A Japanese Version of Gospel Interpretation
A Japanese comic artist drew a manga story titled JESUS in 1997.
Yoshikazu Yasuhiko, the comic artist, is not a Christian. He just wanted to present his version of interpretation of the Gospels. Especially he was drawn to the Gospel according to St. Mark.
According to Yasuhiko, Christ Jesus was not God. He finally died on the cross. He did not resurrect. But there was one young man, named Joshua, who followed Christ Jesus for some reasons.
Joshua's mother had been stoned to death due to adultery. It damaged Joshua psychologically, so that he came to have a major trauma. But one day the young man saw Christ Jesus helped out a woman who was almost to be stoned to death for her adultery. Joshua was extremely moved. The bottom of his heart was hit by cool and hot love Christ Jesus showed to the woman. His psychological wound was healed. So, Joshua decided to follow Christ Jesus so honestly.
But Christ Jesus was arrested by Roman soldiers. It was Barabbas who set up this scenario. Barabbas was himself a prophet. When he had heard of Christ Jesus, Barabbas wanted to test Him to see if He was a true holy prophet. So, Barabbas sent two spies to a group of followers of Christ Jesus: Judas Iscariot and that Joshua.
When Christ Jesus was arrested by Roman soldiers, Joshua ran away for his life as the Gospel depicted the tense scene. However Joshua killed a Roman soldier while he was running away, for which he was arrested eventually to be sentenced to death. So, Joshua was crucified together with Christ Jesus. But Joshua revived later in the house of Joseph of Arimathea.
After he came back to life miraculously and he found that three days had passed since crucifixion of Christ Jesus (and himself), Joshua asked Joseph of Arimathea to bring him to the tomb of Christ Jesus, since Christ might have resurrected. So, they went to the tomb only to find that Christ Jesus was truly dead. There was no resurrection of Christ Jesus.
But Joshua thought that Mary of Magdala, a girlfriend of Christ Jesus, should feel so sad to see that Christ Jesus could not resurrect. Joshua took the dead body of Christ Jesus out of the tomb, leaving only some cloth, etc. And Joshua put on white garments to pretend to be an angel who would meet Mary of Magdala and some other women in front of the tomb. Shortly thereafter, these women came to the tomb and saw an angel (namely Joshua). They were however extremely frightened as the Gospel according to St. Mark reported.
This is a version of interpretation of the story of Christ Jesus by a Japanese cartoonist, if your hearts are touched or not.
Incidentally, the manga artist Yasuhiko joined an anti-Vietnam War movement when he was a university student in a local city of Japan. But he was forced to leave the university due to his political activity. He came to Tokyo and started to work in a photo-composition company. But he seized an opportunity as he successfully applied for a post in a manga/animation production company run by the greatest manga artist of Japan Osamu Tezuka.
Yoshikazu Yasuhiko (1947- ) is a Japanese animator and manga artist in the anime industry.
Yasuhiko dropped out of Hirosaki University and was hired by Osamu Tezuka's Mushi Productions in 1970 as an animator. He later went freelance and worked on various animation productions for film and television. In 1981 he won the Seiun Award in Art category. He began working as a manga artist in 1988. In 1992 he won the Japan Cartoonists Association Award, and in 2000, an Excellence Prize in manga for Ōdō no Inu at the Japan Media Arts Festival. He is also known as a novelist and science fiction illustrator. Some of his most notable works as character designer and director are Brave Reideen, Combattler V, and Mobile Suit Gundam. Less well known is the fact that he was the original character designer for the Dirty Pair, long before their first anime or manga appearance, when he was illustrating the Haruka Takachiho short stories that became the 1980 fixup novel Great Adventures of the Dirty Pair.
In recent years he has branched out artistically, creating such works as Joan, a three-volume story of a young French girl living at the time of the Hundred Years' War, whose life parallels that of Joan of Arc; and Jesus, a two-volume biographical manga about the life of Jesus Christ.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoshikazu_Yasuhiko
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Act 12:25 And Barnabas and Saul returned from Jerusalem, when they had fulfilled their ministry, and took with them John, whose surname was Mark.