 Born in Sydney, Australia as Shane Cummings, he has used "Jiraiya" as his part of his legal name since his Iga-ryu Ninjutsu and Sports Chanbara sensei Kazuo "Crando" Saito bestowed the name to him in the early 1990s when he attained his black belt in Ninjutsu.He lived for many years in Perth, Western Australia and Wellington, New Zealand, before returning to Sydney in 2015.Cummings graduated from Whitireia New Zealand's Creative Writing programme with a Bachelor of Applied Arts (Creative Writing) in 2014.