The Tutor with One Arm: Shigeru Mizuki and the Curriculum of the Holy Fool
Before the lemur filled their basket as the flood waters rose.
Before Wile E. raised his parasol.
Before Joseph built the granary with no Pharaoh in sight—
There was a man with one arm, drawing yokai in the shade of a crooked pine. Not to warn. Not to profit. But because he couldn’t help himself.
Shigeru Mizuki lost his arm in World War II. He came home and taught himself to draw with the other. Not to make a point. Not to overcome.
Just to keep drawing.
Because what else was there to do?
In the decades that followed, he became one of Japan’s most beloved manga artists-mapping a haunted, comical world full of spirits, misfits, and myth.
A world where the sacred lives in the gutter, and the absurd carries the soul of things.
Somewhere in the margins, he scribbled down seven rules for happiness—a kind of back-alley gospel for surviving the modern age:
- Don't aim for success, honor, or victory.
- Keep doing the things you can't help doing.
- Pursue what you enjoy, don't compare yourself to others.
- Believe in your talent.
- Be aware that talent and income are unrelated.
- Be lazy.
- Believe in the invisible world.
These aren’t strategies.
They’re un-strategies—the kind that unravel hustle logic and deflate empires with a grin.
We think of Mizuki as the Tutor of the Holy Fools.
Not the lemur, not the coyote, not Joseph with his ledger full of unheeded warnings—but the one who taught them all to disobey quietly.
To hoard the useless. To persist without glory. To sit by the road and sketch the monster’s funny little tail.
The lemur learned to collect joy like river stones.
The coyote mastered comedic timing in the face of annihilation.
Joseph remembered to prepare, even if no one listened.
And somewhere in the back of all their minds was a man with one arm, saying: “Believe in things you cannot see.”
Mizuki doesn’t fight the system.
He forgets it’s there.
That’s the lesson.
He doesn’t offer productivity tips.
He offers a nap. A ghost story. A good meal.
And a pencil stubbed down to nothing.
So yes—he’s our tutor. The one who sat cross-legged at the edge of the world and taught the sacred art of foolishness.
We don’t need more visionaries.
We need more weird uncles sketching yokai on train tickets.
We need tutors of rest.
Tutors of mischief.
Tutors of enough.
And if the world is ending,
draw anyway.