Noboru Kawasaki was born on January 28, 1941, in Osaka, Japan. He is a Japanese manga artist and the original creator of numerous influential manga and anime works that rose to prominence in the late 1960s and 1970s.

Kawasaki is widely recognized as the creator of the original manga for several major anime series. He is credited with creating Animal 1, which was adapted into an anime in 1968. He is the creator of Kōya no Shōnen Isamu (The Wilderness Boy Isamu), which aired as an anime from 1973 to 1974. He is also the creator of the manga The Song of Tentomushi, which was adapted into an anime in 1974.

His most famous work is Star of the Giants (Kyojin no Hoshi), a baseball manga that became a cultural phenomenon. For this series, Kawasaki provided the artwork while the story was written by Ikki Kajiwara. The Star of the Giants manga was adapted into a long-running anime television series, as well as several animated films, including Kyojin no Hoshi: Yuke Hyuma (1969), Kyojin no Hoshi: Chizome no Kesshōsen, and Kyojin no Hoshi: Dai League Ball (1970).

Beyond these titles, his extensive body of work includes the manga Inakappe Taishō, Skyers 5, and Football Hawk, all of which were also adapted into anime series. Inakappe Taishō, a story about a young judo champion, was published starting in 1970 and won the Shogakukan Manga Award alongside Animal 1.

Throughout his career, Kawasaki has received significant industry recognition. He was a co-recipient of the 14th Shogakukan Manga Award in 1969 for Animal 1 and Inakappe Taishō. He also won the 8th Kodansha Children's Manga Award for Star of the Giants in 1967, and later won the Kodansha Manga Award in the shōnen category for Football Hawk in 1978. His artistic identity is closely linked to sports and adventure narratives that defined a generation of Japanese popular culture. His work on Star of the Giants, in particular, is considered a landmark series that helped establish the sports genre in manga and anime.