Hadashi No Gen Vol.1 - 10 Complete Collection [In Japanese] by Keiji Nakazawa
My rating: 5 of 5 stars A Manga Epic about War, the Bomb, and Buckwheat Whew! I finally read Kenji Nakazawa’s atomic bomb manga epic Hadashi no Gen (Barefoot Gen). Twenty years ago, I bought the three-volume set in the Hiroshima Peace Museum (the original was published in ten-volumes from 1973-1987), but I’d never read it ‘cause it’s so long (2600+ pages) and promised to be so horrifying. It turned out to be a harrowing but also funny and moving story and good practice for reading Japanese (e.g., I learned the Hiroshima dialect way to hostilely address a person: “Odore!”). Inspired by Nakazawa’s experiences before, during, and after the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, the story recounts eight years in the life of his fictional alter-ego (Barefoot) Gen Nakaoka, from age five to thirteen, including his relationships with his family, friends, and nemeses as they struggle to survive before and after the bomb. Throughout, Nakazawa relates historical facts (e.g., how American scientists developed the bomb, how American researchers took samples from the victims to see what effect radiation had on them, and how American authorities suppressed such info to avoid criticism) and reveals Japanese culture (e.g., foods, clothes, jobs, baths, beds, houses, songs, jokes, schools, and communities) and human nature (from selfish and cruel to generous and loving). He draws and writes many memorable scenes, like the following: Gen’s father being beaten by the Japanese police. Gen and his family being helped by their good Samaritan Korean neighbor. Gen and his little brother fighting over a grain of rice. The atomic bomb detonating and destroying. Gen trying to free his family members from their collapsed house as an inferno approaches. Gen helping his mother bear his baby sister. Gen losing his hair. Gen caring for a badly burned young artist whose family won’t touch him. Gen mistaking Ryota for his deceased little brother. Ryota recalling reaching for a cicada when the bomb detonated and killed his parents. Gen trying to steal milk for his sister from the US military but ending up with condoms. Gen earning money by scavenging scrap metal, collecting sewage, and selling skulls. Gen learning how to draw perspective from an old artist. Gen going on a date to Miyajima with Mitsuko. Gen giving Mitsuko’s chastened father a portrait of her. Although Nakazawa depicts the terrible nature of the bomb, he also shows how Japanese war fervor, atrocities against civilians in China and Korea, and abuse of Chinese and Koreans in Japan, deprive the country of innocent victim status. Some of the most disturbing parts of the manga occur before the bomb when, because his father is antiwar, Gen’s family is tormented by neighbors, teachers, and police. Nakazawa’s art looks like that of 1970s manga, ranging from realistic to cartoonish and effectively using camera shots, dynamic motion lines, and expressionistic emotion lines. His panels are rectangular or square, and he dramatically employs rare full-page, half-page, or third-page pictures. He depicts the aftermath of the bomb as a hellscape: buildings collapse, streets buckle, telephone poles snap, and everything burns (even horses); semi-nude people shuffle with hands outstretched before them, their melting skin dripping like wax, or stagger like walking cacti, their bodies bristling with glass fragments; corpses bloat and burst in the river; maggots squirm, flies swarm, and mass cremations smoke. An appalling visual assault on the senses. Maximum body horror. Nakazawa also draws beautiful pictures, like in establishing shots of the sky, as in a small panel showing three flying birds silhouetted against the sun and singing “chi-chi-chi.” He also draws subtle and moving images, as when a closeup of the kids’ footsteps through the sand leads to a zoomed-out picture of their silhouettes starting to run home from the beach with a bright sun above them. He evokes strong emotions via his layouts, as when Gen has been missing his hospitalized mother, and the turn of a page reveals a close-up of her smiling face, evocative lines radiating out from it, her eyes with stars in them. She’s home! Nakazawa also effectively uses suspense and time, as when he informs us that the bomb detonated on August 6th at 8:15 AM, so the family wall clock reading 7:00 means 75 more minutes of “normal” wartime life. When Gen assures his mother that they have nothing to worry about, we worry for them. And when the family clock reads 8:00, they should have fifteen more minutes, but when we turn the page the bomb detonates, time having skipped forward to shock us. Throughout the epic, Nakazawa vividly shows that “In any and every way, war ruins people’s lives.” Gen meets many physically and psychologically damaged people, like the burn-scar-faced girl he says is beautiful only to have her curse him and try to commit suicide after she sees her reflection. At the same time, Nakazawa depicts the resilience of the human spirit. Despite everything he experiences, Gen lives spunkily and encourages other people to try. Surviving adversity makes us stronger, as Gen’s father tells him early on: “Be like buckwheat! The more you step on it and press it down, the stronger and straighter it grows.” It becomes an inspiring refrain for Gen. There are other themes in the manga: Hard work and a positive attitude improve your chances of survival; in any society, in wartime or peacetime, there are unethical, amoral, and cruel people (e.g., politicians, officials, police, gangsters, and any majority) exploiting and tormenting weaker people, and we must oppose such bullies with all our strength; families don't have to be biological to be strong; art should be borderless. At times Gen seems too articulate, intelligent, and aware for his age, serving as mouthpiece for the creator Nakazawa. At one point, Gen’s mother says, “Any time you sense a war feeling starting, you have to immediately speak up loudly against it. There’ll always be some people who say, ‘for the country,’” and Gen replies, “Mom, I won’t let another war happen! No matter what noble and beautiful things people say, I won’t be deceived.” Another time he stops “Kimigayo” from being sung at his junior high school graduation ceremony, telling the audience that the song represents the emperor, who is a war criminal, and that Japanese soldiers cut babies out of pregnant Chinese women with bayonets. Such messages are apt and necessary, but I can’t always believe Gen’d be able to deliver them. The manga has other slight flaws. Given its antiwar thrust, it indulges in too much typical Japanese slapstick violence among family members--though that may be a matter of cultural taste. Nakazawa seems to distinguish between different kinds of violence, acceptable one-on-one fighting vs. abominable bombing and war. Gen is righteously violent: as he ages, he moves from biting evildoers’ fingers to the bone and headbutting their groins to knocking them out with his fists. More than once the manga condones the killing of wicked yakuza by Gen’s surrogate little brother Ryota, being nothing compared to what war criminals did during WWII. Finally, there’s a bit too much potty humor, as when Gen pees on malefactors. All that said, the work is majestic. Anyone wanting to know what it was like to live in Hiroshima before, during, and after the bomb while affirming the power of the human spirit to survive horrors should read Hadashi no Gen (and there are English and other translations). View all my reviews
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