The Power of Childhood

He once told me that everyone believes childhood, once gone, can never return. The child we used to be vanishes as we grow up — and he used to believe that too.

But in the winter of 2000, when he was forty years old, something changed. It happened quietly, during the school holidays, while he was playing with his nine-year-old son. Somehow, he said, he relived his own childhood all over again.

“Ever since I met that little version of myself,” he told me, “I’ve been able to unravel many of the mysteries I once couldn’t understand — including who I really am, and how I came to be the person I am today.”

Everything, he realized, had a pattern — and that pattern led straight back to childhood.

“People often ask me,” he said with a small smile, “how I manage to create so many different kinds of stories — about love, marriage, time, society, men, women, even human nature — and make them both sharp and humorous. I used to think it was simply because I had talent.”

He paused for a long time before adding softly, “But now I know — all of it comes from my childhood.”

He described that childhood to me in vivid detail. “I was an introverted child,” he said, “and I had a learning disability. I didn’t have many friends, so I spent most of my time alone. Even though I was more comfortable being by myself, I was still endlessly curious about the world.”

That curiosity drove him to find his own way to connect with it — through imagination.

“It began with insects,” he said, his eyes brightening with amusement. “I was fascinated by them. In our courtyard, I played with every kind of bug I could find.”

Then, he laughed, as if recalling a mischievous experiment. “Once, I used sugar water to connect two different ant nests with a line. Sometimes the line stretched very long. When the ants discovered the sugar, they’d follow it, and when the two groups met in the middle, their antennae would touch. Then, they’d suddenly turn back.”

He mimed the scene with his hands, smiling. “I’d watch, feeling like a little god observing his creatures. Soon, the soldier ants would come rushing out, forming a perfect line to battle. It was magnificent.”

That was just the beginning. “I also tried to play with bees,” he said. “We lived in a Japanese-style house, and bees often built hives inside. I started experimenting. I’d poke the hive to see how they reacted, and I tried all kinds of ways to protect myself — a broom, a bucket, water — but nothing worked. I got stung so many times my head would swell up.”

He laughed again, remembering. “Finally, I found a method. I realized that if I swung a jump rope in front of them, it would act like a big electric fan — the bees flying toward me would all get knocked down by the spinning rope. But then some clever bees started circling around to sting me from behind. They were evolving faster than I was.”

He leaned back, his tone now thoughtful. “So I thought of something else. Back then, lighters used liquid butane, which is freezing cold when released. I caught the bees in a net, sprayed them with the gas, and they froze instantly. Then I used a needle to press on their abdomens, making their stingers pop out. I’d snip off the stingers quickly, because if you pulled them out, their insides would come with them, and they’d die.”

He spoke with the precision of a scientist. “They’d start waking up about a minute later, so I had to work fast. When I was done, I painted their backsides with watercolor — white paint — so I could recognize them later. Whenever I saw a bee with a white rear flying by, I knew it couldn’t sting me. I wasn’t afraid anymore.”

He grinned, then continued, “After bees, I turned to spiders. There were many in our house. I’d catch them one by one in test tubes, classify them by size, type, and species, and make them fight each other. The competition lasted two months, until finally there was only one left — my ‘Spider King.’”

He paused, his smile fading slightly, and said, “That was my childhood — full of experiments, curiosity, and imagination. I played with every bug I could find. And before each game, I would always imagine what might happen. When there were no more insects left in the yard to play with, I started imagining something bigger — humans.”

He looked at me, eyes gleaming. “Once I started seeing people as if they were insects, the experiments got even more interesting.”He said it casually, but there was something both playful and unsettling in the way he described it. “I had already finished all the insect experiments in the yard, so I turned my attention to the humans around me. I began to observe the neighbors — when they were home, when they weren’t. I wrote it all down in my notebook like an entomologist keeping field notes.”

He chuckled. “Then I started experimenting. I’d ring their doorbells and run away — not once, but several times. The first time they opened the door and saw no one, they thought it was just their imagination. The second time, they’d start looking around, confused. By the third time, they were angry — but with no one to aim that anger at. That’s when I realized I could see emotions. I could read them through their faces — blue at first, then red, and finally pale white with fury.”

He looked up and smiled faintly. “Of course, sometimes I failed my experiments and got caught. Let’s just say I learned a lot about speed and strategy that way.”

He paused for a while before adding, “I also used to imagine people’s hidden possibilities. For example, if I saw a beautiful woman walking gracefully in high heels, I’d think — what if, suddenly, her heel broke and she fell flat on her face? Would she still look the same? Would her dignity survive the fall?”

He laughed. “Or when I saw a serious-looking man, all proper and stiff, I’d think — what if I suddenly jumped up and slapped him? What would happen to that perfect, solemn mask of his?”

He leaned forward, eyes shining like a mischievous child. “Just imagining those reactions made me laugh out loud in the middle of the street. People probably thought I was crazy — this kid walking around, laughing to himself. I was famous in my neighborhood for being ‘the little lunatic.’ But I didn’t mind. I was happy.”

He said that as he grew older, reality caught up with him — school, teachers, classmates. “You can imagine,” he said, “a kid like me — poor grades, learning difficulties — wasn’t exactly popular. I was always the one being left out. But that gave me a strange advantage: I could see the other side of people, the side they didn’t show when they thought someone was watching. Because they didn’t care about me, they didn’t hide who they were. I saw truth.”

He went quiet for a moment. “At first, it was shocking. I remember once, a teacher used to scold me all the time, saying, ‘You’re so stupid, I’ve never seen a kid as dumb as you.’ One day, I was walking with my father on the street, and we ran into that same teacher. He smiled warmly at my father and said, ‘Your son is incredibly bright — one of the smartest students I’ve ever taught.’”

He looked down, smiling faintly, though there was a trace of something sad in his expression. “I’ll never forget that moment. I was so short then that I had to tilt my head up to look at him. And I thought, who is this person? The one who mocks me at school or the one flattering my father? That shock — that gap — was the beginning of my humor.”

He explained, “As I grew, I kept finding more and more of those contradictions. I started to understand the absurdity of human nature. And that absurdity — that clash between what people say and what they really are — is what creates humor. I didn’t know it then, but my childhood was training me to see humor in everything.”

He smiled. “When I became a manga artist at twenty-eight, I realized humor and comics are inseparable — like a dog and a lamppost. Humor, to me, is the final rebellion against an unfair life. Even when you fail, if you can still laugh, you win. Humor is that child inside you who still finds everything funny.”

Then his tone softened. “My childhood was full of imagination and creation. I lived in a small Japanese-style house with a courtyard — gray tiles, sliding doors. That was my world, my little universe. In that courtyard was my secret base: a small desk, my drawing pens, and my monsters.”

He smiled like he was seeing them again. “There were flower spirits hiding in the bushes, dream sprites under my bed, and a tiny dancing creature in the toilet. That was my entire world. I could spend the whole summer there, never stepping outside once. What you see in my drawings today — those strange, humorous monsters — they all come from there.”

He leaned back, thoughtful. “Even as I grew up, those monsters never really left me. One of them I used to call the ‘Troublemaker Monster.’ He’s still with me today. When I was little, he’d make sure that by the time it was my turn to get the nutrition biscuits at school, they’d run out. As an adult, he makes sure that whenever I need something, I can’t find it. I bet everyone has a little Troublemaker Monster like that.”

He laughed, and there was warmth in his voice. “When I was fifty-three, I accidentally discovered I had Asperger’s Syndrome. That explained a lot — the intense focus, the isolation, the sense of living inside a glass bubble that kept the adult world out. But that same bubble protected my imagination. It let me live inside my own world safely.”

He looked at me with quiet conviction. “Most people don’t have Asperger’s, but many of them were like me when they were children — full of imagination and creativity. The problem is, as we grow, the world takes that away from us.”

He sighed. “Our society doesn’t encourage imagination. Schools, parents, the whole system — they slowly chip it away. They replace it with rules, expectations, and definitions of ‘success.’ Bit by bit, they drain the life out of that creative child inside us.”

He told me that he once served as a judge for a national manga competition. “That’s when I realized,” he said, “how imagination slowly fades as people grow up.”

He leaned forward, his tone serious now. “The youngest children’s drawings were incredible — full of wild imagination and unrestrained creativity. Some of them were so brilliant that even professional artists might not have thought of those ideas. But as the age groups went up — elementary, middle school, high school, college — I could see it disappear, layer by layer. By the time they reached adulthood, their imagination had nearly vanished.”

He shook his head. “It wasn’t just that their drawings became more realistic. It was that they stopped seeing differently. They started thinking there was only one right answer.”

He told me about one child’s drawing he remembered vividly — a page covered entirely in small dots. “I asked the boy, ‘Why did you draw only dots? Didn’t you imagine anything else?’ He said, ‘There are elephants, lions, houses, trains, airplanes — everything’s there.’ So I asked, ‘Then why can’t I see them?’ And he said, ‘Because you’re standing too close. If you look from very high up, everything becomes a dot.’”

He paused and smiled faintly. “That’s imagination — the ability to see the world from a completely different angle.”

He mentioned Picasso then, recalling the artist’s words: It took me thirty years to paint like this, but it will take me another thirty to paint like a child again. “That’s exactly it,” he said. “Our education system molds every child into the same shape, using the same container. We lose our individuality and become part of the group. That’s how imagination dies.”

He looked down for a moment, then said softly, “We live the same kind of lives, do the same kind of work, dream the same kind of dreams. Maybe we don’t even dream anymore.”

He leaned back. “We tell children to be successful, but at the same time we take away the very thing that would make them truly alive — their capacity to dream. We demand they surrender their childhood power.”

He went quiet again, as if remembering something long buried. “I think life itself asks us a question — at least twice.”

“The first time,” he said, “is when you’re still young enough to change course. Life asks, ‘Is this the life you really want?’ Some people hear that question and act on it — they quit their jobs, change paths, do something others find crazy. But most people ignore it. They’re afraid to lose what they’ve already gained.”

He sighed. “If you ignore it the first time, life will ask again — right before you die: ‘Was this really the life you wanted?’ Some people smile when they answer. Others shed a tear before taking their last breath, regretting everything.”

He looked up at me then, his eyes sharp and steady. “Every once in a while, we all reach a crossroads. And most of us choose based on social values — what others think is safe or successful. We believe it’s the smart choice. But any choice that ignores your own voice is a mistake. Because the voice inside — that child inside — is the only one who truly knows your power and your gifts.”

He smiled faintly. “That’s what I realized. My childhood self — that imaginative, curious boy — he’s my real teacher. Whenever I have to choose between safety and truth, I ask him. He always knows.”

He paused, thoughtful. “When I first told my uncle that I wanted to make a living by drawing, he gave me a gold pen. I thought it was a gift of encouragement. But then he said, ‘No, this is for you to pawn when you’re starving.’”

He laughed softly, but his eyes were distant. “At the time I thought he was cruel. Now I understand — he just didn’t believe imagination could feed you. Most adults don’t. And that’s exactly why the world feels so empty.”

He looked at me with a quiet conviction. “When I chose to become a professional manga artist at twenty-eight, I was the happiest I’d ever been. Every day I created — imagined, built, laughed. I made a living doing what I loved. It was perfect.”

He smiled, but there was melancholy in it. “Then came success — deadlines, money, fame, expectations. Slowly, I stopped feeling anything. Even my sadness disappeared. Until one day, my child looked at me and said, ‘Dad, you draw with no expression on your face.’”

He went silent for a while. “That hit me hard. I realized I had changed — I was no longer using my child’s intuition. I was using the world’s logic.”

“So I stopped,” he said. “I stopped everything. I put down my pen, ended the endless printing cycles that felt like printing money, and started walking. With my wife and child, I wandered through familiar streets and foreign cities, until little by little, I began to find that inner child again — the one with imagination and laughter.”

He smiled gently. “Now, wherever I go, I take that child with me.”

He looked out the window before continuing, as if searching for the right words. “I really believe,” he said, “that we’re living in a greedy age — and at the same time, an age of deep emptiness. People today have everything, yet they still feel hollow inside. They keep asking for more, but no amount is ever enough. That hunger,” he said quietly, “is not physical. It’s the loss of something we once had — something that belonged to childhood.”

He turned back to me. “Every person once had a tiny dream — maybe it seemed meaningless back then, but looking back, it was powerful enough to keep us alive. Sometimes that small, foolish dream is the only thing that carries a person through life.”

I asked him what he thought the power of childhood really was. He smiled. “You can see it in my manga Absolutely Children,” he said, half-joking. “But since you asked—” he paused—“it’s three things: imagination, creativity, and humor.”

He leaned forward, eyes bright again. “Imagination means being able to walk behind what everyone else sees — to step behind the obvious and find a completely different world there. It means overturning what people call facts and seeing something entirely new.”

He reached for a notebook and began sketching two simple four-panel comics, just lines and gestures. “Look,” he said, “because of imagination, a child’s world and an adult’s world are completely different. Children can find laughter and meaning in the smallest, strangest things. Adults forget how.”

He flipped to another page. “Then there’s creativity — it’s imagination made real. It’s turning one thing into another, then transforming that again into something the world has never seen. Creativity is abstract, but it’s also alive.”

He showed me another sketch — a sequence where a firecracker becomes a factory, then a ship, then a cake. Another where two leaves become a bug, then a bat, then a fat man, and finally a hat on someone’s head. “That’s what it is,” he said, tapping the page, “to take what exists and make it breathe differently.”

Finally, he spoke about humor. His voice softened. “Humor,” he said, “is just a way of seeing — it’s a heart that forgives the world. When you have humor, it’s like having a revolving door in your chest: you can walk from a cold basement straight into the sunlight in a second.”

He smiled faintly. “Humor is that child inside you — the one who thinks everything is funny. Even the sad things. Especially the sad things.”

He sat back, hands clasped loosely. “That’s the power of childhood — it’s the core of every real happiness.”

Then, almost to himself, he said, “I think there are two kinds of happiness. One you can see, and one you can’t.”

He looked at me and explained: “Visible happiness is what modern people chase — big houses, fancy food, good cars, beautiful clothes. But invisible happiness,” he paused, “is what our grandparents had. They lived simply, but with contentment. That was happiness you couldn’t measure.”

“When I was young,” he said, “our water was clean, our air was fresh, and everything we ate would now be called ‘organic.’ People didn’t have much, but they were surrounded by invisible happiness. Today, we have more than ever — and yet, we’ve lost that.”

He sighed, glancing down at his hands. “People now spend fortunes just to have a small garden, but when I was a kid, every house had one — a tiny courtyard to dream in. That, too, was invisible happiness.”

His expression grew serious. “And because we’ve forgotten this, we’re teaching our children the wrong kind of happiness — the kind you can buy. We’ve built childhoods that depend on things, not wonder. That’s not right.”

He paused, then spoke with quiet certainty. “We have to stop teaching children with tools and systems that crush their imagination. We have to give them the space — and the right — to dream. Because someday, those dreams will become their lives.”

He looked up, eyes calm but shining. “And maybe, if we can follow their dreams — if we can walk beside them — we adults might find our own hidden child again. We might hold that small version of ourselves by the hand and face the world together.”

He smiled then, almost as if saying goodbye. “That childhood — that you full of imagination — never really left. It’s just waiting at the corner of a new dream, ready to meet you again.”

He looked at me one last time and said softly, “That’s where a new way of living begins.”

Then he fell silent.

He smiled faintly, like someone remembering an old photograph.“I divide happiness into two kinds,” he said. “The visible and the invisible.”

He leaned back, thoughtful. “Visible happiness is what fills the modern world — big houses, elegant cars, expensive food, fine clothes. We’ve come to believe that the more visible something is, the more real it must be. But invisible happiness,” he said, tapping the table lightly, “that’s what our parents and grandparents had. It’s the quiet, unmeasurable kind.”

He told me how his grandparents lived in a small wooden house with a courtyard, the kind of place where the walls creaked and wind whistled through cracks, but where laughter could echo for hours. “They had so little,” he said, “but they were content. They didn’t have air purifiers, organic markets, or bottled water — yet their water was clean, their food was pure, and their air was light. What they had was invisible happiness: a simple life that didn’t need to prove itself.”

He paused, then laughed softly. “Now, people spend millions to buy back what used to be free — to have a small garden, a patch of sky, or a moment of quiet.”

His tone grew heavier. “The tragedy is that we’ve forgotten how to give this invisible happiness to the next generation. We teach children how to compete, but not how to dream. We give them tools, but not wonder. We prepare them for success, but not for joy.”

He looked up, eyes suddenly clear. “We shouldn’t raise children only with visible happiness. We should give them the freedom to imagine, to fail, to be lost — because only then can they truly find themselves.”

He smiled, and for a moment he seemed like the little boy he once described — the one talking to bees and fighting spider tournaments in the backyard. “Children need the right to dream,” he said. “If they have that, one day they’ll use those dreams to build their own world — one that’s alive and full of meaning.”

He took a slow breath. “And maybe, through them, we adults can find our own way back too. We can rediscover the child hiding inside us — the one we left behind when we grew up.”

He looked out the window, as if he could see that small child somewhere in the distance, waiting.“That childhood version of you,” he said softly, “never really left. It’s still there — behind the corner of every new dream, waiting to walk with you again.”

He smiled one last time.“That’s where new life begins.”

He didn’t add anything after that — just sat quietly, watching the light shift across the floor.