How tall is Akaza?

Akaza's official height: 173 cm

Akaza, the Upper Rank Three demon and the martial artist who confronts Kyojuro Rengoku on the Mugen Train, is listed at 173 cm (5′8″). The figure comes from the Kimetsu no Yaiba Official Fanbook Vol. 2, the second Kisatsutai Kenbunroku, published by Shueisha on February 4, 2021, which added profile data for Muzan Kibutsuji and the Twelve Kizuki after the manga ended. Converted precisely, 173 cm is 68.1 inches, or 5 feet 8.1 inches.

For one of the most feared demons in Demon Slayer, that is a very human height. Akaza is not a giant or a monster in shape. He is a compact, muscular man covered in blue line tattoos, and he fights with nothing but his fists and feet. His danger comes from technique, speed and a demon's ability to regenerate, not from size.

A martial artist's body

Akaza's height and build fit his fighting style exactly. He is an unarmed fighter who uses a family of techniques called Hakai Satsu (Destructive Death), striking with punches and kicks that carry enough force to shatter stone. He senses opponents through their fighting spirit, which lets him read attacks before they land.

In unarmed combat reach matters, and a 173 cm frame gives Akaza no special advantage over a sword-wielding Hashira. He makes up for it with speed and relentless pressure. Against swordsmen who strike from a blade's length away, he closes the distance, and his demon regeneration lets him absorb cuts that would end a human fighter. Gotouge draws him with a lean, defined physique and bare feet, a design that emphasizes mobility over bulk.

Akaza versus Rengoku: the Mugen Train fight

Akaza's first major appearance is the climax of the Mugen Train arc, adapted in the 2020 film that became the highest-grossing film in Japanese box office history at the time, overtaking Spirited Away. According to the film's Wikipedia summary, Akaza arrives after the train is derailed and tries to persuade Kyojuro Rengoku to become a demon. Rengoku refuses, and the two fight until dawn.

Rengoku is 4 cm taller, and as a swordsman he has the added reach of his blade. Yet Akaza overwhelms him and fatally wounds him by impaling his solar plexus. Rengoku holds the demon in place as the sun rises, but Akaza tears himself free and flees into the forest. Tanjiro, 8 cm shorter than Akaza, throws his sword and pierces Akaza's chest as he escapes, and Inosuke, 9 cm shorter, can only watch. It is the fight that turned Akaza into one of the most hated villains in the series.

Akaza versus Tanjiro and Giyu: the Infinity Castle

Akaza returns in the Infinity Castle arc, and the first film of Ufotable's trilogy carries his name in its subtitle: the Japanese title of Part 1 is Akaza Sairai (Akaza Returns). Released in Japan on July 18, 2025, the film set the record for the highest opening-day gross in Japanese box office history and became the highest-grossing Japanese film, with $820.4 million worldwide according to Wikipedia.

In this fight, Tanjiro Kamado and Giyu Tomioka, the Water Hashira, face Akaza together. Giyu is 3 cm taller than the demon and Tanjiro 8 cm shorter, so Akaza is sandwiched between his opponents in height. The film's Wikipedia summary notes that the pair behead him, but his body keeps fighting until he finally accepts defeat. The duel is one of the most celebrated in the series, and its outcome turns on Tanjiro's growth since the Mugen Train, not on any physical advantage.

Strength over size: Akaza's philosophy

Akaza's obsession is strength, and his views on it explain why his own ordinary height never troubles him. He despises weakness, refuses to fight people he considers weak, and admires skilled opponents. On the Mugen Train, he tells Rengoku that he wants to fight him forever, and that as a demon Rengoku could keep training for centuries without aging or dying. In Akaza's mind, the human body's limits, including the decline that comes with age, are the enemy. Size does not enter into it.

That philosophy is visible in how he ranks opponents. His technique for sensing fighting spirit, which the anime renders as a snowflake-shaped compass spreading across the ground beneath him, lets him judge an opponent's strength at a glance. He immediately recognizes Rengoku as a Hashira of extraordinary power, and he dismisses Tanjiro and Inosuke as too weak to bother with. A larger fighter with poor technique would mean nothing to him, while a smaller one with a strong spirit would earn his respect.

The irony of his story is that the fighter who finally defeats him is the one he dismissed. Tanjiro, 8 cm shorter and far less experienced on the Mugen Train, returns in the Infinity Castle strong enough to fight him on equal terms. The duel turns on Tanjiro reaching a state in which he gives off no fighting spirit at all, slipping past the very sense Akaza relies on. It is one of the clearest examples in Demon Slayer of a fight decided by perception and technique rather than physical size.

Akaza and Giyu

Giyu Tomioka deserves a note of his own. At 176 cm, he stands 3 cm above Akaza, making him, after Rengoku, the second Hashira opponent to out-measure the demon. The Water Hashira is quiet and self-critical, the opposite of the flamboyant Rengoku, and Akaza initially seems more interested in Giyu's strength than in Tanjiro's. By the end, it is the partnership of the two swordsmen, one slightly taller and one clearly shorter than Akaza, that brings him down.

Hakuji: the human Akaza was

The Infinity Castle fight also reveals Akaza's past. According to the 2025 film's Wikipedia summary, he was born Hakuji, a young man who stole to pay for his sick father's medicine. After his father's death, Hakuji was taken in by the owner of a martial arts dojo and became engaged to the man's daughter, Koyuki. A rival dojo poisoned both of them. In grief and rage, Hakuji killed the rival dojo's members, and Muzan turned him into a demon.

That history explains much of his design and behavior. His fighting style comes from the dojo where he trained. The Kimetsu no Yaiba Wiki notes that his blue line pattern resembles the criminal tattoos Hakuji bore on his forearms as a human, and that he refuses to eat or kill women because of his memories of Koyuki. And at the end of the fight, when he accepts defeat, he is reunited with Koyuki and the man he once was.

The fanbook gives only one height for Akaza, and his demon body keeps the face and build of the young man Muzan transformed. No separate figure has been published for Hakuji as a human, so 173 cm describes both.

Akaza among the Upper Ranks

Akaza is the third-strongest of Muzan's demons, but he is shorter than the two above him.

Akaza and Doma

Doma, the Upper Rank Two, is 14 cm taller than Akaza. The Kimetsu no Yaiba Wiki describes Akaza as especially antagonistic toward the two Upper Ranks above him and contrasts his refusal to eat women with Doma's enthusiasm for it. Doma outranks him, so the taller demon is also the stronger one in Muzan's hierarchy.

Akaza and Muzan

Muzan Kibutsuji, the demon who created him, is 6 cm taller in his main form. The Wikipedia character list notes that Muzan keeps only the Upper Ranks under his direct command after purging the Lower Ranks, and Akaza is one of his most trusted servants, sent to deal with the Hashira. Akaza's next major fight after the Mugen Train comes in the Infinity Castle, against the same Tanjiro he dismissed.

Akaza and Kokushibo

Kokushibo, the Upper Rank One, is 190 cm, 17 cm taller than Akaza and the tallest of the Upper Ranks tracked on this site. According to the Kimetsu no Yaiba Wiki, Akaza vowed to kill Kokushibo after the Upper One cut his hand, which reinforces the pattern: the two demons above him are both taller, and both outrank him.

Height in the Taishō era

Demon Slayer is set in the Taishō era (1912 to 1926), and Akaza's human life as Hakuji took place earlier still: the Kimetsu no Yaiba Wiki gives his chronological age as more than 133, which places his human years in the late Edo period. Our World in Data's history of human height includes skeletal estimates suggesting Japanese men in the Edo period (1603 to 1867) averaged about 158 cm. NCD-RisC estimates, used on this site's Japan average height page, put Japanese men born in 1896 at about 156.2 cm.

At 173 cm, Hakuji would have been a strikingly tall and powerful young man in Edo-era Japan, roughly 15 cm above the average man of his time. That fits a martial artist whose strength drew the attention of a dojo master and, eventually, of Muzan himself. To modern eyes, the same height is only slightly above the Japanese average.

What 173 cm means today

Today, 173 cm is almost exactly average for a Japanese man and close to the global mean: Our World in Data puts the average man born in 1996 at about 171 cm. Real people at Akaza's exact height on this site include:

• Tom Holland, listed at 173 cm.
• Dua Lipa, listed at 173 cm.
• Rihanna and Robert Downey Jr., both listed at 173 cm.

Akaza is voiced by Akira Ishida in Japanese. To see him beside Rengoku, Tanjiro, Giyu or yourself at true scale, use the height comparison tool. The Demon Slayer character hub lists every Hashira and demon tracked on the site, from the 135 cm Rui to the 220 cm Gyomei.