Yamacha's Creation and conception

When Toriyama decided to create the Dragon Ball manga, he used Chinese author Wu Cheng'en's Journey to the West as a prototype for his own series.^[3][4] The role prototype for Yamcha was Gojō, the river monster, from Toriyama's one-shot series Dragon Boy.^[5] Gojō was based on Sha Wujing, the bandit from the Journey to the West that eventually joins the heroes' side. When translated from Chinese into Japanese-language, Sha Wujing becomes Sa Gojō.