Why did Yu Yu Hakusho end?

Yoshihiro Togashi gave the account himself in Yoshirin de Pon!, the doujinshi he wrote and distributed at the 1994 Summer Comiket, in a piece titled, in translation, Yoshihiro Togashi Speaks: On finishing the serialization of YuYu Hakusho, alongside an interview piece in the same book. A sourcing note matters here, because retellings often misplace this essay in the final volume of the manga. The record places it in Togashi's own doujinshi, and the quotes below are his, in the translation of that text carried across the sources opened for this page.

He lists three reasons, in his own order: 'My body. Thoughts I had about what it means to draw manga. Desire to do other things than work.' He had wanted to end the series earlier than he did: he originally wanted to finish in December 1993, at the climax of the Sensui arc, the storyline readers know as Chapter Black. The final six months of publication, after that decision point, were the hard stretch. The editors at Shueisha tried to talk him out of cancelling the series. His answer, in the record, was that another popular series would replace it.

On the relief he felt, he is equally plain: 'It's not that I've lost all emotional attachment to the work, but I feel that my stress levels had greatly surpassed my will to work.' That sentence is the correction to the laziest version of this story. He did not stop caring about the series. He stopped being able to carry it.