<h2>Never learn to paint.&#8221;</h2>
<figure id="attachment_452059" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-452059" style="width: 924px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="efbd21bf"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2025/12/0c3218c3e7f70f46a23f098a9aeccb13.png" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-452059" class="wp-caption-text"> Mr. and Mrs. Oyama are always so calm. Their names, &#8220;Shungo&#8221; and &#8220;Junko,&#8221; are also synchronized. Mr. Oyama&#8217;s clothes and arms were covered with paint.</figcaption></figure>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> When I was having a drink at a tavern with an acquaintance, we talked about painting Doraemon. I drew a picture of Doraemon as if he had fallen into the darkness, and the conversation got very lively. It became fun, and I started making doodles like drawings on my schedule book and uploading them to SNS, and now I wanted to add color to my drawings.</span></p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> I posted, half jokingly, &#8220;Will someone please teach me how to draw,&#8221; and Mr. Fumihiko Nishioka, a professor at Tama Art University, said, &#8220;Your drawings are very good. It was February.</span></p>
<p> At the time, Shungo Oyama, 51, had no way of knowing that 10 months later he would hold a solo exhibition that attracted a total of 900 visitors in one week. Oyama was a former PRIDE fighter who had fought the &#8220;Fearful Knee Kid&#8221; Vanderlei Silva, the &#8220;Deadliest Tyrant of the 20th Century&#8221; Peter Aerts, and the Gracie Clan.</p>
<p> However, he had a premonition that a new life was about to begin. When he was in the second grade of elementary school, his judo teacher praised him, saying, &#8221; <span class="strongInContent">You&#8217;re good at the back-oinage throw</span>.</p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> That one comment turned me on and made me fall in love with judo, and that was the beginning of my life as a fighter. Immediately after receiving Mr. Nishioka&#8217;s words, I went to an art supply store and bought a sketchbook. I started by asking the clerk, &#8216;What&#8217;s the difference between watercolor and oil painting?&#8217; I started by asking the clerk, &#8216;What is the difference between watercolor and oil painting?</span></p>
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<p> Junko, a former idol, sleep consultant, and brain-gut therapist who married Mr. Oyama in 2010, accepted her husband&#8217;s transition to an artist as a natural thing.</p>
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<p> (For the story of Mr. Oyama and Junko&#8217;s marriage, click here↓.</p>
<p><a href="https://friday.kodansha.co.jp/article/190048"> How 80&#8217;s idol Junko Kawada married &#8220;Gracie Hunter&#8221;)</a></p>
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<p><span class="strongInContent"> He adds a message to his work, but I knew a long time ago that he was a messenger. There are several people whose lives have been changed by what he has conveyed to them, even if they use the same words. It&#8217;s been 20 years since I met him, and I&#8217;ve been there to witness such scenes. For five or ten years now, I&#8217;ve been telling him, &#8216;You should put your words out there more,'&#8221; Junko said.</span></p>
<p> However, <span class="strongInContent">&#8220;oil painting was fresh,&#8221;</span> Junko recalls.</p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> The day after I said, &#8216;Mr. Nishioka praised me,&#8217; I already started painting, and within a month I was working on oil paintings.&#8221; I once heard that a painter was coming to a nearby bookstore to hold an event, so I went there to study, but I was basically self-taught. It was like learning as I painted.</span></p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> If I didn&#8217;t get it right, I would paint over it and then paint over it again, and I was free to do whatever I wanted. I am free to choose how to cut out the subject, how to compose the picture, and so on,</span><span class="strongInContent"> Professionals may think it&#8217;s impossible, but I think it&#8217;s part of his personality,&#8221; says Junko.</span></p>
<p> The exhibition, which was held in Tokyo from mid-December, was visited by 900 people from a wide variety of backgrounds, from fellow martial artists such as Hidehiko Yoshida (56) and Genki Sudo (47) to Akie Abe (63) and Sahel Rose (40). Junko was pleased that most of them were impressed by Oyama&#8217;s message.</p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> Junko was happy to hear that most of them were impressed by Oyama&#8217;s message, &#8220;I reaffirmed that he is a messenger after all. Everyone tearfully told me how they felt, saying, &#8216;This is the first time I&#8217;ve cried when I saw a painting. His early works</span><span class="strongInContent"> Many of his early works feature a &#8220;crying boy,&#8221; which is his inner child. The pain and sadness he carried in his childhood are expressed in his paintings.</span></p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> After that was sublimated to some extent, the paintings he produced were more cheerful, with smiling faces and flowers. But even in the bright paintings, there was sadness somewhere, and everyone seemed to resonate with that,&#8221; said Junko.</span></p>
<p> Initially, the plan was to display 120 paintings at the exhibition. However, due to the number of purchasers, she had to bring in works that had been stored at home to the venue in a hurry. The total number of works, including clay works, reached 162, and all 152 paintings exhibited were sold out.</p>
<figure id="attachment_452040" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-452040" style="width: 1170px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="c61107a8"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2025/12/58b7eac3ee9cc3fb03b7deefbfee5ae1.png" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-452040" class="wp-caption-text"> A red sticker indicates that the sale has been completed. The paintings were sold out even as they were being viewed.</figcaption></figure>
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<div data-friday-nextpage-lead=" I couldn&#39;t move from the venue."></div>
<h2>A sight not seen in my martial arts days.</h2>
<div> The exhibition ended at 8:00 pm. After cleaning and tidying up, the volunteer staff went home, but Mr. Oyama remained at the venue until 2 am.</div>
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<div><span class="strongInContent"> I couldn&#8217;t digest what was happening in front of my eyes,&#8221; he said. I couldn&#8217;t digest the situation where people were crying because they empathized with my work, and people wanted to buy my work one after another.</span></div>
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<div><span class="strongInContent"> It&#8217;s a feeling I don&#8217;t know how to describe. My heart is so excited at the thought that I will no longer be able to see the beloved works that I have created that I can&#8217;t move.</span><span class="strongInContent"> This is a sight I could not see when I was a fighter. Matches were over in an instant, so I never had the chance to bask in the afterglow for hours or days.</span><span class="strongInContent"> I was never like that.&#8221;</span></div>
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<figure id="attachment_452042" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-452042" style="width: 1170px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="969112a7"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2025/12/223d24f48df60fa9a8d95cc71fc56044.png" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-452042" class="wp-caption-text"> Holding a work of art at the venue of his solo exhibition</figcaption></figure>
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<div> The place where he creates is his living room or his own room. Before the exhibition, he had so many works that they overflowed into his bedroom. In just one week, these works, which had occupied his home to the point where he had nowhere to step, were given to someone else. Junko, who was the first one to view the works day and night and was asked for her opinion on them, was more than happy.</div>
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<div><span class="strongInContent"> She said, &#8220;I would paint until midnight, and when I woke up in the morning, I would suddenly start something new, or create for eight hours straight without eating. It was a happy moment for me to be there to see that he had found what he really wanted to do, and that this was a major turning point in his life,&#8221; said Junko.</span></div>
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<p><span class="strongInContent"> Junko: &#8220;It&#8217;s fun to see things take shape. My experience as a struggling fighter has become my creative energy and asset. I wonder if this is why I suffered so much.</span></p>
<p> It was his martial arts master, Takahiro Tezuka, who was Oyama&#8217;s second fighter from his debut until his retirement, who encouraged him to hold a solo exhibition.</p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> Whenever I finished a piece of work, I would take a picture of it and send it to Mr. Tezuka. Then, around June, he told me, &#8216;Oyama, you should do a private exhibition. Then, this time, Just Pro President Sadahiro Terai said, &#8220;If you are going to hold a private exhibition, I will fully cooperate with you. The project progressed very quickly.</span></p>
<p> Mr. Oyama describes the process leading up to the exhibition as &#8220;divine. What awaited him at the beginning of his second life was an intractable disease, cardiac amyloidosis, designated by the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare. The Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare has designated transthyretin cardiac amyloidosis as an intractable disease. It is the same strain of the disease that claimed the life of Antonio Inoki (79 years old), a great admirer of Mr. Oyama.</p>
<p> An abnormal protein called amyloid is deposited in organs throughout the body, causing dysfunction. Oyama&#8217;s life was made brighter by this troublesome disease, which afflicts patients with a variety of symptoms, including numbness in the limbs, palpitations, arrhythmias, and heart failure.</p>
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<div data-friday-nextpage-lead=" The Gift of Life"></div>
<h2>The second switch in my life</h2>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> The more I look into it, the more I realize that amyloidosis is a formidable enemy. There is no medicine to cure it. But when I became conscious of death, a switch flipped for the second time in my life, the first time since I became a martial artist. After that, I spent my days immersed in creative activities, and on April 30, after receiving my sentence, I painted a rather large picture called &#8220;Ikiru. I drew it by hand, without using a brush.</span></p>
<figure id="attachment_452039" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-452039" style="width: 1108px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="535ec68f"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2025/12/06ef3a754b5e10572a337c50f5886805.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-452039" class="wp-caption-text"> A work he painted immediately after being diagnosed with cardiac amyloidosis</figcaption></figure>
<p> Oyama says that he was thankful for his illness, putting aside denial that there had been a mistake, anger and despair over why he was suffering from the disease, and saying, &#8220;I&#8217;ve never had artificial joint surgery or anything like that.</p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> He said, &#8220;All the major events in my life so far, like my artificial joint surgery, have been a gift. For example, when I was hospitalized for a detached retina, two friends who had come to visit me for the first time ran into each other in the hospital room. They couldn&#8217;t take the time to talk, so they started talking somehow, and eventually they all became very good friends.</span></p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> I realized that when people are in the same space, they become friends, and that&#8217;s when I started the karma connection. I started trying to gather people I liked and bring them together, and my world expanded at once. Friends called friends, and I made irreplaceable friends. I even published a book about connecting with people.</span></p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> So when the doctor told me I had amyloidosis, I thought, &#8216;My life is interesting. During my time as a fighter, when I didn&#8217;t get the results I wanted, didn&#8217;t have any friends, and was constantly injured, I learned to &#8220;look at things from a bird&#8217;s eye view. When you look at things from a bird&#8217;s eye view, you see things differently. Life is a tragedy if you look at it from a close-up, but a comedy if you look at it from a long shot.</span></p>
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<p> The numbness that began in his left hand spread to both hands. At one point, he could not get out of bed for four days because he had difficulty breathing. For a time, it was even feared that he might not be able to hold a solo exhibition, but he says his condition has improved since his application for intractable disease was accepted and he was able to receive injections to slow the progression of the disease.</p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> For the first time in my life, I don&#8217;t feel like training anymore. I&#8217;m just going to accept that as part of it. I wouldn&#8217;t have allowed my muscles to fall off in the past. However, this disease has given me a strong sense of &#8220;I want to leave proof of my life to the world. I lost muscle mass, but it ignited my desire to create.</span></p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> All I had to do was to give form to what was overflowing from within me. Everyone was surprised at my unusual concentration when they saw the number of works I had created. Without a doubt, I would not have been able to hold this exhibition if I had not had amyloidosis. It was a gift after all. My life took a major turn when I got the disease.</span></p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> It reminded me of when I entered the ring of PRIDE when I was a fighter. I was thrown into the flow of a great destiny, and suddenly the scenery changed. Then, I suddenly clashed with top fighter Vanderlei Silva (49) in a packed Saitama Super Arena. &#8230;&#8230; It was similar to that time,&#8221; said Mr. Oyama.</span></p>
<p> Rest your body and review your diet. Taking good care of yourself is an effective way to prevent amyloidosis. On top of that, considering the fact that he was able to encounter his favorite painting, <span class="strongInContent">&#8220;It was wonderful. I think it was a gift,&#8221;</span> Junko thinks.</p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> Hundreds of my favorite friends, spread out through karma, came to my exhibition. When I saw myself surrounded by them, I honestly thought, &#8216;I am so happy. The time he enjoys with everyone is the most important thing in his life. I am sure he will spend the rest of his life creating works of art.&#8221;</span></p>
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<div data-friday-nextpage-lead=" Miracles that happened around Mr. Oyama"></div>
<h2 class="pagination">Real art purifies those who see it.</h2>
<figure id="attachment_452058" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-452058" style="width: 5712px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="fe482a9f"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2025/12/50904b2b3a29552a34f530f10ba06810.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-452058" class="wp-caption-text"> Holding an art book made by his friends</figcaption></figure>
<p> Now that he has finished his solo exhibition, Mr. Oyama is thinking about &#8220;showing people that I am enjoying my life, no matter what kind of incurable disease I have.</p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> I want to leave people with energy 100 years from now.</span><span class="strongInContent"> I create my works very quickly. I created three pieces during the exhibition. I would like to hold a second exhibition when I have enough works.</span></p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> I want to draw, draw, draw until the end, and then die making art. That is my dream. Fighters have to retire, but I can do art until I die.</span><span class="strongInContent"> So, at the end, I want to finish a good work and say, &#8220;I like it! I made it! I hope to die saying, &#8216;I like it,&#8217; or &#8216;It&#8217;s done!</span></p>
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<p> Junko smiled, &#8220;I&#8217; <span class="strongInContent">m sure that will happen.</span></p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> Nanami Tanimura, 38, who came from Australia, said, &#8220;I&#8217;ve seen so many great works, but why am I so moved here? Mr. Nishioka said something like, &#8220;Real art is that which purifies the viewer,&#8221; and I think everyone who came to the exhibition left purified.</span></p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> I think that everyone who came to the exhibition went home purified. I think the more he paints, the happier he gets. If everyone starts or resumes art because of him, or starts doing what they really wanted to do, then it would be meaningful for him to create his works.</span></p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> Besides, there are many people around him who have overcome serious or incurable illnesses. It&#8217;s not just one or two people. So I believe that he will also overcome his illness. And so he will leave thousands of works. Maybe in a flash. While increasing his happiness each time. Such a wonderful life is hard to find.&#8221;</span></p>
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<figure id="attachment_452055" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-452055" style="width: 1142px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="5abafd91"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2025/12/8dd72ef021b127e4879cd449015afd85.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-452055" class="wp-caption-text"> An early work that caught the eye of Professor Fumihiko Nishioka of Tama Art University</figcaption></figure>
<figure id="attachment_452056" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-452056" style="width: 1170px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="ad4ba9d7"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2025/12/bbb224ee9e3be7aa5f32b18a4e1f1e09.png" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-452056" class="wp-caption-text"> He writes the messages that accompany his paintings as they come to him, without drafting them.</figcaption></figure>
<figure id="attachment_452057" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-452057" style="width: 1170px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="7df6f77b"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2025/12/50ed8c094cc61ec2c7f4431634fab39e.png" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-452057" class="wp-caption-text"> Artworks other than paintings were also displayed at the exhibition.</figcaption></figure>


 Do you remember the days of the martial arts boom, when there was a judo-born PRIDE fighter who defeated Peter Aerts and the Gracie clan? His name was Shungo Oyama. We interviewed him to find out how his life started to shine again after being diagnosed with an incurable disease.

Miracle of former PRIDE fighter Shungo Oyama, who was diagnosed with incurable cardiac amyloidosis and turned into an artist, “Interesting.

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