Tsutomu Aragaki

Tsutomu Aragaki (新垣勉 Aragaki Tsutomu, born 1952 in Yomitan, Okinawa Prefecture) is a Japanese tenor.

He was born in Yomitan, Okinawa Prefecture. He was blinded shortly after birth when a midwife put overly-strong drops in his eyes. When he was a year old, his parents divorced and his Mexican-American father went back to the United States. His mother, who was Japanese, remarried when he was still a child and Tsutomu was sent to live with his maternal grandmother. His grandmother raised him until he was 14 when she died. Now without relatives, one day he heard a hymn on the radio. This led him to visit a church, where he told the minister about his life. The minister listened quietly, and ended up crying. He was then raised in a minister's family. It was this meeting that led Tsutomu both to sing and to become a Baptist minister. The CD, "Sugar Cane Field" ,recorded best three of the classical CD sales number of sheets of 2002.

The Fuji TV movie Mada Minu Chichi e, Haha e [まだ見ぬ父へ母へ] (To the Father and Mother I Still Haven't Seen) is a dramatization of his life.[1]

Notes

  1. ↑ Japan Times. "Comic child-detective, comedians visit the poor, blind singer docu-drama." December 6, 2007.

References