Minoru Kiyota received his B.A. from the University of California in 1949, and worked for the Far East U.S. Air Intelligence in a civilian capacity during the Korean War. After the war, he enrolled at Tokyo University as a graduate student and received his Ph.D. from the Department of Indian Philosophy in 1963. He then was employed as an Assistant Professor by the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a joint appointment in the Department of Indian Studies and the Department of East Asian Languages and Literature. In 1989, he was given a post as a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Kinesiology and began to teach Kendo. He retired in 1999, but continues to teach Kendo.