Kito was born into a family of artists in 1925 and began painting at the age of 16. In 1943, he entered the National School of Fine Arts in Tokyo, specializing in Western Art, against the wishes of his father, who was himself a traditional landscape painter.
After graduating in 1948, he began exhibiting his work and teaching drawing at a high school in Tokyo. At the end of 1952, Kito left Japan for Europe, thanks to donations from the parents of his high school students. Upon arriving in France, he enrolled at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, studying in Jean Souverbie's class. He explored Cubism until 1957 and frequented the artistic neighborhoods of Montparnasse and Saint-Germain-des-Prés.
From 1954 onward, he regularly participated in group exhibitions at the Salon de la Jeune Peinture, Salon de Crest, Salon Comparaisons, and Salon d'Automne, as well as at the Musée Galliera, Musée d'Évreux, Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris, and the National Museum of Modern Art in Osaka, Japan.
In 1955, he held his first solo exhibition at Galerie Lara Vincy—a historic collaboration that would continue annually until 1962. He later exhibited in Italy, Luxembourg, Denmark, and, from 1969, regularly in Japan. In 1970, he returned to Japan to continue his work until his death in 1994.
Kito's artistic sensibility was deeply influenced by the masters of primitive art. He was a frequent visitor to the Musée de l'Homme and admired the cave paintings of Lascaux and Altamira in Spain.
"In his early years, his painting took on a playful quality, creating a personal synthesis of his assimilation of Western art—which he irreverently enjoyed mocking—and the creations of ancient Japanese art, which favored archaic forms and color in the depiction of fabulous or even demonic creatures. Humor and menace coexist in his early figurative works (...). Until 1958, he incorporated identifiable, unexpected objects, but gradually, all representation faded in favor of signs traced within a thick, textured material. In turn, the bright colors receded, the symbolic forms disappeared, and the canvases became monochrome, overtaken by a dark greyness that barely allowed light to filter through. After 1961, Kito returned to his earlier graphic style, where humor once again took center stage." Lydia Harambourg (L’École de Paris 1945-1965, Dictionnaire des peintres, p. 269)
His works are featured in numerous museums, including the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, the Centre Pompidou, the Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo, the Vienna Museum in Austria, and the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco in the United States.