Kamikokuryo had initially planned to become an oil painter and illustrator but was inspired to join the video game industry by the release of Final Fantasy VII.

[1] He originally aspired to become an oil painter and illustrator, but his hobby of playing video games had him interested in their emerging industry early on.

[6][7] Kamikokuryo designed large cities with varied architectural styles as he wanted to convey the feeling of walking through a real-life metropolis.

However, they eventually wound up as the principal setting for the Nintendo DS sequel Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings whose art was also supervised by Kamikokuryo.

[12] The works of Salvador Dalí and Giorgio de Chirico were used as references and helped Kamikokuryo strike a balance between photorealism and fantasy-like surrealism.

[14] Kamikokuryo gave his artists more freedom to include their own ideas in the game's locations, intending to rectify the shortcomings of the more artificial seeming settings in Final Fantasy XIII.

[12] In addition to adjusting models, camera angles and lighting effects, he also drew the final version of the character Lightning based on a silhouette sketch by Tetsuya Nomura.

[14] His primary influences are realist painter Andrew Wyeth, industrial designer Luigi Colani, comics artists Alex Ross and Frank Frazetta as well as photojournalist Steve McCurry.

[2][3] Kamikokuryo also gives Hajime Sorayama, Katsuya Terada, Range Murata, Akira Yasuda, Ryuichiro Kutsuzawa and Alphonse Mucha as his favorite artists.

[2] Kamikokuryo's preferred titles include Grand Theft Auto, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Red Dead Redemption, Dragon Warrior III and Final Fantasy VII.