Tomihiro Hoshino

Tomihiro Hoshino is my hero because he inspires me. He shows me that my brother can do anything he wants even if he is in the same situation that Tomihiro is in. When I read Tomihiro's biography, it made me more confident in what my brother can do. It also made me more interested in helping my brother to get through his problem.

Tomihiro Hoshino was a gymnastics coach in Japan. While demonstrating a double somersault, a tragic incident changed his whole life. He was paralyzed from the neck down and had to deal with severe respiratory problems that almost took his life.

He was in the hospital for 9 years for his condition, but the constant support from friends and family kept him going. He found something that gave him hope and gave his life meaning once again. This thing that kept him going was painting. With his mother’s help he began to practice daily by lying on his side and holding the paintbrush in his mouth. He practiced the alphabet first because he couldn’t create sentences.

He would fill the blank pages of the notebook with flowers and scenes of nature. He said that painting the flowers helped him find his place once again. The reason why he began painting flowers is that when one of his friends brought him flowers, while he was in the hospital, he gazed at them and they became “bigger than him” and he realized that God loved the flowers as much as he loved him. He also began painting them because they were a way of expressing his gratitude for his revelation.

By 1979, Tomihiro had created enough paintings to present a showcase of his work in a gallery. There he successfully sold all the paintings he had created. By 2000, visitors to Tomihiro Museum exceeded 3.5 million. He has grown accustomed to his life as a disabled person and now says it is not as painful as people think it is. He also says that ironically, were it not for his tragedy and his life course being rerouted, neither he nor the world would have come to know his extraordinary talent and his beautiful mind.