Hakusensha was founded on December 1, 1973, by
Shueisha. It is now a separate company although still a part of the
Hitotsubashi Group with Shueisha and
Shogakukan as one of the major members of the
keiretsu. After setting up the company for five months, the firm published their first magazine, a shōjo manga magazine titled . In November that year, they moved from to . In 1975, the firm changed the frequency of their magazine from monthly to semi-monthly; in March, they created their first
imprint, . In July 1976, they published their second manga magazine, a shōjo manga magazine named as a sister magazine to
Hana to Yume that is published bi-monthly. In April 1977, they set up a publication editing department and in July, they began publishing a seasonal magazine titled . In March 1981, they moved to . In September, they branched out from their usual
shōjo manga magazines to a
shōnen genre by publishing . With that, the company released their series in
Shōnen Jets under a new imprint, in July 1982. As of January 2009, the magazine was defunct but the imprint is used to publish their seinen manga series serializing in
Young Animal and
Young Animal Arashi as well as certain series serializing in
Melody. Three years later on August, they published a new magazine, specialising under the josei genre,
Silky that is published on even-numbered months. With that, they created an imprint for
Silkys series to be published under . In March 1989, they started publishing a seinen manga magazine called
Animal House. Three years after
Animal House, they published
Moe, a monthly magazine for
picture books targeted toward shōjo readers. In May that year,
Animal House was renamed to
Young Animal and was then published semi-monthly since. In March 1994, they created another imprint, . This imprint is for publishing manga in the
bunkoban format. Moreover, in December 1995, they started publishing another magazine that was published seasonally, which is targeted toward josei readers. In January 1996, they created an imprint for , . In July that year, they created . In September, they published
Melody which publishes on odd-numbered months. On the same month, they moved to , their present location. In April 1996, they published
LaLa DX on odd-numbered months. The company also began selling their drama CDs under , abbreviated as
HCD. In June 2001, they published
Candy; as of January 2009, the magazine has been discontinued. In May 2005, they changed their special publication of
Young Animal Arashi into a monthly publication. In July 2006,
Bessatsu Hana to Yume was made a monthly publication. , a magazine targeted at readers of
yaoi genre started its publication in May 2008.
Le Paradis, a manga anthology published triannually published its first issue on October 29, 2008. ===
Media mix=== Besides publishing, the company releases drama CDs of series under its magazines: , , , and . Moreover, it is involved in the productions of games, TV drama, theatrical movies, musicals, radio shows, TV animation and original video animation. Series under the company can be read through mobile phones in Japan using the following service portals: and .
Hakusensha e-Comics was started in September 2005 and is operated by Hakusensha and CharaWeb.
Sony PlayStation Portable manga distribution service It was announced at the 2009
Tokyo Game Show press conference that Hakusensha and 11 other publishing companies in Japan (such as
Kodansha,
Shueisha,
Shogakukan,
Square Enix, publishers associated with
Kadokawa Shoten,
Bandai Visual and
Futabasha) would provide nearly 100 titles of manga to supply the service in
PlayStation Store. Hakusensha has yet to provide details of the supplied titles for the service. This service is only available for Japanese PlayStation Portable consoles and will start in December 2009. ==Publications==