25 Facts About Kazuhiko Torishima

Kazuhiko Torishima is a Japanese publishing executive and former manga magazine editor, who is currently serving as an advisor to Hakusensha.

Kazuhiko Torishima formerly worked at Shueisha, where he began as an editor in 1976, before becoming a senior managing director, and later a Shogakukan-Shueisha Productions director.

Kazuhiko Torishima was manga author Akira Toriyama's editor during the run of Dr Slump and through the first half of Dragon Ball.

Kazuhiko Torishima received a Special Achievement Award at the 2022 Japan Media Arts Festival for his work in manga, including the discovering of Toriyama and establishing the now "indispensable cross-media production method".

Kazuhiko Torishima said that because he could not get into a university, he moved to Tokyo to enter a prep school, where he was liberated having found people that were smarter than himself and shared his interests.

Kazuhiko Torishima joined Shueisha in 1976, the year he graduated from Keio University, wanting to work on Monthly Playboy because of their high-quality short stories.

Kazuhiko Torishima studied the first chapter of Ore wa Teppei panel by panel and the layout and angles in each one, because he felt it was the easiest manga to read and tried to impart this basic structure to his artists.

Kazuhiko Torishima was most notably editor to Akira Toriyama during Dr Slump and the beginning of Dragon Ball, and to Masakazu Katsura during Wingman.

Kazuhiko Torishima is a fan of video games and was therefore put in charge of the first video game-related articles in Weekly Shonen Jump, for which he brought in Yuji Horii to help.

When his manager told him to figure out why CoroCoro Comic was doing so well, Kazuhiko Torishima determined it was because of the sealed pages that had to be cut opened and included cheats and tips for video games.

Kazuhiko Torishima decided to have Horii, who had begun working at Enix, write the scenario and Toriyama design the characters.

Kazuhiko Torishima claimed that he purposefully had Enix fully fund the game, intentionally keeping Shueisha out of the decision making process for the good of the product while still reserving the option to create a manga based on it and not pay any royalties.

Kazuhiko Torishima was editor-in-chief of the video game-themed V Jump when it launched in 1993.

Kazuhiko Torishima became a member of the board of directors at Shueisha and was appointed full-time Director of Business in August 2004.

Kazuhiko Torishima served during the establishment of Shogakukan-Shueisha Productions in 2008.

Kazuhiko Torishima became a managing director at Shueisha in August 2009 and promoted to Senior Managing Director in August 2010.

Kazuhiko Torishima retired from Shueisha in August 2015 and became president of Hakusensha in November 2015.

Kazuhiko Torishima was a member of the Tokyo Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games' Mascot Selection Panel, who determined the process for choosing the mascots of the 2020 Summer Olympics.

In 2016, Kazuhiko Torishima claimed that when he became a deputy editor at Weekly Shonen Jump he created teaching materials for how the editors should help their manga artists that are still used to this day.

Kazuhiko Torishima convinced Toriyama to make Arale the main character of Dr Slump instead of Senbei Norimaki, which the author agrees turned out better.

Toriyama stated that Kazuhiko Torishima enjoys romance and that the relationships of Arale and Obotchaman, Akane and Tsukutsun, and Taro and Tsururin in Dr Slump were all his ideas.

Kazuhiko Torishima stated that when starting Dragon Ball, Torishima had wanted Goku and Bulma to form a relationship.

Masakazu Katsura credits Kazuhiko Torishima with coming up with ideas for Video Girl Ai.

Kazuhiko Torishima has been parodied often in many manga series serialized in Weekly Shonen Jump.

Direct parodies of Kazuhiko Torishima appear in Kinnikuman written by the duo Yudetamago and Bakuman by Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata.