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Kazuhiko Torishima
鳥嶋 和彦
Born	(1952-10-19) October 19, 1952 Ojiya, Niigata, Japan
Alma mater	Keio University
Years active	1976–present
Known for	Shueisha manga magazine editing
Title	Outside director at Bushiroad

Kazuhiko Torishima (Japanese: 鳥嶋 和彦, Hepburn: Torishima Kazuhiko, born October 19, 1952) is a Japanese publishing executive and former manga magazine editor, who is currently serving as an outside director at Bushiroad. He formerly worked at Shueisha, where he began as an editor in 1976, before becoming a senior managing director (CEO), and later a Shogakukan-Shueisha Productions director. When he moved to Hakusensha in 2015, he first served as president, then representative director, before taking on the role of advisor. He began working for Bushiroad at the end of 2022.

Torishima is often associated with works from the manga magazine Weekly Shōnen Jump, for which he was editor-in-chief from 1996 to 2001. He was manga author Akira Toriyama's editor throughout the run of Dr. Slump and during the first half of Dragon Ball. 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".

Early life

Kazuhiko Torishima was born in the small community of Ojiya, Niigata in 1952. He described his mother as very positive, but said he did not have a good relationship with his father. Torishima has repeatedly spoken of his dislike for his hometown, which he described as a "stifling" place where nothing changes, and its residents, who he feels are "incredibly complicated" to deal with. Because they had nothing in common to talk about, he had no friends and spent his youth alone reading books; "when you don't have the financial background to escape that kind of community, your only option is read a lot of books. As they allow you to escape into a different world. So reading a lot helped me to survive". While still in elementary school, he would read a lot of Confucius, Friedrich Nietzsche and Blaise Pascal. In middle school, he tried to read one book a day by going to multiple libraries every day, reading anything that caught his interest. When he had enough of philosophers writing different and contradictory things, Torishima switched to erotic novels such as Story of the Eye and Story of O. Torishima said that because he could not get into a university, he moved to Tokyo to enter a college-preparatory school, where he was liberated having found people that were smarter than himself and who shared his interests. He went on to attend Keio University, which he chose because its tuition was cheap, against his father's wishes because he thought it would be the best way to achieve financial independence. Although he wanted to major in French literature in their Faculty of Letters, he chose the Faculty of Law because of its employability and because his parents refused to pay tuition for anything else. He later stated that the people he met at Keio became lifelong friends.

Career

Jump (1976–2001)

As a bibliophile, Torishima believed the only career prospects he had were either as a writer or an editor. He chose the latter because he said he lacked almost all the skills needed for the former. Torishima wanted to work at Bungeishunjū, but they were one of many publishing companies not hiring due to the recession from the 1973 oil crisis. He claims to have applied to 48 companies across various industries and to have only heard back from two, a mid-level life insurance company and Shueisha. Torishima joined Shueisha in 1976, the year he graduated. He wanted to work on Monthly Playboy because of their high-quality short stories and novellas by famous authors, both domestic and foreign. However, he was assigned as an editor at Weekly Shōnen Jump, despite having never really had any contact with manga until Shueisha sent him their products for reference. He said he considered quitting after only a week. Torishima was put in charge of Buronson and Shinji Hiramatsu's Doberman Deka. After this series jumped from around seventeenth in the reader rankings to third and going to the Shogakukan archives to study classic manga, he finally became interested in his job. Preferring shōjo manga such as Kaze to Ki no Uta and Poe no Ichizoku, Torishima felt that Jump manga at the time "had no intelligence or depth" and decided to help foster manga he found interesting to rank high with readers. He also 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. Torishima was most notably editor to Akira Toriyama throughout Dr. Slump (1980–1984) and for the first half of Dragon Ball (1984–1995).

The two began working together after Torishima read a work Toriyama submitted for Weekly Shōnen Jump's Newcomer Award. He though it was beautiful and funny, but it was ineligible to compete because it was a parody, so Torishima sent the artist a telegram and encouraged him to keep drawing and sending him manga. This resulted in Wonder Island, which became Toriyama's first published work when it appeared in Weekly Shōnen Jump in 1978. However, it took 18 months, with Torishima rejecting 500 pages of work, until Toriyama began his first serialized work in Dr. Slump. It was an immediate success, ranking second in the reader rankings. Despite its success of regularly selling one million copies and having an anime adaptation that was about to debut, Toriyama wanted to end the manga after only six months. The magazine's chief editor told them that if they could come up with something more interesting and successful then they could end Dr. Slump.

Torishima felt the Dr. Slump anime adaptation was unsuccessful because it greatly deviated from the original manga. He believed the reason for its deficiency was due to no one at Weekly Shōnen Jump knowing how to manage an anime adaptation based on one of their manga as this was "the first real time" it had been done. Therefore, he decided to study both the creative and business sides to anime creation. This included talking to the team for Doraemon at Shogakukan. When it came time to adapt Dragon Ball, he and the Jump team had a huge "bible" created for the series before production even started on the anime, and were much more hands on.

Because they were short on staff, Torishima was made editor of Weekly Shōnen Jump's reader submissions page. He agreed on the condition that writer Akira Sakuma (who later created Momotaro Dentetsu) be put in charge of it. They increased the page count from four to eight, and hired illustrator Doi Takayuki (who also worked on Momotaro Dentetsu). This was the creation of the magazine's Jump Broadcasting Station (ジャンプ放送局, Janpu Hōsō Kyoku) column. The column reached tenth in the readers survey, surpassing half of the manga series.

Torishima is a fan of video games, which he said are more interesting than manga; "Manga is something you read once and then it's over, but games have a learning effect. If you hit a wall once, you can learn and analyze 'why you failed', and try again, and you can move forward. In other words, games are a very reasonable and fair medium. That's why you can play them over and over again." He was put in charge of the first video game-related articles in Weekly Shōnen 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, Torishima determined it was because of the sealed pages that had to be cut opened and included cheats and tips for video games. In addition to including similar pages in Jump, they also began to rate games, something new at the time, with the resulting content being voted third in the magazine's reader polls. This was the birth of Famicom Shinken (ファミコン神拳), the video game section of Weekly Shōnen Jump issues. After finding success with video game articles and wanting to show readers of Jump how one is developed, the magazine decided to develop their own role-playing game like Ultima so that they would have exclusive coverage of it. He decided to have Horii, who had begun working at Enix, write the scenario and Toriyama design the characters. 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. The video game was Dragon Quest (1986).

Torishima was also editor to Masakazu Katsura on Wing-Man (1983–1985) and Video Girl Ai (1989–1992). He cited Makoto Isshiki as the most difficult manga artist he has worked worth, explaining that she wanted to end Hanattare Boogie (1986) as soon as he told her it had been approved for serialization.

Torishima left Weekly Shōnen Jump to launch V Jump magazine in 1992, and serve as its editor-in-chief. The goal was to contain manga, anime, and video game content all in one medium. He later claimed to have predicted people being able to access all of these in one place like smartphones, and wanted to "get off the sinking ship" that was print manga magazines as soon as possible.

In February 1996, Torishima left V Jump and took over as editor-in-chief of Weekly Shōnen Jump during declining sales. He cited the end of Dragon Ball as the biggest reason for the rapid fall, explaining that, when a long-running hit series ends, the regular readers tend to leave. "The readers knew that no new manga had been coming out for several years, but only the editorial department and Shueisha did not." He later said they were only concerned with securing immediate profits, and "foolishly" thought circulation would go back up if they brought him back, without any regard for the future. He decided the only way to make a difference was to replace all the current authors and introduce new ones, as it did not matter how much they promoted new series by authors who formerly had a hit, the readers would feel it was just rehashing. He also explained to the company that increasing royalties by having its manga made into anime, video games, and other merchandise made more sense than increasing circulation, and was also easier. Under his leadership, blockbuster series such as Yu-Gi-Oh!, One Piece, and Naruto were launched. Torishima was the magazine's editor-in-chief until June 2001.

Executive career (2002–present)

He became a member of the board of directors at Shueisha and was appointed full-time Director of Business in August 2004. He served during the establishment of Shogakukan-Shueisha Productions in 2008. Torishima became a managing director (CEO) at Shueisha in August 2009 and promoted to Senior Managing Director in August 2010. In December 2010, he spoke at the New Manga Creators Awards in response to the Tokyo Metropolitan Ordinance Regarding the Healthy Development of Youths's controversial passing of the industry opposed Bill 156. There he challenged new manga artists to "produce manga that would blow away [Tokyo Governor] Shintaro Ishihara."

Torishima retired from Shueisha in August 2015 and became president of Hakusensha in November 2015. The first thing he did was personally meet with every single employee for at least half an hour. His term as president was set for two and a half years. He 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. The panel decided to allow children a hand in the selection of the mascot for the first time at an Olympic Games. Torishima said, "Kids' minds work differently from adults'. As a member of the panel, I like to think my job is to help bridge that gap." In November 2018, Torishima was promoted to Representative Director at Hakusensha. In 2021, Torishima began Dr. Mashirito's Ultimate Manga Technique (Dr.マシリト 最強漫画術, Dokutā Mashirito Saikyō Manga Jutsu) in Saikyō Jump. It teaches how to become a manga artist, including practical techniques, how to submit manuscripts to publishers, and how to work with editors. It was collected into a book published by Shueisha on July 21, 2023, that includes an interview with Toriyama, Katsura and Koji Inada. It will be published in English by Viz Media in spring 2025. From 2021 to 2022, Torishima was an advisor to Hakusensha. Also in 2022, he was a special judge of Comico's Tate Color Manga Awards. On December 31, 2022, Torishima was approved as an outside director at Bushiroad.

Philosophy

Manga is basically about starting a new series with a new author, ending it if it doesn't work, and repeating this cycle as quickly as possible to look for the seeds of a hit. That's all there is to it. In fact, that's where Jump originated.

 —Kazuhiko Torishima, 2019

Torishima stated that editors in charge of hit manga are the most important people at a manga magazine. He explained, if something happens to the editor-in-chief, the magazine can still be published. But editors hold the authors in their hands, and if the authors are gone, the magazine can not be published. He also called an editor-in-chief's opinion on manga "basically irrelevant" because they are motivated by the response from readers. So if there is a good response, the editor-in-chief can not say no. "The people who produce results on the front lines are the most important." Torishima stated that editors do not need to be liked and are not friends with the manga artists. They must give their honest opinion, even if it is difficult to say. However, he also told his staff to always side with their artists if the editorial department's opinion conflicts with the author's.

Torishima said he could only deal with up to five manga artists at one time. He aimed to get new authors serialized within three years, preferably between two and three. After about six months of meetings, he could see if they were getting better and how well he would be able to work with them. If he felt it would be too difficult, he would tell them to go elsewhere. He stated an important part of being an editor is to have a lot of different conversations with the authors to discover their potential points of interest; "Artists really open up and talk when it's not their own work they're dissecting." So he would take manga creators to see movies, ask their opinions on other people's manga and anime, and take notes for future reference. Torishima believes it is best for editors to not read too much manga, as an editor who loves manga will force their own preferences on the artists.

Through the trials and errors he went through with Toriyama leading up to the creation of Dr. Slump, Torishima said he inadvertently developed something akin to a training method for new artists. He believes manga can be either easy or hard to read, and that this readability is determined by panel layouts and their perspectives. He would read a manga 50 times, researching and analyzing where each and every panel should go, so that he could then explain this to the artists. Torishima explained, "The speech balloons in manga can fit about three, seven-character-long lines of colloquial Japanese, and these are exchanged back and forth via dialogue between characters. The reader 'sees' rather than 'reads' because that conversation is unfolding along with the pictures. So it should be something that can be read at a considerable speed." He said every artist improved significantly after they understood page structure. Between panels, dialogue, and pictures, Torishima believes pictures are the least important in manga. In 2022, Torishima said some modern manga, where the story progresses through dialogue between characters, felt a bit unnatural because they had too much talking.

Torishima said every new artist has something they desperately want to depict, but these often end up as copies of series that they like and you can not make a hit out of an imitation. He explained, the only way to realize their originality is through trial and error, writing and drawing like Toriyama and his 500 failed manuscripts. "A little soul-searching can lead to a big hit." He believes that the manga that become big hits are those that resonate with children. "In the West, manga is something that adults give to children, but in Japan it is something that children choose for themselves. And the manga that you read when you are young stays in your mind even when you grow up." Because manga artists are adults, Torishima said it is up to the editor to act as a bridge between them and children. He said it is easier for new writers to create a hit because their sensibilities are closer to the readers. He also explained that while they have less ability to compose, their manuscript fees are cheaper when compared to veteran artists. Torishima would stress creating attractive characters to new artists and his junior editors, because he believes what is important is not the story or setting, but 'who' the chapter is about. A person's level of interest will be completely different depending on who the story is about. "If it's about someone you like, even the most trivial thing will be an important story." In 2024, Torishima criticized the current editors of Weekly Shōnen Jump as "no good" and their manga as "excessive". He explained the settings are too elaborate, and it is the editors' jobs to cut this down, but they are unable to do so.

With the advent of digital distribution, Torishima has said that magazines and major publishers are "finished", but manga itself has the ability to transform. The traditional business model has been to use magazines to promote manga, then sell the manga in tankōbon, which make up for the financial losses of the magazine. He explained that major publishers are reluctant to shift to digital distribution because it cuts out the printing companies, distribution companies, and bookstores, and are using manga sales to cover other loss-making divisions instead of putting it back into the manga industry. However, he stated the print industry still has higher-quality works as most digital manga has the same problem as doujinshi; it is whatever the author wants to draw and lacks the quality-check provided by an editor. Torishima believes the only way forward is for editors to take on more responsibilities and be hired as free agents by publishing houses, who will pay more to those who produce hits and release those who do not. Another issue Torishima sees with digital distribution is that while famous titles and those created by well-known authors are easy to find and sell well, new works by new artists do not get noticed. One of the features of print magazines is that you can discover things you did not know about. He also pointed out that the shift to digital sees manga having to now compete against anime and video games for screen time.

Influence on fiction

Torishima claimed that when he became a deputy editor at Weekly Shōnen Jump he created teaching materials for how editors should help their manga artists that are still used as of 2016. Although he is sometimes viewed as an editor who forced authors to make romantic comedies, he said this is because there was a certain trend at the time and it is what the readers wanted.

As a rookie editor, Torishima was put in charge of Doberman Deka, which had already been chosen to end in a few months due to low rankings in the reader surveys. Believing that its artist Shinji Hiramatsu was good at action but bad at drawing women, Torishima gave him an issue of the actor and idol magazine Myojo and told him to model the face of a new policewoman character after that of the most popular idol at the time, Ikue Sakakibara. After which, Doberman Deka jumped from around seventeenth in the reader rankings to third, and made Torishima finally interested in his job.

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 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. He also stated that when starting Dragon Ball, Torishima had wanted Goku and Bulma to form a relationship. Loosely basing Dragon Ball on the classic Chinese novel Journey to the West was the idea of Torishima, who chose the novel largely because it was a free intellectual property, but also because its Chinese setting was not common in manga at the time and would make it both unique and differentiate it from Dr. Slump's US West Coast feel. Toriyama created the Dragon Ball character Cell after Torishima, no longer his editor, was disappointed with Androids 19 and 20, and later Androids 17 and 18, as villains.

Torishima said he was disappointment when Masakazu Katsura told him he wanted to draw a transforming superhero manga. He said science fiction works in television with its special effects, but that kind of "awesomeness" does not come across visually in manga. So Torishima proposed making it a school story involving girls and asked him to make the main character more realistic and familiar to readers, resulting in Wing-Man. Katsura credited Torishima with coming up with ideas for Video Girl Ai. It was Torishima who brought Tetsuo Hara the offer from Capcom to create the character designs for the video game Saturday Night Slam Masters.

Torishima has been parodied often in many manga series serialized in Weekly Shōnen Jump. The most notable being the character Dr. Mashirito in Toriyama's Dr. Slump, who serves as the series' most prominent antagonist and has the same name as the editor but with the syllables reversed. He also inspired other manga characters such as Matoriv in Dragon Quest: Dai no Daibōken, Torishiman in Tottemo! Luckyman, the character King Bonbi in the board game Momotaro Dentetsu, and Doctor Mashirito in I Become a Gedoh-Man. by Shinji Hiramatsu. Direct parodies of Torishima appear in Kinnikuman written by the duo Yudetamago and Bakuman by Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata.