People like Yoshihiro Togashi

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.

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.