Takuto Kashiki is a Japanese manga artist and writer, best known as the original creator of the manga series Hakumei and Mikochi (also known as Hakumei to Mikochi or Minuscule). He studied at a university specializing in manga, and during his student years he drew for fanzines. After completing his studies, he moved to Tokyo and continued working on fanzines, where he was discovered by his future editor, a woman named Morioka. His editor initially asked him to draw three one-shot stories, one of which would later become the first chapter of what is now Hakumei and Mikochi. He has stated that he worked as an assistant for only a very short period, helping out on a very occasional basis rather than serving as a dedicated assistant to any particular manga creator.

Kashiki’s most notable original work is Hakumei and Mikochi, a manga series that began serialization in 2011 in Enterbrain's seinen manga magazine Fellows!. The magazine was later renamed Harta in 2013, where the series continues to be published. The story follows two tiny nine-centimeter-tall women living in a lush forest, depicting their daily adventures, cultural events, and interactions with the natural world. The series has been collected into multiple tankōbon volumes. The success of the manga led to a twelve-episode anime television series adaptation produced by the studio Lerche, which aired from January 12 to March 30, 2018. An original video animation was also released on the second Blu-ray and DVD volume on June 27, 2018. The anime has been licensed for English distribution by Sentai Filmworks, while the manga is published in English by Yen Press under the title Hakumei and Mikochi: Tiny Little Life in the Woods.

Regarding his artistic identity and recurring themes, Kashiki has stated that his primary inspiration came from books he loved as a child that told stories of small creatures such as mice or goblins. He has cited Noriko Sasaki’s Dōbutsu no Oisha-san (The Animal Doctor) as a specific influence, as well as more mainstream series like Dragon Ball. He intentionally did not target a specific age group with his work, and has said he receives letters from people in their mid-twenties, elementary school students, and elderly readers, indicating a very broad audience. A core message he hopes to convey is for readers to find small pleasures in their daily lives to make the ordinary more agreeable, rather than delivering any grand thematic statement. He deliberately integrates fantastical elements into the story naturally, making them feel ordinary by describing everything through the eyes of the characters. While early chapters were mostly self-contained stories, he noted that later volumes would include stories that continue over multiple chapters, though the series would never become completely linear.

For his creative process, Kashiki works with one assistant who does not touch the drawings themselves. The assistant is responsible only for placing screentones and drawing perspective lines. Kashiki draws all pages himself. The process for a full chapter begins with discussions between Kashiki and his editor to decide on the scenario, which takes about one week. The drawing phase for approximately twenty-six pages then takes between two weeks and twenty days. For the artwork itself, he has adapted his natural drawing style to be more realistic so that readers can have a sensory experience, feeling as if they could touch the leaves in the forest. Because his characters are so small, he has had to learn to draw everything from a low angle looking upward.

Beyond Hakumei and Mikochi, Kashiki has created other original works. These include the one-shot Midoriiro no Isu from 2016, the series U12 Kodomo Fellows which began in 2016, and the series Ishu Kouryuukai which ran from 2011 to 2024. His complete bibliography includes multiple volumes of the main Hakumei and Mikochi series, also published in French under the title Minuscule, as well as an official guidebook to that world. In all of his published manga, he is consistently credited as both the writer and the artist. His significance in the industry stems from his creation of a successful and long-running manga that has been adapted into an anime, appealing to a broad demographic from children to older adults, all while maintaining a distinctive artistic style and a gentle, slice-of-life narrative approach that has been characterized as belonging to the iyashikei (healing) genre.