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Culture & history · SakaiminatoMizuki Shigeru
He lost an arm at Rabaul, learned to draw with the other one, and gave Japan its monsters back
The street from Sakaiminato station is lined with 178 bronze monsters. They are there because one man from this town was conscripted, sent to New Guinea, survived malaria and an air raid that killed every man at his post, lost his left arm, came home, taught himself to draw right-handed, and spent sixty years documenting Japan's folk monsters before they were forgotten.
Checked against official sources · updated · Takumi Yamada
Mizuki Shigeru was born in Osaka in 1922 and grew up in Sakaiminato. As a child he was told folk tales by an elderly local woman he called Nonnonba, and those stories — of the creatures that live in the gap between the human world and everything else — never left him.
The war
He was conscripted and sent to Rabaul, in what is now Papua New Guinea. He contracted malaria. In an Allied air raid the men at his post were all killed; he escaped into the sea and made his way back to his unit. He then lost his left arm — his drawing arm — to infection after being wounded.
He was cared for by the local Tolai people, learned some of their language, and later said he had considered staying. He came home in 1946 to a country that had lost, taught himself to draw with his right hand, and worked as a fishmonger and a rental-manga artist in extreme poverty for over a decade.
He did not become successful until his forties. He then worked, prolifically, until his death in 2015 at ninety-three.
What he actually did
His famous work is GeGeGe no Kitaro — a boy of the yokai world, with one eye, and a father who is an eyeball on legs. It has been animated in every decade since the 1960s, which means every living generation of Japanese people met the yokai through him.
But the more serious achievement is that he catalogued them. He travelled, collected local folklore, and drew hundreds of creatures that existed only in regional oral tradition and were disappearing with the people who remembered them. Many yokai now have a canonical appearance, and that appearance is Mizuki's drawing.
He also drew the war. His autobiographical work about the Pacific is unsparing, angry about the officers, and among the most respected war comics in Japan. He was not sentimental about any of it.
The road
Mizuki Shigeru Road runs about 800 metres from the station into town, with 178 bronze yokai figures set along it. It opened in 1993 with 23 statues and grew; the town was declining and the road was, frankly, a survival strategy. It worked.
The Mizuki Shigeru Museum at the far end handles both halves of him — the monsters and the war — and it is better than the street suggests.
How it happened
- 1922Born in Osaka; raised in Sakaiminato
And told folk tales by Nonnonba
- 1943–46Rabaul: malaria, an air raid, and his left arm
The only survivor of his post
- 1960sGeGeGe no Kitaro
Animated in every decade since
- lifetimeHe catalogues hundreds of regional yokai
Their canonical look is now his drawing
- 1993Mizuki Shigeru Road opens
23 statues, growing to 178
- 2015He dies at 93
Working almost to the end
Where this becomes real on your port day
Walk the 800 metres from the station slowly, then give the museum an hour. The war half is the part people skip.
The vocabulary of Mizuki
- Kitaro 鬼太郎
- The one-eyed yokai boy. Every generation since the 1960s knows him.
- Nonnonba のんのんばあ
- The old woman who told him the stories. He wrote a book about her.
- Medama-oyaji 目玉おやじ
- Kitaro's father: an eyeball with a body. Beloved, genuinely.
- Rabauru ラバウル
- Rabaul. Where he lost his arm and his comrades.
FAQ
Who was Mizuki Shigeru?
A manga artist raised in Sakaiminato who was conscripted to Rabaul in the Pacific war, survived malaria and an air raid that killed every man at his post, lost his left drawing arm, taught himself to draw right-handed, and spent sixty years documenting Japan's folk monsters. He created GeGeGe no Kitaro and gave hundreds of regional yokai their now-canonical appearance.
What is Mizuki Shigeru Road?
An 800-metre street running from Sakaiminato station into town, lined with 178 bronze yokai statues. It opened in 1993 with 23 figures as a regeneration strategy for a declining fishing town, and it worked — the manhole covers, streetlights, taxis and shop shutters are all committed to it now.
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