihiro Togashi and Eiichiro Oda; as well as directors Akira Kurosawa, Kōki Mitani, Kentaro Kobayashi and Hayao Miyazaki. He has also mentioned the Kabuki actor Kanzaburo Nakamura XVIII as a source of influence for his works.

Trivia

 * Kaiu Shirai is ranked 29th in the second popularity poll.
 * Before The Promised Neverland, he made two One-Shots, a Popy's Wish (Popy in Negai in Japanese), to test how his relationship with Posuka would work, and the other Ashley: The Gate's Whereabouts, which he did with another artist.
 * Kaiu Shirai likes to pass the message of Jump in his manga (Effort, Friendship, and Victory) and, even with his story being something without battles and completely "Anti-Jump", he still hopes to get this message across.
 * Shirai says he loves to deceive readers.
 * Shirai says authors such as Naoki Urasawa (Works: Monster, Pluto, 20th Century Boys), Takeshi Obata (Works: Death Note, Bakuman, Hikaru no Go) and Yūsei Matsui (Works: Neuro: Supernatural Detective, Assassination Classroom) are some of his inspirations.
 * In one of the special pages of the first volume of The Promised Neverland, Shirai stated the orphans' poorly drawn drawings that were posted on the walls in the orphanage are drawn by him.undefinedundefined
 * He is a Christian.
 * Shirai appears to be a very private person as interviews with him are rare and his real name, appearance, age, date of birth, and much of his personal life is a mystery.
 * He currently has no personal website and no social media.