By Keiji Nakazawa (Last Gasp)
ISBN: 978-0-86719-595-8
Hadashi no Gen began in 1973, serialised in ShÅ«kan ShÅnen Jampu (Weekly Boys Jump) following an occasional series of single stories released the previous year including Kuroi Ame ni Utarete (Struck by Black Rain) and Aru Hi Totsuzen, (One Day, Suddenly) in diverse magazines. These led Shonen’s editor Tadasu Nagano to commission the 45 page Ore wa Mita (I Saw It) for a Monthly Jump special devoted to autobiographical works. Nagano realised that the author – an actual survivor of the first Atomic Bombing – had much more to say and commissioned the serial which has grown into this stunning epic.
The tale was controversial in a country that too often preferred to ignore rather than confront its mistakes and indiscretions, and after 18 months Hadashi no Gen was removed from Jump and moved first to Shimin (Citizen), Bunka HyÅron (Cultural Criticism), and KyÅiku HyÅron (Educational Criticism).
Like his indomitable hero Keiji Nakazawa never lost heart and his persistence led to the first Japanese book collection in 1975, later translated by a precursor of today’s Project Gen into English and other languages including Norwegian, French German, Italian, Portuguese Swedish, Finnish, Indonesian, Tagalog and Esperanto. He completed the tale in 1985. This chronicle of despair and hope has been adapted into three live action films (from 1976 to 1980), 2 anime films, (1983 and 1987) and in 2007, a 2-part live action television drama.
Since I Saw It! became Barefoot Gen, it has been revised and refined: now the entire semi-autobiographical saga is being released in an unabridged ten-volume English translation by Last Gasp under the auspices of Project Gen, the multinational organisation dedicated to global peace and the abolition of nuclear weapons.
The first book A Cartoon Story of Hiroshima (ISBN: 978-0-86719-602-3) began with six year old Gen Nakaoka singing folk-songs in a small allotment, cultivating wheat with his father, an artist whose anti-war sentiment had made life even more difficult for his family. Hiroshima was starving, with American air-raids a constant hazard and rabid patriotic militarists urging the weary populace to greater and greater sacrifice. Everywhere constant reminders that their greatest honour would be to die for the Emperor exhorted greater effort for final victory, but still American bombs kept raining down…
Out of the Ashes signalled the dawn of a new kind of oppression as General Douglas MacArthur became the de facto new Emperor of Japan. On 30th August 1945 the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers took complete control of the defeated and humiliated country, and began a process of westernization that though often scurrilous and brutally painful, led to a totally new country being created.
The attitudes of the Japanese, however, took somewhat longer to change. As usual, Gen and Ryuta are scavenging when they discover a huge dump of weapons casually abandoned by returning soldiers and disregarded by the villagers of rural Eba. As any children would, they play with the fascinating objects, terrifying themselves when the loaded weapons discharge. Entranced by the destructive power they each take a handgun, just in case the Americans are as bad as everyone is saying…
The mental state of the defeated peoples is perhaps hard for us to grasp. By declaring a complete surrender, the Japanese military overlords had inflicted upon the people a most crushing blow. Over and again the book’s characters say that the Americans can do “whatever they like” because of the absolute capitulation. The defeated are prepared for constant injustice; expect daily abuse and travesty – they almost welcome it. If the oft-abused maxim of surrender being the greatest dishonour is true then the entire country is now dishonourable, worthless, deserving of every wicked thing the conquerors inflict upon them…
When the boys return to the shed the family lives in they find big brother Koji has returned, badly traumatised by his experiences at a Kamikaze training camp, and horrified by the pitiful shrine to his father and dead siblings. His shock slowly fades but not the anger. When the Occupation Forces arrive; tall monstrous soldiers with alien faces, his emotions boil over and he rushes to attack them, but Mama Nakaoka literally beats the fury out of him. Throughout the drama the mother is a sheltering wall, holding her children safely together, but no-one knows how ill she truly is…
A more sinister event occurs when Gen and Ryuta, whilst playing in the rubble, spy American soldiers extracting organs from the corpses that still litter the landscape. Discovered the starving kids are placated with chewing gum – a taste of heaven for the sugar-starved waifs… As soon as the Occupation began, Americans were everywhere, collecting samples, gathering information. Things and people disappeared into a cavernous hole never to be heard of. Simultaneously US authorities suppressed all mention of and data about the bombs and their after-effects – as if they wanted the world to forget what had happened…
The family had been staying in a shed in rural Eba, guests of Mama’s friend Kiyo, despite the outright hostility of the good woman’s family. Now, with all the surviving Nakaokas reunited they are driven out. Resolutely they return to the ruins of the city, but not before Gen extracts a typically unpleasant and humiliating vengeance. On the slow journey back they meet returning soldiers and are taught the meaning of a new word: Malnutrition.
Gen realizes how close to death his family is – especially Tomoko – and resolves to get real food and nutritious milk for his sister. He and Ryuta break into the US base, but the mission goes disastrously, ludicrously wrong. It does however give him an introduction to the growing gangster element secretly thriving amidst the ruins, a connection that will have tragic repercussions in the future. And when they are swindled out of food and milk by two Japanese soldiers trying to take over the Black Market Ryuta remembers the gun he played with not so long ago…
By the time he returns Gen has been beaten near to death. Furious the little boy avenges his adopted brother by killing the soldiers, and falls under the sway of another gang-boss. When Gen recovers Ryuta has vanished, but not before leaving them money to buy food…
Life goes on: out of the rubble the Nakaoka’s build a shack from scavenged debris. With a roof over their heads a semblance of normality returns. A school reopens and the children of Hiroshima resume their education, but everywhere the effects of the bomb can be seen. During an ordeal of teasing Gen comes to the defence of Nomura, a young girl whose hair has fallen out, thereby revealing his own wounds and deformities. In this cruel crucible lifelong friendships are forged.
Gen is no shrinking violet. When he finds Nomura throwing stones at a woman consorting with an American G.I. he is appalled to discover it is the little girl’s sister: doubly so when he hears their tragic story, but it pales into insignificance when Tomoko is stolen. The family searches for weeks, but with no one to help – nobody else cares – Gen is forced to desperate measures. He gets the local priest to teach him how to pray!
But in the end it is observational skills and a little luck that leads him to the kidnappers and another dehumanizing confrontation. The baby has become the good-luck symbol of a gang of ne’er-do-wells and the police – corrupt and powerless since their guns were surrendered to the Americans – can do nothing. But even this awful situation is not cut-and-dried. Gen’s rage fades when he learns why Tomoko was stolen and why the thugs cannot return her. The impasse crumbles and all enmity vanishes when the sickly baby starts to cough up blood…
On August 6th 1947, Hiroshima held the First Annual Peace Festival amid ruins and a starving, dying populace. The stupidity and hypocrisy caused a small riot but Gen wasn’t involved. He was desperately trying to earn enough money to pay the profiteering doctor treating Tomoko. As he hustles he discovers Americans bulldozing bodies into a mass-grave without even a blessing to ease their spirits. The appalling lack of respect inspires him. He will use the prayers he has learned to bless the newly-departed – for which the bereaved happily pay!
But even this is not enough for the American drugs Tomoko needs. Luckily, Black Marketeer, Mr. Pak, a Korean slave-labourer befriended by Gen before the bomb reappears, and happily gives him all he needs.
But not in time…
In a series riddled like a firing-squad wall with tragic and horrific scenes, the paroxysms of emotion as Gen denies, endures, accepts and moves on from the death of the beloved sister he delivered during the firestorm of Hiroshima is a beautiful, awful thing to behold – one that shows more than other how comics can affect and inform a reader. They are proof of what a master artist can invoke – and more so when Nakazawa then rides that tide of tragedy into a promise of hope by the skillful weaving of his chosen metaphors: growing wheat, folk-song and a new day dawning…
Although accessible and thoroughly readable by older children, Barefoot Gen is a work of astoundingly subtle layers and textures. Throughout the tale Gen is visited by dreams, the impact and relevance of which shape the way he grows and develops. They speak of things lost or uncompleted, populated by the family and things he misses most. But never does he retreat into those dreams or any form of fantasy. His world of harsh reality cannot be escaped or avoided: it must be overcome…
© 2008 Keiji Nakazawa. All Rights Reserved.