Why does Hunter x Hunter keep going on hiatus?

The short version is the one Togashi gave himself, in a public message written for his art exhibition in July 2022. He had been unable to sit in a chair for two years, which made him unable to draw. He resumed only by, in his words, throwing conventional methods to the wayside. The illustration he included shows himself lying on his back, drawing, captioned: 'Currently, I can only draw in this position.'

The rest of that message is just as plain, and this page prints it rather than any diagnosis built on top of it. Everyday movements take him three to five times longer than they used to. Two weeks before writing, he could not get into position to wipe himself and had to shower every time he used the toilet. His advice to readers was not about manga at all: 'Everyone, I sincerely ask you to take care of your backs and hips. Your hips are important.' Togashi has described his back and hip problems in his own statements for years. He has not, in the statements opened for this page, named a medical diagnosis, and this page does not supply one.

His process posts through the 2022 return fill in what working inside those limits looks like. In August 2022 he tweeted that his symptoms had not improved and that treatment and recovery were taking a great deal of his time, and a little later: 'I've done one frame. I can't put strength into my right hand, and I'm in pain.' The hiatuses are what a weekly deadline does when it meets that record: the chapter stops when the body does.