[dannavy85]

It was January 1989, I was stationed at NAF Atsugi at the time when the news broke that Emperor Hirohito had died of old age. What an amazing time, the last leader of World War II, the last true Imperial Sovereign of Japan to display any true power over the people had passed.

There wasn't anything remarkable about the period, certainly the Japanese people reacted with little visable emotions. There was an emptiness you could see in the displays of rememberance. Of course Hirohito was very old, had lived a full life, experianced a passing of history profound, devistating and forfilling for his nation. His death had been expected.

Then came February 9th. That morning Osamu Tezuka had been working late in his drawing room at home when his elder son found him lying on the floor. The old man had kept his terminal cancer a secret and kept drawing till his last breath.

The effect on the Japanese nation was at once catastrophic and heart breaking, the whole nation from child to elder cried with an emotional outburst as if a father, a beloved family member, a president had been swiftly and unjustly taken before his time. Men who were once children surviving the immediate aftermath of World War II wept unshamed at the loss of this sustainer, who's manga was the one bright light in a moment of national darkness.

NHK news anchors wept. Men on the streets, in stores, in hotels wept. Children hanged drawings of Tezuka characters and wept. This man, this simple friendly old common man, the son of a photographer who loved Walt Disney and chased bugs all his life had been more openly mourned and cried for than a man of privilage and sovereign status.

I watched citizens gather for memorials, the largest starting at a park in Osaka where over 500,000 people lined the route from the memorial house to Tezuka's boyhood home in Takarazuka. He was just more than a simple artist. He was a teacher, a mentor, a sempei, a friend and he came of the common man.

It was....a remarkable period of history.