Nakamura Hisako

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Nakamura Hisako 中村久子
(1897 - 1968)



間もなく久子は自立するために、身売りされる形で
「だるま娘」 Daruma Musume
の名で見世物小屋での芸人として働くようになり、両手の無い体での裁縫や編み物を見せる芸を披露した。
- source : wikipedia

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- Daruma Musume ダルマ娘 The Daruma Girl -

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The inspiring life of Hisako Nakamura
Hisako Nakamura is probably one of Japan’s most popular practicing Buddhist who has touched many lives through her works and her struggles. Many would think that no other person can be more influential than the great Buddha himself and many of his followers including the Dalai Lama. Unless people would understand the way Hisako Nakamura has lived, perhaps they could understand why she had become influential and inspiring for many Japanese.

Nakamura was born into a poor family in 1897 in Takayama city, Gifu prefecture in Japan. It is known, at the time, that the changes in temperature in this part of the country are very severe with their winters among the most aggressive out of all. Nakamura, at the young age of three, got frost bite on her feet and hands. At the time, her frostbites developed into idiopathic gangrene. Soon, her limbs were all amputated at the young age of four. Her survival in these ordeals is the most amazing because at the time there were no anaesthetics and for a child of four to survive amputation without it is truly a proof of her with and courage.

The physical pain through her sickness was not the only thing that she had to endure. The first of this would be the loss of their father who died from over fatigue and over work just to collect enough money for her medical expenses. Furthermore, as she was growing up she was continuously being taunted by other children in the village calling her an animal due to her disability. Because of this, she was determined to prove to them that she was a normal human being – training herself to eat using chopsticks without her hands. Seeing that she was successful in doing so, her mother was determined to teach her how to live a normal life and be productive despite what she went through. So, she learned how to do calligraphy, sew clothes, do household chores despite the lack of both arms and legs.

She worked for the circus for most of her life showing off to the audiences that even a woman who lost four limbs will still be able to perform normal tasks. Because of her work she was able to travel and meet a number of people who introduced her to the true way of life. It was when she met Hellen Keller that she was truly awakened to Buddhism. She strove to become a beautiful lotus flower, knowing that it will not become what it is without the muddy water it lives in.
She realized that her disability and all that she went through in life were not hardships but blessings for her to attain her true goal of being a lotus flower.
- source : www.creap.info/2014 -

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- reference -

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