no tears for the creatures of the night

bogleech:

I remember when I first discovered Gegege no Kitarou through the internet, in probably 1998 or 99. It had just one tiny English fanpage with a couple of pictures but I was enthralled, and I pretty much discovered Youkai mytholoy and horror manga from there, information on both still unbelievably scarce.

Shigeru Mizuki himself was also just a fucking incredible individual.

He wanted to be an artist all his life, but he was enlisted in WWII, where he was accused of being a “deserter” for being the sole survivor of a surprise attack, assigned to what was going to be a suicide strike as punishment, saved because he had to be hospitalized for fucking malaria, then lost his arm when the allied forces bombed the hospital, again one of the few survivors.

Along the way he befriended a tribe in New Guinea, the Tolai, who rekindled his love of mythology and the supernatural, which is its own amazing story.

Years later he re-trained himself to draw with his other hand and basically devoted himself to studying and revitalizing Japan’s own folklore. He came to be considered the leading scholarly expert on youkai and basically the reason youkai re-entered the public eye at all. Without his efforts, they may have faded largely to obscurity in post-war Japan.

He also seemed convinced - or at least liked to maintain - that youkai spirits were definitely real, but that there was something about our widespread use of electric light that repelled them or even made us unable to perceive them anymore, which is a fascinating concept.

(via spacefuture)