On the second week of our study abroad trip to Japan, we visited the beautiful city of Hiroshima. During our short stay, we had the privilege of going to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and Park to learn about the tragedy that occurred in August of 1945. After touring the museum, Professor Ibaraki recommended Barefoot Gen to me. He mentioned that he had read it himself as a young man and that the story had a lasting impact on him. That is how a copy of the first volume of Barefoot Gen made the 7,000-mile journey back to the United States with me.
Barefoot Gen, written and illustrated by Keiji Nakazawa, is a ten-volume manga series first serialized as Hadashi no Gen in 1972-73. The manga was banned in many local libraries on multiple occasions on account of it containing “unsupported depictions of Japanese atrocities”. Thankfully, local courts lifted the ban soon after, leaving school systems to make their own decisions about the importance of Barefoot Gen. If you are planning on reading Barefoot Gen for yourself, I suggest skipping the rest of this blog.
I knew very little about the series going into it, only that my professors and a few classmates recommended it. I knew that Barefoot Gen was going to be an emotionally challenging read- something I was correct about. I did not, however, expect to be so deeply impacted by the continued abuse of Gen and his family. While the illustrations in Barefoot Gen are in no way refined, the rawness
How police treated “traitors” like Mr. Nakaoka.
of Nakazawa’s lines and the exaggerated style only serve to enhance the brutality of the life that Japanese citizens lived during the war.
Because Gen’s father did not support the war effort, his family and everyone who associated themselves with the Nakaoka family were labeled as traitors and treated as less than human. Violence was very prevalent throughout the entire volume, whether it was from Mr. Nakaoka, the Nakaoka kids fighting back against neighbors and townspeople, or the gruesome scenes after the atomic bomb was dropped. However, some of this violence was vital in showing a key characteristic in Gen: that he is much like his father in that he will do “wrong” or societally unacceptable things for what he believes is right.
Almost all of the first volume was dedicated to showing how Japanese society treated “traitors” during the war, in addition to the struggle it took to redeem one’s family from the title of traitor, as seen with Koji Nakaoka (Army pilot recruit). Some of the hardest scenes to read occurred after the bomb was dropped and we see half of Gen’s family trapped in the rubble. The mangaka did an excellent job getting readers attached to these characters, only to make it more tragic as we see them literally burning alive in the last fifty pages.
The tragic effects of the atomic bomb.
Barefoot Gen is definitely a manga I see myself reading through completion, as it is such an important part of history that is told in such a heartbreaking but impactful format. I would absolutely recommend this to anyone curious about the everyday lives of those affected by the war effort and the atomic bomb.