Akira Toriyama Wrote the Daizenshuu

Akira Toriyama provided a brief written introduction for each of the various Daizenshuu, a series of guide books released from 1995-1996 after the Dragon Ball manga came to an end. For the seventh volume — the “Dragon Ball Large Encyclopedia” — Toriyama wrote:

This Daizenshuu, the 7th and final one, is a huge Dragon Ball encyclopedia. I think the staff who make these books always have a rough time of it, but this one looked even more hellish than usual. They really did a great job. I’m ridiculously forgetful, so despite being the author, there’s lots of stuff even I don’t know anymore. It was often quite a nuisance, and I think having this encyclopedia around when the series was still running would have really helped me out. Darn it all.

Anyway, my thanks to the staff, and to all Dragon Ball fans.

— Akira Toriyama

Right off the bat, it should be clear from this statement that Toriyama — seen here literally praising the actual writers and producers of the book series — did not himself write them himself.

So who did…?

“Daizenshuu 101”

Before we go any further, let’s run through a little bit of a “Daizenshuu 101” crash course:

• Yes, the series of ten Daizenshuu — Japanese guide books from 1995-1996 contemporary with the end of the original manga serialization — are official publications released by Shueisha, the ultimate rights-holder of the Dragon Ball franchise
• The Daizenshuu are what you might classify as “coffee table books”: premium-style releases — the original seven volumes are hardcover — classifying and recapping various bits of information across the full breadth of the franchise, from illustrations to in-universe categorizations to merchandise overviews and beyond
• Yes, Akira Toriyama “approved” of the Daizenshuu (if you want to extrapolate that out from his opening comment in Daizenshuu 7 where he says it would have been nice to have had these volumes while he was working on the series) — that’s what we just covered
• We have no idea if Akira Toriyama actually sat and read each and every word across the hundreds and hundreds of pages in the ten Daizenshuu, but that sure seems unlikely
• Expanding on and further clarifying things: no, Akira Toriyama did not himself personally write all of the entries across the hundreds and hundreds of pages in the ten Daizenshuu
• Under the aforementioned supervision by Shueisha, the Daizenshuu were largely written and produced by Caramel Mama, a magazine and book agency in Japan founded by Tsuneo Matsumoto (himself originally the president of Akira Toriyama’s fanclub) — we’ll get more in depth on this shortly

The “Chosha” (and “Gensaku”) Conundrum

In the back of each Daizenshuu, the credits list a short batch of important details:

That first 著者 (chosha) credit is the main culprit here. We’ll come back to that in a second — but let’s first start with another, perhaps more-familiar credit.

The 原作 (gensaku) credit refers to the “Original Author,” which (in this case) more specifically refers to the original creation of the underlying Dragon Ball property as a whole. Akira Toriyama receives this credit on the actual Dragon Ball manga itself… but also on things like Dragon Ball GT, The Brief Return of Dr. Slump, Episode of Bardock, and Dragon Ball Super — all things he had varying degrees of involvement with.

This brings us back around to the “author” credit in the Daizenshuu.

原作 (gensaku) means anyone who plots the original setting and rough drafts for a story, while 著者 (chosha) is the one who pens those ideas to paper — so when there is a 原作 credit, it usually refers to the ideas/planning of a person or attribution to a certain individual’s ideas; this is also sometimes attributed as 脚本 (kyakuhon) depending on the book(s) and individual(s) involved.

When 著者 is used in the case of a databook like the Daizenshuu, however, it gets a little tenuous. Some guidebooks credits the original author with 著者, but are actually compiled by members editorial, while the 原作者 (original author/mangaka in a single-authored Jump manga’s case) will look over it to at least some degree — this last part is not always explicitly listed, but in some books they do give a more thorough breakdown of roles.

In short, the 著者 credit for these Jump-franchise books (including the Daizenshuu) is simply so they can have the mangaka‘s (or mangakas‘) name on the front cover, and even if they provide “some” or “a lot of” information for the editorial team to compile the book, they are not the ones actually penning the books themselves.

The Other Top Names

Another critical name listed here is Akinori Watanabe, who served as editor on the Daizenshuu under the supervisory watch of Shueisha. Watanabe was not Toriyama’s editor on the Dragon Ball manga, and this is often misrepresented and misattributed when discussing the Daizenshuu. Toriyama had three editors on the Dragon Ball manga (only one at any given time): Kazuhiko Torishima, Yū Kondō, and Fuyuto Takeda — Akinori Watanabe was not an editor on the Dragon Ball manga.

Worth a quick mention is also perhaps Norikazu Sakaguchi, who gets the “Publisher” credit here above Watanabe as editor. Sakaguchi later served as present of Shueisha spin-off corporation Hakusensha, a position that was incidentally also later held by Kazuhiko Torishima, and now — only within the last few years — current president Yasufumi Takagi.

This is all actually preceded by a separate batch of credits present alongside the table of contents in each issue, which gets down to business over the actual content of these books:

Tsuneo Matsumoto & Caramel Mama

Tsuneo Matsumoto became involved with Akira Toriyama during the course of Dr. Slump, and through Toriyama’s editor at the time (Kazuhiko Torishima), he served as the first president of Toriyama’s official fan club, the “Akira Toriyama Preservation Society,” where he oversaw the publication of club’s newsletter, Bird Land Press, which ran for 25 issues in to 1987.

Matsumoto occasionally popped up in some slightly more public roles — for example, he conducted the interview between Akira Toriyama and Rumiko Takahashi that appeared in TeLePAL in 1986, and took part in an interview with Akira Toriyama and Kazuhiko Torishima in V-Jump in 1993.

Much like Toriyama incorporated his editors into stories of the era, Matsumoto is also supposedly the reference for the Turtle Hermit in Dragon Ball.

More important than any of this, however, is the fact that Matsumoto was the founder of a company called Caramel Mama in August 1986. The company initially served as a book and magazine publication support studio, handling everything from initial planning to the full scope of the production process.

In terms of Dragon Ball guide books, Caramel Mama has been there since the beginning — they handled the planning, writing, and editing of the franchise’s first-ever guide book, the Dragon Ball: Adventure Special back in 1987. From here they moved on to production on various merchandise and video game guide books.

One neat tidbit from this era is that video game guides would regularly include original manga panels and drawings, but fully colorized (from chapters that never were) — in fact, these drawings were colored by staff members at Caramel Mama who received direct guidance from Akira Toriyama himself (and according to Caramel Mama, some of the people who did this coloring back then have since gone on to become accomplished manga artists in their own right).

As the company flourished and worked on an increasing number of products, this takes us to 1995 with the release of Dragon Ball‘s major guide book series, the Daizenshuu. Per Caramel Mama’s website description, they handled the planning, editing, database organization, artwork curation, writing, world-building, and more:

連載から10年、世界に名だたる大ヒットコンテンツとなった「DRAGON BALL」の世界観を総まとめにした大全集を創刊。現在の公式ファンブックの先駆けともいえる存在となりました。この時はじめて「宇宙が球形をしていた」ことなどが明らかになりました。また、この本の刊行に合わせ、鳥山家のカラーイラストを全部ポジ化しました。

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The publication of the Daizenshuu marked the 10th anniversary of the serialization of Dragon Ball, which had become a massive hit throughout the world. These could be called the forerunners of the modern “official fanbooks.” This was the first time that things such as the universe being spherical in nature became clear for all to see. Furthermore, in time for the publication of these books, a full, high-resolution scan of all the color illustrations from Toriyama’s home was also conducted.

As time went on and Dragon Ball‘s production revival gained steam, Caramel Mama became more involved than their prior role with simple documentation — for example, they directly collaborated with Shueisha on the production of Dragon Ball: Episode of Bardock and even Dragon Ball Heroes: Victory Mission (detailing these works as 原案協力 or “Original Concept Collaboration”).

Caramel Mama’s workload also increased with the shift to more digital promotion, with them being in charge of the production and content for the current-day Dragon Ball Official Site (which replaced the previous 30th anniversary website),

Beginning in 2012, Caramel Mama began adopting the lyric “Love is All You Need” — directly taken from The Beatles — as their guiding philosophy. Their stated goal was that, as the world became increasingly digitized, they felt what was needed more than ever was warmth, flexibility, and thoughtfulness, and that they strove to deliver the “love” their clients needed for every situation and product released.

Matsumoto sadly passed away in April 2026 from an illness at age 71. Naoto Akamatsu now serves as Caramel Mama’s President and CEO.

The Kisōsha Exceptions

It’s worth noting that Kisōsha — a company that mainly works with Shueisha and Kodansha on ancillary publications like these — was “Responsible for Anime Parts in Volumes 3, 5, 6, & 7” of the Daizenshuu. This makes sense, considering the split workload, resources, and actual products made between Shueisha (manga) and Toei (anime).

So Who Actually Wrote & Produced the Daizenshuu?

There are certainly interviews with Akira Toriyama spread across the various Daizenshuu, and Toriyama’s own words are — of course — his own words. That’s a huge reach, however, from saying that Toriyama “wrote the Daizenshuu” (which he didn’t).

Fans then often dismissively hand-wave the guide books as written by “Shueisha interns”… but the fact of the matter is that Caramel Mama’s entire purpose is to act as support for these kinds of products. Did Tsuneo Matsumoto write Dragon Ball? No. Was he an editor on Dragon Ball? No. Were these books, however, actually produced by the rights-holders with a close connection and presumably a fair degree of oversight? Absolutely.

Do we even know their names? Yes! The final page of Daizenshuu #7 — the aforementioned “Dragon Ball Large Encyclopedia” — features a complete listing of staff credits for the entire set of books. By this point, names like “Tsuneo Matsumoto” and “Naoto Akamatsu” should be familiar!

Full Credits