It’s Illya’s birthday! And Miyu’s! And Chloe’s!! …also mine, I guess. Oh and the moonlanding’s!
I decided today’s reading should be a special vibe check of sorts and… uh… I’m gonna save the interpretation for myself today because it got a bit too personal.
First thing I wanted to do was take some sort of commemorative selfie for birthday purposes, so I head out scounting for spots and I find the perfect one.
You mean to tell me I can sit in a teacup with Medama Oyaji?
WHAT DO YOU MEAN I CAN’T????
Thus the first day of being 32 starts with me lamenting that I’m not 20 years younger so I can sit with Medama Oyaji in his teacup.
You might see a bunch more of him and honestly, while I was already a fan, this trip made me a Medama Oyaji stan.
Like, imagine having a “just a little dude” type mascot, but instead of an annoying child inciting annoying child behavior, it’s basically Your Dad reminding you from a distance to be nice.
Like Jiminy Cricket, except easier to draw and not a cop.
I briefly returned to my room and I figured hey, I should test my birthday present, the big camera lens.
For clarification, it’s a 200-800mm lens PLUS a 2x extender.
Here’s a photo from my wondow with my iphone 15. First at native 3x optical zoom and second at the limit of the phone’s digital zoom.
Then here’s the big lens.
The most interesting thing is how you can see heat distortion. It’s a fun reminder of the sort of things no amount of zoom can avoid because if your eyes can’t fix that an artificial eye sure won’t.
After a quick change of shirt (I tend to rotate my shirts in summer because I sweat like a motherfucker) I decided to check the whole Shigeru Mizuki Road.
While yes, it’s a themed shotengai, the shops tend to carry more than just Kitaro stuff sometimes, meaning that you’ll find value in them even if you have the merch.
One highlight is a very small festival-esque park hidden sliiiiiightly away from the main street (though still signaled).
Honestly, on the whole I was shocked at how many people were around. I wasn’t expecting the area to be desolate or like… some obscure attraction, but I definitely found more than I expected. Lots of kids too, dressed in Kitaro and Neko Musume colors, and they looked like they WANTED to be there instead of just being dragged along.
Then came, arguably, the highlight of this trip: The museum.
The museum made me very emotional, which I wasn’t expecting.
You see, I’m not someone that idolizes others, as much because I’m a proudful and stubborn bitch as I do because I find human flaws more compelling and even commendable. I do have deep respect for authors though, and Shigeru Mizuki is one author I’ve had quite the respect for.
One of the many reasons is that while Mizuki was most definitely a hard worker, he never had the same grind mindset that his WW2 contemporaries had, so he was one of the few that managed to live to really old age, to age 93 in fact.
Fujiko F Fujio (of Doraemon fame) died at 62, Osamu Tezuka (of Osamu Tezuka fame) died at age 60, Shotaro Ishinomori (of Kamen Rider fame) died at 60…
I could keep naming names, but I’m picking those three because of a couple of relevant reasons: They died without even reaching their mid-60s, they had a reputation for working themselves to the bone marrow, and they all have some sort larger than life fame. Hell, everyone knows Tezuka is called God of Manga, but few comment that Ishinomori was called KING of Manga.
So with that in mind, it’s a SHOCK when you enter the Shigeru Mizuki Museum and there’s zero pretenses. Shigeru Mizuki is presented as a normal man that’s inspiring BECAUSE he was so normal.
He was deemed lazy growing up, he got enrolled into a suicide mission in the war and didn’t push through meaning he failed AND kept his life, he got married in an arranged marriage (of the kind that’s set up by an external organization and such). His work is presented more as highlights of his life rather than his actual life. Hell, Mizuki was arguably more a folklorist that published his work in manga form than a mangaka in the usual sense of the word.
And if you’ve ever seen his work, Mizuki’s work reflects this. The world is scary and ugly, humans are pathetic and ugly, but that doesn’t make the world any less beautiful nor humans any less worthy of love.
So the museum feels less like a monument to a larger than life legacy and more like the celebration of a local man that was impressive precisely in how he managed to do so much despite not having the biggest expectations thrown his way.
There’s one extra bit that kinda makes this dawn on you and makes the whole “died very old” point more poignant.
There’s a building with a bunch of photos of things that have happened at the Shigeru Mizuki Road in the past, like parades and whatnot. He’s in plenty of them in some way, and even if he isn’t his family is.
When you work since your 20s and you make it to 60 that gives your work legendary quality to itself, but when you make it to 90 that’s the time gap where your work becomes something else, it becomes like the roman colosseum, something that’s just beyond regular mortal comprehension… and Mizuki managed to live to see that stage.
Tezuka’s work was already legendary before he died, but imagine living to see something like the 50th anniversary of your work. Imagine living to see your work be celebrated as older than Mia Ikumi of Tokyo Mew Mew fame was when she died in 2022.
Dude, I can barely imagine getting to 50, I’m turning 32 and going “holy shit I’m 12 years older than this one cousin of mine was when he got shot”. This world’s scary and I’m just happy every second that I’ve managed to make it another day.
Like I said, I don’t idolize people (if nothing else out of respect, ironically) but if I ever gotta set up what my goals are, Shigeru Mizuki is Goals.
As you can tell by all this sudden burst of insight, the museum got to me. I think the fact that I’ve been going through a book on Rupert Murdoch and Ted Turner’s Bitch Fight during this trip added an extra contrast between petty ass billionares vs this single legendary local.
A funny coicidence was that when I entered the museum I had one of the fangamer VA-11 Hall-A shirts on. It wasn’t on purpose, it’s just a really comfortable shirt fitting for the hot ass weather, but I didn’t realize until I was heading out how it gave it the feel of a pilgrimage from one author to another.
After that whole thing I made it to the end of the Shigeru Mizuki Road and headed back. I got the stamp rally book and a bunch of other things while at it.
I’ve been trying to take photos of all the statues but it’s a bitch to take pics of them at that time of day. I might have better luck at night, ironically, since they all have lights from below.
After cooling off I decided, you know what? It’s my birthday I’m gonna eat a lot of crab sushi. And so I did.
Afterwards I decided to explore the area a bit so I just kept walking by the docks… but then by the second time where I saw it necessary to pour water from a vending machine on my head to not overheat I decided hey, maybe I should return, there’s still a couple of days ahead.