Barefoot Gen: Following the
Footsteps of Hiroshima
Nick
Langley
Abstract
Based
largely on author Keiji Nakazawa's experiences as a Hiroshima
survivor, the manga novel Barefoot Gen: A
Cartoon History of Hiroshima and its sequels depict life in Hiroshima during and after
its 1945 destruction by an American atomic bomb. Barefoot Gen takes a harrowing look at the nature of war and impact
on the people who are not even fighting it, making points that resonate even
today in light of America's
current situation with its "war of terror" and wars in the Middle East. The current paper examines the novel's
content, structure, history, and impact, including consideration of the
author's motivations.
Barefoot
Gen: Following the Footsteps of Hiroshima
The manga novel Barefoot Gen has a frightening resonance that rings true today. It
is a harrowing look into what war entails on the people who aren't even
fighting in it. The points made seem to parallel far too much with America's current situation with the "war
on terror" and how many non-combatants have died during America's wars in Afghanistan
and Iraq.
The story brings a great insight to Japanese culture during World War II,
showing how there were Japanese who did not agree with the war, even protested
it. Even though the most tragic event in the story is caused by America, the focus is on Japan's
delusions and abuse of its own people. This is a great story, and reviewing
only the first story of this series has piqued my interest for more. Barefoot Gen is only the first of a four
part and two-thousand page story, the first part showing what life was like
during the war, and the following parts showing what life was like after the
war, all of which is set in Hiroshima. Although the first part is by far the
most famous, the other volumes have a great prevalence too. Additional volumes
follow with three sequels released so far out of a planned set of ten: Barefoot Gen: The Day After (Nakazawa,
2004b); Barefoot Gen: Life after the Bomb
(Nakazawa, 2005a); Barefoot Gen: Out of
the Ashes (Nakazawa, 2005b). The story shows that everyone in World War II
was a victim.
The Origin of Barefoot Gen
As a Hiroshima survivor, Nakazawa could not help
but think often about the event, pondering its meaning for both the bombers and
those who got bombed. Prior to Barefoot
Gen, Nakazawa had already written about the bombing several times. His
first work about the bomb, Kuroi Ame ni
Utarate (Struck by Black Rain) depicted young people in post-war Hiroshima as they became
involved in the black market for weapons. The main character's hatred as an
atomic bomb survivor drives him to kill an American black marketer. Nakazawa
developed this work into a series of five books before Barefoot Gen (Book Rags, n.d.; Gleason, 1988).
Barefoot
Gen (known as Hadashi no Gen in Japan) was
first serialized in the manga anthology magazine Shonen Jump back in 1973. When editors of Shonen Jump asked Nakazawa to contribute to a series of cartoonist
autobiographies, the work evolved into the semi-autobiographical Barefoot Gen. The story moved to other
magazines and was eventually published in a collection in 1975. The following
year, an organization called Project Gen released English translations of the Barefoot Gen in four volumes. A newer
translation (Nakazawa, 2004a) has come out recently with an introduction by Art
Spiegelman, creator of the graphic novel Maus
(Spiegelman, 1991; 1992), a story about the life of Art's grandfather during
the Holocaust, in which Spiegelman draws mice to portray Jews and cats to portray
the Nazis in a not so subtle allegory to the Nazis' capturing of Jewish
families and sending them into concentration camps. His introduction sings
praise of the story, and how it sticks with him almost as if the story were his
own memories and not Nakazawa's.
Volume One
The story
of Barefoot Gen is about the
depression Japan
sunk into during the war. The reason for this depression was because families
were forced to pay tribute to the Emperor and give up most of their food and
supplies to soldiers who abused their power and forced citizens to give up far
too much of what they own to them. This caused Gen's father to believe that the
war was a poor man's battle and a rich man's war. Because of the outlook that
Gen's father had on the war and how openly spoken he was about it, Gen's entire
family is ridiculed by neighbors and Gen would end up in fights with fellow
students at the school he went to, ending with Gen and his brother resorting to
a surprising amount of finger biting.
Parallels to Nakazawa
The ending
parallels Nakazawa's life almost exactly the same as what happened to him when
Hiroshima was bombed, as
Nakazawa explains during his revisit to where his old school used to be:
I
used to walk along the walls here and on august the sixth, when I just reached
the entrance, just in front of the wall here, my classmate's mother came up to
me. When the bomb went off, the wall protected me from the heat ray. My
classmate's mother, who was standing only one meter away from me, was
completely burned and blown away by the blast. When I came around, I realized I
had been blown away along with the school wall. If the wall had collapsed on
me, my body would have been crushed and I would have died, but a big tree fell
in front of the wall and somehow made some room. That saved my life. I had a
six-inch nail stuck in my face (points to scar) and this is the scar that I got
from that. It is a miracle I survived. (Japanorama,
2002, June 1)
The chances for Nakazawa to have
survived were astronomically low and the fact that his mother gave birth to his
little sister that same day are even lower. It almost seems like a divine force
wanted him to survive Hiroshima,
so he could tell his story to the world. In the book, the only family member to
survive the bombing is Gen's mother. His father, sister, and brother are all
buried under the rubble of his house, burned to death by the fire that consumed
it. Gen's new little sister also dies after a few months from malnutrition. In
real life, Nakazawa's mother was the only family member to survive
Hiroshima and his house
collapsed on the rest of his family. Nakazawa's baby sister also dies after
four months, all of which parallels very closely to what happens in the book.
Nakazawa seems destined to tell his story to the world, and he seems happy to
accept it.
Nakazawa's Life Since
In the mid-seventies, Nakazawa was
very busy giving speeches, giving anywhere from twenty to thirty a year about
his experiences as an atomic bomb survivor and various issues on peace. Now
that Nakazawa is older, he has moved away from giving speeches and now
dedicates much of his time working with the International Barefoot Gen
Foundation. Through it, he tries to communicate the horrible reality of nuclear
weapons by pulling upon his own life experiences, as he explains:
"The very message I've been
trying to convey should be addressed to those individual countries that make
frantic efforts to make nuclear weapons. My passion for work comes from anger
and frustration. I just want to say to them 'Do you really know what will
happen?'" (Japanorama,
2002, June 1)
Why Nakazawa Wrote It
The reason Nakazawa started writing Barefoot Gen was because of the death of
his mother in nineteen sixty-six. He began revisiting old memories, and wrote
many stories about World War II before finally getting to Barefoot Gen. He began work on Barefoot
Gen because of the freedom an editor told him he could have, as Nakazawa
explains:
It didn't really occur to me to write
about what happened to me personally until the magazine Monthly Shonen Jump
started running a series of 'cartoonist autobiographies.' They asked me to
write one about myself. At first, I didn't want to, but they kept after me. The
result was Ore
wa Mita (I Saw It). When Nagano
read it, he told me, 'You should do a longer series based on this. You can make
it as many pages as you want and we can run it for as long as you want.' I
could hardly believe it. That was the first time an editor had ever said
anything like that to me. I was incredibly grateful, and felt I should do the
best job I could. That was how Hadashi no
Gen [Barefoot Gen] came about.
(Gleason, 1988)
Nakazawa
does not blame America as
the sole reason for the horrors of Hiroshima.
In fact, Barefoot Gen mostly focuses
on the problems with the imperial system and the excessive amount of power
given to the military. Art Spiegelman states that Nakazawa's focus on Japan's fault
for the outcome of the war seems to make the story almost too pleasant for
British and American readers.
Spin-offs
Barefoot Gen has spawned an animated
movie (Hadashi no Gen, 1983, cited by
Internet Movie Database, n.d.) and a sequel. These versions of the series
remain almost entirely unchanged from the original, keeping faithful to the
source material because of the fact that Nakazawa wrote both films. Both were
created under a production company that he founded. There were also three
live-action movies based on Barefoot Gen
directed by Tengo Yamada that did not garner nearly as much attention as the
animated film, possibly because it wouldn't have been as possible to keep as
faithful to the original material using life actors instead of cartoons to
represent the original drawings.
The
Semi-Autobiographical Approach
I understand why Nakazawa decided to
make the story semi-autobiographical instead of the true story of his life.
There is a lack of cohesiveness to an autobiography that only a fictional story
can achieve. He had to show you the love of Gen's family. Instead of just
telling you "My family loved me" he proved it through character
development. This was probably in hopes of getting a more personal reaction
from the reader, especially since a large majority of his audience was very
young so he could get his message to reach a new generation after World War II.
Storytelling Method
The encapsulation, which is the way
in which events are portrayed from panel to panel in terms of how much time
passes between them, is a kind of action to action, moment to moment kind of
feel. It takes a lot more panels to show a single event than it would usually
take in an American comic book, which is common for manga. There are many more
syntagmatic choices shown along paradigmatic axis. To explain, syntagmatic
choices are like choosing individual frames out of a film reel to show the exact
moments you feel are essential, and the paradigmatic choices are like choosing
between different versions of the same scene filmed three times. In other
words, syntagmatic choices are the smaller event choices while the paradigmatic
are more in regards to altogether plot. There is some skipping around, like
when someone is explaining a story or there's an update on America's
progress with the atomic bomb. This is common for Manga. What is unusual is the
fact that there is plenty of dialogue. Almost every panel is filled with a
caption, talk balloon, or thought balloon. This attention to dialogue creates
for a very dense story, giving it just as much or more content than a regular
novel.
Story Depiction
The entire story is in black and
white, limiting it on what it can do cinematically. The black and white does
seem appropriate, because of its simple art and some of the violent subject
matter becomes easier to bear because of its simplicity and lack of color. The
art is easy to compare to Disney animation, because of the large eyes and
Nakazawa's exaggeration of the expressions of the children (Gen and his little
brother especially) to show how different and carefree they are in comparison
to the adults. The art does have other effects because of its simplicity. You
would never see an animated Disney film with a war scene showing a family being
blown up by a grenade, but Nakazawa does in Barefoot
Gen. Though the art makes the story strangely surreal, the subject matter
is so gritty it would be hard to read through otherwise. It also might have
been an artistic choice on Nakazawa's part since the story was aimed at a
younger audience.
The Humor of Gen
Barefoot
Gen does not lack humor, and what humor it has is traditional spastic
Manga/Anime humor that I don't care for at all. Nakazawa does have a lot of
attempts at humor in the story, but it is a lot of slapstick. At least with
this story, the source of the weird humor is from Gen and his little brother,
who are little kids and little kids don't tend to have the best sense of humor.
Even though I don't personally care for the humor, most of it leads to warm
moments between Gen's family, which is very important to character development
and really made me value their interaction.
The Bomb
The scenes following
Hiroshima's bombing are
absolutely horrifying. The victims of the bomb were walking around like zombies
with their skin melting off, rushing to the river to try to treat their burns
but ultimately dying there in vain. Horses running around in a panic while
caught aflame. Gen's father, brother, and sister ended up burning to death
under the wreckage of their home. All of these show the brutal truth of nuclear
weaponry and what Japan's
stubborn resolve to keep fighting the war even after the fall of Hitler has led
to. I had never heard exactly what happened to Hiroshima, whether it was completely
disintegrated or just broadly damaged. Nakazawa shows exactly what happens. The
atomic bomb blows up above the city, and the flash caused lethal burns to
anyone caught in it. They would die from the burns if they weren't killed by
the force of the blast. It would seem obvious for Nakazawa to portray this in a
way that would make America
seem evil for it but he doesn't. The way it is presented almost seems like America's bombing was divine retribution for Japan's
continuous involvement in the war. These images have stuck with me and will
more than likely not escape me, but I think that's good. The bombing is why
this story is famous. The critical moment that is the end of the first volume
and the cause of the next three is done just right so it haunts you and you are
constantly reminded of why it happened through the next volumes.
Propaganda in Japan
It would have been easy for Nakazawa
to have swayed his opinions to a different side, considering the kind of
propaganda that circulated in Japan
during the war. There were many booklets that would portray America and Britain
as corporate "fat cats" trying to take over Japan. In
pamphlets there would have pictures of what they thought were Allied forces
plans and Japan's
plans to counter and thwart them. They also released pamphlets in English
specifically meant to harm American morale, written in English and filled with
threatening messages and writing meant to be psychologically manipulative. From
one of these pamphlets (Japanese Propaganda, 2005) are some examples from a
page labeled "IT IS DANGEROUS TO READ THE FOLLOWING":
4.
Don't try to practice sleeping in a fixed posture. This is also one of the
symptoms of neurosis. It is contagious to your comrades-in-arms.
9.
Don't fall into the habit of glancing sideways at your comrades-in-arms. Your
surgeon dislikes such a habit, as it predicts the approaching menace of
neurosis.
12.
Don't try to develop your imaginative power to the extent that all human faces
look like animals'. Or you are likely to see no more human faces even on your
friends.
These are just a few examples from a
list of thirteen things you should not do if you are an American soldier. America's
propaganda was more about making sure to not talk about American plans or
encouraged people to work hard. America
used mostly posters. While Japan
had its share of propaganda in the form of posters, they had a lot of pamphlets
that aimed at more than just creating bias against America but also aimed to raise
morale. Because of Japan's
broader and more expanded kind of Propaganda, it would have been easy for
Nakazawa to have given in to an organization to sponsor his work as long as it
had a clear anti-American message. Nakazawa is an advocate of peace, so he
would never want to turn his story into just another piece of racist
propaganda.
Violence in Barefoot Gen
Even though it doesn't show much in
the way of battle scenes of World War II, Barefoot
Gen is surprisingly violent. Gen ends up biting a kid's finger off during
one fight, but Gen and his little brother were getting victimized by the
bullies when they were getting rocks thrown at them. There were many other
instances of violence like this, most of which were brought upon by the fact
that Gen's neighbors knew that his father protested the war. Gen's father's
outspoken nature against the war was very taboo during these desperate times of
Japan, which is easy to imagine considering the fact that many Japanese soldiers
were willing to die diving planes into ships just for the cause of their
country. Some of the other notable scenes of violence were families committing
suicide because they didn't want Americans to capture them. Families would
gather around a grenade and blow themselves up. Mothers would poison their
children. Truly gruesome stuff. This is an ancient mentality of Japan. Samurai
believed the greatest honor one could achieve was dying in battle. This was
propagated by emperors over the centuries so that soldiers would be eager to
fight in battle. In my opinion, the way to win a battle is to have soldiers
that value their life, not throw it away in sheer reckless passion. Kamikaze
fighter pilots were the embodiment of this idea at its most extreme. If neighbors
were really this cruel to one another, Japan must have been pure hell to
live in during World War II.
Hiroshima after the War
The nuclear bomb called "Little
Boy" dropped on Hiroshima
August sixth, 1945, directly killed an estimated eighty-thousand people and
completely destroyed well over half of the buildings. In the months to follow,
an estimated sixty-thousand more died from injuries and radiation poisoning
caused by the atomic bomb. Although these numbers are extraordinary, Japan lost
nearly three million people during the war. The city began rebuilding soon
during the aftermath. To look at the city today, it would seem almost as if
nothing happened. The only remaining thing left from the nuclear attack is the
Genbaku Dome that is now a part of the
Hiroshima Peace
Memorial Park. In 1949,
Hiroshima was declared a City of Peace by Japanese Parliament, garnering it
much attention as a place for international conferences for peace as well as
other important issues. Hiroshima
continues to be a kind of "Capital of Peace" for international
affairs to this very day.
Religion in Barefoot Gen and Japan
Religion also changed after World
War II (Country Studies, n.d.; Wikipedia, n.d.). Buddhism and Shintoism were
very prominent in Japan
before the war. After the war, religion became much more ambiguous. Traditions
in the culture reflect many customs held by Buddhism and Shintoism, but they
are no longer given direct religious connotation. Weddings are often done by
Shinto priests, but Christian weddings are very popular. Funerals are generally
performed by Buddhists priests, but there have been alterations to help make
the funerals more personal to the families of the one who has died. Japan no longer
has specific religions that most follow, but has more of an amalgam of
religions that are subject to worship. This blend of religion and culture is
hard to pick out and to the Japanese it is so mundane to mix traditions that
they probably don't even notice. These traditions that the Japanese uphold are
seen in Barefoot Gen, but it is never
directly explained what the religious connotations of them are.
Education in Japan and Barefoot Gen
Education also faced changes after
the war. Barefoot Gen shows that
militarist ideas were being taught to students of all ages, where students were
learning to have a universal mentality that the Japanese were superior to
everyone else on earth. Many were also forced to work in factories to help give
supplies to Japanese soldiers during school. Taiwan
had been captured by Japan
during World War II, and a man that was Taiwanese was given a great deal of
grief for helping Gen's family by supplying them with food. After
World War II, America's
occupation of Japan
aimed for educational reform, making it easier for more children to get
accepted into school. Even with this "easing" of Japan's
educational policies, it still has some of the highest academic success in the
world, most notably in science and math (Country Studies, n.d.).
Conclusion
Barefoot
Gen is a fantastic read. Before this, I had never read an entire manga in
my life. I had glanced through one based on the television series Cowboy Bebop, and I think that's about
the extent of it. Barefoot Gen is
different from comic books, manga, and just everything else that's out there.
It portrays something with great relevance, and though it is fictional it takes
place in a factual setting and parallels the author's life a great deal. It
shows something that is not really addressed in American culture, and I feel
that is a shame. We always hear about the Holocaust, but we too infrequently
hear about what kind of tragedies hit Japan during World War II. It's an
insight to one of America's
enemies during World War II, and this story humanizes them.
References
Book
Rags (n.d.) Keiji Nakazawa. Retrieved May 15, 2007 from Book Rags:
http://www.bookrags.com/wiki/Keiji_Nakazawa.
Country
Studies (n.d.) A country study: Japan.
Retrieved May 14, 2007, from http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/jptoc.html.
Gleason,
A. (1988). Keiji Nakazawa. The Comics
Journal, 256, 15.
Internet Movie Database (n.d.). Hadashi no Gen. Retrieved May 16, 2007,
from http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085218/.
Japanese
Propaganda (2005). Japanese propagana
booklet from World War II. Retrieved May 17, 2007, from http://www.2bangkok.com/wwiipropaganda.shtml.
Japanorama
(2002, June 1). Horror (interview with Keiji Nakazawa). Japanorama television series, episode 6.
Nakazawa,
K. (2004a). Barefoot Gen: A cartoon
history of Hiroshima
(vol. 1). San Francisco,
CA: Last Gasp.
Nakazawa,
K. (2004b). Barefoot Gen: The day after
(A cartoon history of Hiroshima, volume 2).
San Francisco, CA:
Last Gasp.
Nakazawa,
K. (2005a). Barefoot Gen: Life after the
bomb (A cartoon history of Hiroshima,
volume 3). San Francisco,
CA: Last Gasp.
Nakazawa,
K. (2005b). Barefoot Gen: Out of the
ashes (A cartoon history of Hiroshima,
volume 4). San Francisco,
CA: Last Gasp.
Spiegelman,
A. (1991). Maus: A survivor's tale: My
father bleeds history. New York,
NY: Pantheon Books.
Spiegelman,
A. (1992). Maus II: A survivor's tale:
And here my troubles began. New
York: Pantheon Books.
Wikipedia.
(n.d.) Japan. Retrieved May 17, 2007
from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan.
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