One-Armed Japanese Manga Artist Believing in Spirits
Shigeru Mizuki (real name: Shigeru Mura, 1922-2015) was a prestigious manga (cartoon) artist who started his career in 1958 after he had been demobilized and sent home from a South Pacific war front in WWII where he had lost his left arm due to an air raid by the U.S./Australian military.
Mizuki was chosen by the Japanese Government to be a person who has performed distinguished services in the field of culture in Japan in 2010. Indeed, Mizuki is even today recognized as one of the most successful manga (cartoon) artist in Japan after WWII like Osamu Tezuka (1928-1989) whose style influenced many manga/animation artists in Japan after WWII. (Mizuki once said that Tezuka was younger than he, but as Mizuki used to sleep more than 10 hours per day, he could live longer than Tezuka.)
What is specific to Mizuki is his emphasis on specters or spiritual figures. He created a Manga series with a boy called Kitaro with spiritual power as a main figure. Kitaro fights against evil spirits and bad guys, and he always wins in the end. Kitaro is called "Ge-Ge-Ge-no Kitaro (Kitaro of ge, ge, ge)" as animals praise him and sing luridly with sounds of "ge, ge, ge" to praise him and celebrate his victory over the wicked.
But the most specific to Mizuki is the fact that he was a manga (cartoon) artist with only right arm, although he used some assistants after he became famous and very busy. He came back to Japan as a disabled soldier without any hope in his life after WWII, but he did not lose his will to continue his life, so that he finally decided to use his talent for painting after various jobs such as peddling of the fish and an owner of an apartment house (called Mizuki House, which became his pen name). And, he could marry a young woman in his home town while he was still a poor comic artist. It was when Mizuki was almost 40 years of age that his manga (comics) became so popular in the Japanese society. And, he finally became a rich man so as to travel the world (such as the South Pacific regions, South East Asia, Australia, and the U.S.) to see local spiritual traditions. He has become a researcher of the spiritual culture. Based on this experience, he created many graphic novels.
Mizuki had believed the existence of spiritual creatures since he was a small child as he was familiar with an old woman in his home town who often came to his house for help and had a superstitious idea. Mizuki showed his talent of painting in his primary-school age before WWII. But, it is a kind of miracles that a disabled soldier with only one arm became a successful manga artist.
When he traveled to Australia to see Aborigine's culture, he found that they were living with spirits. He was satisfied to see that there were people daily living with spirits. He thinks that men after their death would go into the state like a baby before one or two years old where they do not realize that they are living.
He did not have spiritual ability, but he believed that spirits were everywhere especially in undeveloped regions in the world. Anyway, it is a miracle that a one-armed manga artist had become one of the most notable and successful artists in Japan after WWII. So, disabled soldiers in the Ukraine War might become successful artists in the future.
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John 9, King James Version
16 Therefore said some of the Pharisees, This man is not of God, because he keepeth not the sabbath day. Others said, How can a man that is a sinner do such miracles? And there was a division among them.
17 They say unto the blind man again, What sayest thou of him, that he hath opened thine eyes? He said, He is a prophet.
18 But the Jews did not believe concerning him, that he had been blind, and received his sight, until they called the parents of him that had received his sight.
19 And they asked them, saying, Is this your son, who ye say was born blind? how then doth he now see?
20 His parents answered them and said, We know that this is our son, and that he was born blind:
21 But by what means he now seeth, we know not; or who hath opened his eyes, we know not: he is of age; ask him: he shall speak for himself.