Shigeo Aizawa

Shigeo Kobayashi (重夫小林, "Luxuriant Man, Small Forest") is a high-profile Shinobi of Sunagakure. Born without the ability to speak, Shigeo has never once said a single word to anyone since he was born, suffering from a particularly severe case of expressive aphasia, disabling him from producing language, either spoken or written. Because of this, Shigeo had great difficulties growing up and felt perpetually isolated from the world around him - his desperation for contact, for the desire to be seen, recognized and most tragically of all, heard, ultimately lead Shigeo down a long road to become one of the most widely acclaimed users of of the current era. For the last twelve years, Shigeo has relied almost exclusively upon genjutsu for communication with others, using the mental imagery and phantom sounds it produces to effectively "talk".

Before he became skilled enough in the use of genjutsu to employ it in such a manner, Shigeo instead relied entirely on the language of flowers in an attempt to communicate with others. This sadly tended to fail utterly due to how floriography was an art which was very rarely practiced in Sunagakure, due to how its arid and harsh climate made cultivating lasting plantlife almost impossible. Shigeo would thus devote a great deal of his early life to understanding each of the symbolic meanings of the flowers he cultivated himself, all in a mostly futile attempt to exist in a society largely content to ignore him.

Shigeo's isolation was only ever broken once before he learned enough about genjutsu to become capable of actual conversations. This was in the Academy, when a then twelve-year old Kankurō acknowledged his presence by asking him what his name was, this was extremely simple gesture, and although Shigeo couldn't answer it at the time; he spent a lot of time trying to cultivate hydrangea just to show his heartfelt gratitude for Kankurō being one of the first people to ever actually acknowledge him as a person, despite how little he thought about it at the time. He would then leave a bouquet composed of hydrangea and rosemaries subtly conveying the symbolic message of "you have my heartfelt gratitude for understanding me, don't forget me" at Kankurō doorstep during one particular night.