Song Kang-ho
$12 Million
Eiichiro Oda’s net worth is estimated at $200 million. He is a Japanese manga artist and the creator of One Piece, the best-selling manga series in history with over 600 million copies in circulation worldwide as of March 2026. Oda has been serializing One Piece in Weekly Shōnen Jump continuously since 1997, making him one of the most commercially successful fiction authors of all time.
Updated March 2026: According to Anime News Network, One Piece officially surpassed 600 million copies in circulation worldwide in March 2026 with the release of Volume 114, cementing Oda as the eighth best-selling fiction author of all time, just behind J.K. Rowling, according to Crunchyroll. His estimated annual earnings are approximately ¥3.1 billion (roughly $23 million USD), according to the One Piece Wiki.
Eiichiro Oda (Japanese: 尾田 栄一郎) was born on January 1, 1975, in Kumamoto City, Kumamoto Prefecture, Japan. From an unusually young age, Oda set a clear professional goal: at four years old, he resolved to become a manga artist specifically to avoid having to get a conventional job. His primary creative influences were Akira Toriyama’s Dragon Ball and the animated series Vicky the Viking, which sparked his lifelong interest in pirates.
During junior high school, Oda befriended a classmate named Nakao who shared his passion for manga, helping him develop more formal drawing skills. In high school, he quit soccer to dedicate himself entirely to manga. During his senior year in 1992, the 17-year-old Oda submitted his first full-length work, Wanted!, a Western-themed manga, to Shueisha’s prestigious Tezuka Awards under a pseudonym. It won Second Class honors (one of only three awarded that cycle), earning him a ¥500,000 cash prize and his first published interview in a Kumamoto City newspaper.
In 1993, Oda enrolled in the architecture program at Kyushu Tokai University but dropped out shortly thereafter to pursue a professional manga career in Tokyo under the mentorship of editor Kaoru Kushima.
After winning the Tezuka Award, Oda began working as an assistant at Weekly Shōnen Jump, where he assisted Shinobu Kaitani on Suizan Police Gang, then Masaya Tokuhiro on Jungle King Tar-chan and Mizu no Tomodachi Kappaman. At age 19, he became an assistant to Nobuhiro Watsuki on Rurouni Kenshin, a landmark training ground — Watsuki credits Oda with helping create the character Honjō Kamatari. During this period, Oda won the Hop Step Award for new artists.
In 1996, Oda drew two pirate-themed one-shot stories titled “Romance Dawn,” featuring a prototype of his main character Monkey D. Luffy, published in Akamaru Jump and Weekly Shōnen Jump. These laid the groundwork for One Piece, which began full serialization in Weekly Shōnen Jump in July 1997.
One Piece became one of the fastest-growing manga series in history. It reached 100 million collected tankōbon volumes sold by February 2005, crossed 200 million by February 2011, reached 430 million copies in circulation by October 2017, and has now surpassed 600 million as of March 2026, according to Anime News Network. The series has been recognized in the Guinness World Records twice — in 2015 (320 million copies) and in 2022 (516 million copies) — as the best-selling manga series in history.
In addition to the manga, Oda has been deeply involved in the One Piece film franchise. He served as the story writer and executive producer for One Piece Film: Strong World (2009), One Piece Film: Z (2012), One Piece Film: Gold (2016), One Piece: Stampede (2019), and One Piece Film: Red (2022). He also served as executive producer for the Netflix live-action adaptation of One Piece, which debuted in 2023 and became the most-watched title on Netflix in the second half of 2023 with 71.6 million views. Season 2 of the live-action series premiered in 2026 and earned an 8.9/10 average IMDb rating, outperforming Season 1.
Oda was awarded the 41st Japan Cartoonists Association Grand Prize (2012/2013) and has received multiple Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize nominations. His work has won multiple Sondermann Awards (2005, 2008, 2009). In 2025, One Piece was once again the highest-selling manga in Japan with 4.2 million copies sold for the year, according to Oricon data.
Eiichiro Oda has been married to Chiaki Inaba since November 7, 2004. Inaba is a former model, actress, and tarento (Japanese multi-talented entertainer). They met in late 2002 at Jump Festa, a major anime and manga expo, where Inaba was performing a stage role as Nami from One Piece. The couple has two daughters — one born in 2006 and one born in 2009 — whose names have not been made public, per Wikipedia.
Oda is known for a punishing work schedule. He and his editors have described him as sleeping only three hours per night during a typical work week. He was hospitalized in 2013 for a peritonsillar abscess and underwent a tonsillectomy in 2014 to resolve the condition. Despite his wealth, Oda has maintained a relatively modest public profile in Japan, living in a private home in Tokyo fitted with a purpose-built manga studio. He is known within the industry for deep friendships with fellow manga artists including Masashi Kishimoto (Naruto), Yoshihiro Togashi (Hunter x Hunter), and Akira Toriyama (Dragon Ball, deceased 2024), with whom he collaborated on multiple projects including the Cross Epoch crossover in 2007.
Oda has been a longtime supporter of earthquake disaster recovery in his home region. Beyond his 2018 donation to Kumamoto Prefecture, he participated in the ONE PIECE Kumamoto Revival Project, contributed artwork for local products, and wrote public messages of support to disaster victims following the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami.
Eiichiro Oda’s net worth is estimated at $200 million as of 2026, with some estimates ranging as high as $230–$280 million. His wealth is derived from manga royalties on more than 600 million copies of One Piece sold worldwide, anime licensing fees, film producer credits, merchandise royalties on a franchise now valued at approximately $30.2 billion, and his Netflix live-action executive producer role. The One Piece Wiki estimates his annual earnings at approximately ¥3.1 billion (around $23 million USD).
Eiichiro Oda’s wife is Chiaki Inaba (稲葉ちあき), a former model, actress, and tarento. They met at Jump Festa in late 2002, where Inaba played the role of Nami during a live One Piece stage show. The couple married on November 7, 2004, and have been together for over 20 years. Inaba has largely maintained a private life separate from the public attention surrounding her husband’s work.
Eiichiro Oda was born on January 1, 1975, in Kumamoto City, Kumamoto Prefecture, Japan, making him 51 years old as of January 2026. He began his professional manga career at age 17 in 1992, started serializing One Piece at age 22 in 1997, and has been publishing it continuously for nearly 29 years as of 2026.
Eiichiro Oda’s exact height has not been formally published in major biographical sources, but the One Piece Wiki describes him as “a Japanese man of average height,” consistent with the Japanese adult male average of approximately 5 feet 7 inches (170–172 cm). Unlike many Western celebrities, Japanese manga artists rarely disclose precise physical measurements publicly, and Oda himself is rarely photographed in situations where his height can be precisely gauged.
Eiichiro Oda earns an estimated ¥3.1 billion (approximately $23 million USD) per year, according to earnings data cited by the One Piece Wiki, sourced from the Japanese television program Baka Furi. This figure encompasses manga royalties from weekly serialization in Weekly Shōnen Jump, tankōbon volume royalties, anime licensing, merchandise royalties, and film producer fees. It does not fully account for one-time income from major film releases or the Netflix live-action series.
Eiichiro Oda lives in Tokyo, Japan. He maintains a private residence that reportedly includes a dedicated manga studio — an unusual luxury given the typically smaller scale of Japanese homes. Oda was born and raised in Kumamoto City, Kumamoto Prefecture, and has maintained strong ties to the region through philanthropic contributions. He donated ¥800 million to Kumamoto Prefecture in 2018 following the 2016 earthquake, per Wikipedia.
Yes, Eiichiro Oda and his wife Chiaki Inaba have two daughters. Their first daughter was born in 2006 and their second in 2009. Both children have been kept largely out of the public eye, as Oda and Inaba have maintained privacy regarding their family life. Oda has acknowledged his demanding work schedule — reportedly sleeping only three hours a night — which limits the time he spends with his family, per Wikipedia.
One Piece surpassed 600 million copies in circulation in March 2026 with the release of Volume 114, making it not only the best-selling manga of all time but the best-selling comic series ever printed in volume format, per Anime News Network. The series has held two separate Guinness World Records for best-selling manga, was listed in the 2025 Oricon charts as the top-selling manga in Japan that year, and its Netflix live-action adaptation became one of the platform’s most-watched series in 2023. The franchise as a whole is valued at approximately $30.2 billion as of 2026.