The Boy Who Raised Me Wrong

If anyone ever genuinely served as a mentor for how to move through the world—how to talk to adults, deflect authority, say the thing no one else will say—it was a five-year-old Japanese cartoon kid with a bowl cut and absolutely no shame. Shin-chan taught me more about self-possession than any actual adult in my life managed.

Which is why the news that Yoshito Usui—the 51-year-old man who created him—was found dead in the mountains near Tokyo hit harder than it probably should have. He’d gone hiking and disappeared for days before police found his body. Dental records confirmed it. He was gone, and with him the engine behind one of the most subversive children’s cartoons ever made.

Shin-chan ran for years on afternoon television around the world—the kind of show parents kept almost banning because their kids were absorbing all the wrong lessons from it, which was of course the point entirely. Usui built a character who existed in direct, cheerful opposition to every expectation placed on a child: be obedient, be quiet, be respectful. Shin-chan was none of those things, and watching him get away with it was a genuine joy. The ass-boogie alone was a contribution to human culture—I mean that sincerely. The episodes are still on YouTube if you need them, and you probably do. Dance the butt-boogie-woogie, it’ll make you happy, boogie-woogie.