Beloved Japanese artist who depicted horrors of war dies at 93

Shigeru Mizuki, a giant of Japanese manga artists (L) and his wife Nunoe Mura pose for a photo with Kitaro, the main character of his popular horror manga series ''Gegege no Kitaro,'' in Tokyo, in this file photo taken by Kyodo May, 2014 and released by Kyodo November 30,...

An award-winning Japanese manga artist, whose retellings of traditional ghost stories and depictions of the horrors of World War Two helped propel anime to global popularity, died on Monday at the age of 93.

Shigeru Mizuki, a beloved household name in Japan, was an art student when he was drafted in 1942 and sent to fight in New Guinea, where he lost his left arm and witnessed scenes that haunted him for the rest of his life.

Debuting in 1957, Mizuki went on to write manga dealing with the U.S. wartime bombing, the abuse he and other military recruits suffered under their emperor-worshipping commanders during World War Two, and a biography of Adolf Hitler.

In 1979, he illustrated "The Darkness of the Fukushima Nuclear Reactor" about the lives of workers at the Fukushima nuclear plant that was crippled by the March 11, 2011, earthquake and tsunami.

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(Reporting by Elaine Lies; Editing by Nick Macfie)

Read more at Reutershttp://www.reuters.com/article/2015/11/30/us-japan-artist-mizuki-idUSKBN0TJ0KD20151130#YZqXpp1GSjHmUOlF.99