Day 9: part 1 - GeGeGe no Kitaro

I woke up on Thursday morning not knowing what I would do today. All I knew is that later in the evening I had to meet some new friends. In fact, I had never met these people before, yet they were the whole reason that I decided to revisit Osaka. At this point, it seemed like a stupid decision, and I didn't feel like I was in a social mood, reasoning that I would probably never see these folks again. In any case, the plans were made, and I didn't feel like I could break them now. So I had to find some way to spend the time before the evening.

One thing that seemed like it would be fun was an exhibition of GeGeGe no Kintaro, a Japanese comic by Mizuki Shigeru. I had seen ads for it in the Osaka information booths, and so I decided to check it out. I was looking forward to making a significant part of my Japanese tour a trip to a remote sea-side town of Sakaiminato. The reason I wanted to go there was because they have a museum dedicated to hometown hero Mizuki Shigeru. Well, here I was in not-so-remote Osaka, with an opportunity to see a Mizuki exhibition.

However, this museum was in a more remote part of Osaka. I had to take a couple of trains to get there, and then walk a little ways. I think the charm of heading to this area is really the giant ferris wheel and the aquarium. Although of all sea life I love whales and jellyfish, I was fairly certain that they would not have any whales on display (at least not the big ones), so the prospect of seeing jellyfish did not justify the entrance fee for me. So I skipped the aquarium, and went to the museum next door to see the Mizuki exhibition.

Although I am interested in a specific work of Mizuki's that is related to the war, it seems that he is most famous for a children's comic called GeGeGe no Kintaro. I have not read it, but it is supposedly about a little boy who encounters Yokai, or monsters or ghouls, around his country-side home. I was very curious to explore the culture of the Yokai in Japan, and see what I could learn from the exhibition. However, unlike all the other museums I have been to in Japan so far, this exhibition had not English accompaniment at all. So, basically all I could see were his illustrations, along with bronze sculptures and amusement type figure that looked like they belonged in a county fair fun house, though these were much more skillfully sculpted.

Unfortunately, I did not catch the name of the museum, as it was not displayed anywhere in English, but from the ads I saw that featured the next exhibition, it seemed that it was a museum that specialized in illustration of one sort or another. Furthermore, having seen this exhibition, perhaps I would feel a bit better about skipping the arduous trip to Sakaiminato that I had scheduled in a coule of days.