"Can't find the heart"

Author: Abo Mita
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-01-01
Features: In a small town, there is Mr. Ho Ho, who is the editor, journalist, and laborer, always troubled by the lack of big news; there is Mr. Tu Tu, who specializes in drawing maps and happily places the theater in the center of the grassland; there are also two police officers, named Little Dwarf and Old Tall; and Mr. Saka and his Blanken sheep pass by, inviting everyone to stop by the town for a rest. Abo Mita is a unique Japanese cartoonist. Her cartoons have a literary charm, especially the charm of prose. Her prose is called "pearls and jade essays," filled with beautiful imagination and profound philosophical thoughts. She is a writer who uses cartoons to write prose. Abo Mita's prose cartoons are very clear and pure, without a trace of dust. In her essays, a sheep drinking by the water also "drinks the clouds reflected in the water." She says that the sheep drank the "reflection of the clouds" too. In her hands, the gurgling stream is the "spirit of the clear spring, deeply sighing." Her "spirits" are not "existences of rhetoric" but a "life" that exists within "beauty." The police in her cartoons are all "fairytale-like" in their kindness, cheering for "the flowers have bloomed" and helping the townspeople search for "flowers with water-blue petals" in the wilderness. All essayists are naturally humorous. The students in her cartoons would say to their admired teachers, "I have read all your works and have marked them with red lines." This kind-hearted student goes to great lengths to become a disciple, wanting to "make" an onion chopper that won't make people cry, to give to his mother, believing she will be so happy she will cry.