Asian Studies

Barefoot Gen is a manga or a cartoon created by Keiji Nakazawa. The graphic novel is a ten part series loosely based on Nakawazas own experience during the bombing of Hiroshima in 1945. The first volume entitled Barefoot Gen A Cartoon Story of Hiroshima, introduces the Nakaoka family. The father, Daikichi Nakaoka, is a craftsman who outspokenly declares his opposition to the war between Japan and the United States. He despairs over the catastrophic effects that the war is creating. He can barely provide food for his family and suffers as his young sons Gen and Shinji constantly complain of their hunger and his pregnant wife Kimie suffers from malnutrition. His son Akira is forced to live separately from them as he gets sent to the countryside to be safe from the anticipated bombings. His open opposition towards the war creates hostility among his neighbors and his family is labeled as traitors. But Daikichi Nakaoka stands by his opinion that the war is wrong and even goes to the extent of defying the Neighborhood Chairmans orders during a spear drill by walking out and declaring that Japan will never win the war. His children, however, are affected by their neighbors taunting. Gen, Shinji and their big sister Eiko are bullied by the Chairmans son Ryukichi while they were out selling clogs. Not all the neighbors harbor ill feelings towards the Nakaoka family though. Their Korean neighbor Mr. Pak extends a helping hand when he heard that Kimie was sick of malnutrition by providing them food and giving them money for medicine. However, the succeeding events did nothing to lessen Daikichis bitter feelings towards the war. He disowns his oldest son Koji when Koji signs up for the war in order to prove to their neighbors that they were not traitors. His son Akira who was sent to an evacuation site in the countryside showed up at his doorstep one day after running away from the evacuation site. Because of the hard life he experienced in the countryside, Akira refused to return when his parents urged him to go back to the evacuation site for his own safety. Eiko, Gen and Shinji get in trouble in school as their classmates and teachers jeered at them for being traitors. Daikichi was sent to prison when he attacks a teacher who abused one of his children in school. He was soon let out of prison after a few weeks as more people are starting to express their dissatisfaction towards the government.

In the midst of all this chaos, Gen Nakaoka maintains his cheerful spirit as a young boy. He complains of constant hunger but cheers up in the thought of one day eating rice again when the war is over. Despite having to face the difficulties of air raids as a daily routine, Gen still maintains his playful spirit. He is not indifferent to his familys hardships, though, and tries his best to cheer up his father when they are forced to eat locusts because of lack of food. He protects his sister and younger brother from the neighborhood bullies when they make fun of them and call them traitors. Like his father, he is also getting sick of the war but views everything happening around him as a fact of life and hopes that the war will soon be over.

    The war is far from over though. The United States, China and Great Britain issued the Postdam Declaration demanding unconditional surrender from Japan. But Japans war leaders are determined to fight to the last man. The United States then devices a plan to drop an atomic bomb on Japan. They form a special bombing squadron called the 509th Composite Group in secret and B-29 bombers begin practice runs and join actual air raids on Japanese cities in preparation for the atomic bombing.
In the early morning of August 6, 1945, Gen goes to school never anticipating that the most horrible tragedy will befall upon his beloved hometown in just a few minutes. The United States dropped the nuclear bomb, Little Boy, over Hiroshima killing thousands in an instant. Momentarily knocked off by the blast, Gen awakes to screaming people on the streets. He rushes towards home and is horrified by the sight of zombie-like humans littering the streets. He searches for his family in the rubble that was his home and soon finds his mother trying to free his father, little brother Shinji and sister Eiko who were trapped under their burning house. Gen and his mothers efforts were to no avail and they were forced to watch as the rest of their family burned to death. In the face of such a horrifying misfortune, Gen had his pregnant mother to think about. He rushes her to safety and since he could not find anybody to help him, he had to help his mother deliver the baby. This is where the first volume of the harrowing story of Barefoot Gen ends.

Although depicted in a graphic novel or a cartoon, Barefoot Gen still vividly illustrates and narrates an important part of world history that both adults and children can take an interest to. The bombing of Hiroshima City, Japan during World War II depicts the many wrong things that war creates. Thousands of civilians died, the whole city fell to ruins and in the aftermath of the bombing a lot of people still suffered from injuries resulting from exposure to radiation. Keiji Nakazawas Barefoot Gen implicitly gives a vivid description of the suffering of civilians during the war. Some may view the cartoon very childlike but when you read on and find images of the bombing and the zombie-like creatures drawn in the pages of the book, one cannot help but be affected by the horror that the illustrations create. Being a survivor of the Hiroshima bombing, Nakazawa tries to create what it was like for him to live in a tragic time such as this. He neither appears to be anti-American nor was he trying to draw more sympathy towards the Japanese people during the war. As a reader turns page after page of Barefoot Gen, he will soon realize that Nakazawa is in fact anti-war and therefore only wants people to know that war is wrong and it should never take place.

Through the eyes of Gen Nakaoka, Keiji Nakazawa succeeds in illustrating realistic events that occur before, during and after the bombing of Hiroshima. Before the bombing, people are already going hungry because of food shortage as they are made to believe that soldiers need more food to be able to defend their country. Students in the universities are forced to work in artillery camps to produce more weapons to be used in the war. Young men are being recruited into the army and are being brainwashed that dying in the battlefield is the most honorable act that they can do for their family and for Japan. During the bombing of Hiroshima, dying people litter the streets. Readers of Barefoot Gen will be shocked to see illustrations of a walking human being with his eyeballs hanging out of its sockets and people with melting skins walking on the streets. The mushroom cloud that resulted from the nuclear bomb explosion and gruesome images of death and destruction are all vividly illustrated in the cartoon. After the bombing, Nakazawa draws pictures of wailing people distraught over the loss of loved ones and people screaming in pain over the injuries they took.

As it is a cartoon, Nakazawa does not have the luxury to explain his story in long sentences but through his illustrations, he successfully recounts significant events that led to the bombing of Hiroshima in a historically accurate manner. Nevertheless, young and adult readers will be compelled to feel compassion towards the victims of war.

Through Barefoot Gen, Keiji Nakazawa makes it clear that he wants to help make sure that what happened to Hiroshima is never repeated. While the war between the United States and Japan can be a touchy topic for most, Nakazawa tells his story without bias. He does not put blame on Americans nor the Japanese government. He manages to give an unbiased description of how the Americans secretly devised and unleashed a weapon of mass destruction and the Japanese governments stubborn refusal to give up the war despite the peoples suffering. Both sides did something wrong but what he highlighted on are the grim casualties of war and the fact that war can make people selfishly turn on each other. His goal to make the world realize that war is wrong may have been achieved but his desire to not have what happened to Hiroshima repeated may be an ambitious goal. As every chapter in history is written, a lot of wars still took place long after the Hiroshima bombing and the casualties of war are equally if not more brutal than what happened to Hiroshima. The death toll in the war in Afghanistan and Iraq is a grim testament to the continuing horrors that the war is creating. It is saddening to realize that some countries and its leaders still think that war is inevitable but perhaps there is still hope. If more people are touched by the works of brilliant men like Keiji Nakazawa and actually spread the antiwar sentiments that these men are trying to convey then perhaps world peace can be achieved.