Yoshihiro Togashi

In 2017, Togashi wrote the two-chapter manga Akuten Wars (悪天ウォーズ ) . It was illustrated by Hachi Mizuno and published in the September and November issues of Grand Jump Premium.

Togashi enjoys board-game-style video games and bowling with his family. He also likes watching horror movies, and considers Don't Look Up and Dawn of the Dead his favorites. Togashi cites visual effects designer H. R. Giger as a major influence. Togashi suffered from an immense amount of stress while working on Yu Yu Hakusho, which caused him inconsistent sleep patterns and chest pain. On March 29, 2011, Togashi and his fellow manga artists posted messages on the official Shōnen Jump website in support of the victims of the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami. He has a younger brother named Hideaki Togashi, who is also a manga artist.

Since 2006, Togashi has taken numerous lengthy hiatuses while serializing Hunter × Hunter. Some were due to illness and lower back pain, while the reasons for others were never disclosed. Thompson speculated that Togashi's slow output is because he is a perfectionist who wants to do everything himself, noting that if he really wanted to, he could have his assistants do everything. In his 2017 book Sensei Hakusho, which recounts his time working as Togashi's assistant from 1990 to 1997, Kunio Ajino stated that Togashi was unusually generous to his staff.

Togashi is married to Naoko Takeuchi, the manga artist of Sailor Moon. The two were introduced at a party hosted by Kazushi Hagiwara in August 1997. The following year, Takeuchi assisted Togashi for a short time by adding screentone to his manga Hunter × Hunter. Togashi and Takeuchi were married on January 6, 1999. In attendance for the ceremony were several fellow manga artists and voice actors from both the Sailor Moon and Yu Yu Hakusho anime series. The couple have two children and have collaborated on a children's book titled Oobo— Nu— Tochiibo— Nu— (おおぼーぬーとちぃぼーぬー ) , which Takeuchi wrote and Togashi illustrated.

Togashi's next major series Hunter × Hunter (ハンター×ハンター ) , an action-adventure manga, began serialization in 1998. The story revolves around the protagonist Gon Freecss, a young boy in search of his father, who is a legendary, elite member of society called a "Hunter". This manga also performed very well commercially, with the first 20 volumes selling nearly 55 million copies in Japan as of August 2011. In 2008, Togashi tied with One Piece author Eiichiro Oda as the fifth favorite manga artist from a poll posted by the marketing research firm Oricon.

In 1990, Togashi made a name for himself with his next series Yu Yu Hakusho (幽☆遊☆白書 , lit. Poltergeist Report) . Based on his interests in the occult and in horror films, the plot features the character Yusuke Urameshi, who is killed and brought back to life as an "Underworld Detective". The manga, which lasted 175 chapters over 19 tankōbon from 1990 to 1994, went on to sell over 50 million copies worldwide, earned Togashi a Shogakukan Manga Award in 1994, and received a hit anime adaptation. In 1995, he created Level E (レベルE ) , a science fiction-comedy manga. Comprising three volumes, it was first published in Weekly Shōnen Jump in 1995 and ran until 1997. Level E was adapted into an anime television series in 2011.

Born in Shinjō, Yamagata to a family that owned a paper shop, Togashi began drawing manga casually in his first to second year of elementary school. In high school, Togashi joined the fine-arts club; he later enrolled at Yamagata University where he studied education in the hope of becoming a teacher. During college he submitted some of his manga work to Weekly Young Jump, published by Shueisha. In 1986, at age 20, he authored a manga titled Buttobi Straight (ぶっとびストレート , Buttobi Sutorēto) for which he received the Tezuka Award, the most prestigious award for new comic artists in Japan. Another manga by Togashi titled Jura no Mizuki (ジュラのミヅキ ) was an honorable mention in Shueisha's first annual Hop Step Award Selection magazine, published in 1988. After having given up his goal of becoming a teacher, Togashi was contacted by an editor of Weekly Shōnen Jump during his senior year of college, who asked him to move to Tokyo.

Yoshihiro Togashi (冨樫 義博 , Togashi Yoshihiro, born April 27, 1966) is a Japanese manga artist. He began drawing manga at an early age; while he attended college, the publishing company Shueisha recognized his talent. Togashi has authored numerous manga series in different genres during the past three decades. He is perhaps best known for writing and illustrating the Yu Yu Hakusho and Hunter × Hunter series, both of which have been published in the popular Weekly Shōnen Jump magazine. Togashi is married to Naoko Takeuchi, the author of Sailor Moon.