He studied technical design while still at Kyushu Sangyo University, where he began to draw manga. He worked on several one-shot stories before releasing his serialized works: Cat's Eye, City Hunter and Angel Heart.

Among his assistants there were INOUE Takehiko, UMEZAWA Haruto & YANAGAWA Yoshihiro.

MORITA Masanori applied as his assistant, but he introduced Morita to HARA Tetsuo instead as he already had enough assistants at that time.

Hojo, Hara & Tsugihara Ryuuji founded Coamix in 2000 with their former editor on Jump, Horie Nobuhiko.

Once commented that he thinks the prejudice of Western (OEL) manga not being "authentic" was bizarre and thinks all Western manga was good. (This is probably due to manga literally meaning comics in their country.)