He graduated from Musashino Art University's Design Department in 1964.
After graduating, he took a part-time job at Senkosya, an advertising agency, where he worked as an illustrator.
It was here that he met Yu Aku, a famous songwriter in Japan, who asked Kamimura to collaborate with him. Aku wanted Kamimura to draw a comic strip with a dramatic story.
His debut was Kawaiko Sayurichan no Daraku in Gekkan Town's first issue in 1967.
The next year, with the drawing of PARADA (original author: Yu Aku), his motivation changed from being an illustrator to that of a comic strip writer.
After that, he published many lyrical stories such as Dousei Jidai, Shura Yukihime (original story by Kazuo Koike), Shina no Kawa (original story by Hideo Okazaki),
etc...
DOUSEI JIDAI was especially a big hit and was called a new epoch in comics.
Quentin Tarantino used the theme song from 'Lady Snowblood' (1973) as an atmospheric piece for his epic martial arts film 'Kill Bill' (2003-2004), which shared a similar plotline. This brought 'Lady Snowblood' under worldwide attention and motivated the first English translation of the manga in 2005-2006 by Dark Horse. Translations of his other works soon followed. In 2009 Ed Brubaker, Marko Djurdjevic and Clay Mann created the character Lady Bullseye in Marvel's 'Daredevil' franchise as a tribute to Lady Snowblood.
He was called SHOWA NO ESHI, which means "Ukiyoe painter of the Showa Era," because of his elegant stroke lines.
He was so busy because he had to draw four hundred pages a month.
Iwaaki Hitoshi and Taniguchi Jiro were once his assistants.
In 1986, he was hospitalized with a pharynx tumor. He died on January 11, 1986, he was only 45 years old.
