While Naoki Urasawa was pitching the idea of writing a manga about the medical field, he could tell his editor was not enjoying it. Knowing that the editor was a big fan of baseball, he joking proposed a story about women's judo, but the editor lit up at the idea. Urasawa said that he then scribbled out the whole of "Yawara!" during that meeting in about 30 minutes, from the characters to the story. The series started in 1986, women's judo became a demonstration sport just before the 1988 Summer Olympics with it set to be a fully competitive sport at the 1992 Summer Olympics, so it was perfect to include that goal in the manga. But the author never thought the series would last long enough to reach the latter.