Barefoot Gen, Vol. 1: A Cartoon Story of Hiroshima

It is not an "oh, woe is me" tale of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but rather a sharp and critical statement about both nuclear war and the Japanese expansionist empire in the first part of this century. Packed with fine details of Japanese life which are still obvious today, simple illustrations and direct text hold nothing back. What many readers may find awkward humour rattled with panic is scattered through the story, but that is a very accurate depiction of the Japanese social response mechanism to impossible situations.

The book is also a unique pop-culture portrayal of Japanese attitudes to 'gaijin', or foreigners living in Japan at the time, particularly Korean. Koreans were left without assistance by Japanese who considered them third class, and this book is unique to include that aspect in a text for youth. It is also sharply critical of an Empire's treatment of her people, while this empire still shadows Japanese life today. A truly remarkable book which should find a space on the shelves of youth and community libraries everywhere.

The simple language and graphics also make this book an excellent source for ESL readers.

Do yourself and your teenagers a favour and find copies of Barefoot Gen and the other books by Nakazawa which have been translated in this series (search Amazon.com for "The Day After", "Out of the Ashes" and others), then share them.


A literary atomic bomb in its impact   May 10, 2003
F. Orion Pozo (Raleigh, NC USA)
8 out of 8 found this review helpful

This book tell what life was like in Hiroshima in the four months before the atomic bomb. It is actually the first of a series on the effects of war and the atomic bomb on the lives of one family as seen through the eyes of a 6 year old boy, Gen Nakaoka. Based on the real-life experiences of the author, this volume opens in April 1945 and tells of the hardships of war on the people of Japan.

Gen's father is a craftsman in Hiroshima who makes wooden sandles to try to feed his five children and his pregnant wife. He is labelled a traitor by his neighbors because he is opposed to the war. We see the cruelties and hardships of their daily lives through the eyes of young Gen who can't understand why he and his family are despised. The close family values of his home life are in sharp contrast to the rabid patriotic chauvenism of his community. This volume ends with the events of August 6, the day of the atomic bomb. The story of how Gen survives is told in the subsequent volumes.

The work has been well translated from the Japanese original: Hadashi no Gen. It was originally published in serial form in 1972 and 1973 in Shukan Shonen Jampu, the largest weekly comic magazine in Japan, with a circulation of over two million. The drawings are all in black and white. This US edition was published as part of a movement to translate the book into other languages and spread around the world its message of the threat of nuclear war. It is a wonderful testimony to the strength of the human spirit and the horrors of nuclear war. There are a few introductory essays at the front of the book and a publisher's note at the end that help to put this book into perspective. It is a powerful and tragic story that I highly recommend for anyone interested in the topic.


You may have to be brave enough to buy and own this book...   May 5, 2004
R. Garcia (Brockport, NY)
7 out of 8 found this review helpful

...which recalls all the gruesome and harrowing events that led up to the great, tragic bombing incident on Japan that FINALLY ended World War II for once and for all.

Nothing is held back. There is farting, bloody bowel movements, the baring of nipple to suckle an infant, maggots crawling through ravaged flesh, and burning corpses popping out of coffins to curl back like twigs. It's all raw and wide-open here.

But like all the greatest manga stories ever drawn and written, you will be hopelessly riveted all the way to the end as well as wanting to read it again and again to relive even the ugliest scenes ever to unfold on paper. For one of the most infamous pieces of Japanese history has been burned forever on the pages to be told and retold to the future generations yet to come. If they have strong hearts and stomaches for such a moving drama that the artist himself had unfortunately witnessed with his own young eyes.

But the grim story isn't without humor or some warmth that the heroic family shares and what's more, the characters are also well-drawn in the classic 1970s style with those bright, shining eyes, expressive mouths, and cute, chiseled noses.

In spite of all those masterful elements, the saddest of all true-to-life manga tales got to me so much that I don't know if I will ever own the series, let alone watch the anime, which I actually refused to see in the first place!


Powerful, though stilted at times   July 19, 2006
Robert P. Beveridge (Cleveland, OH)
6 out of 7 found this review helpful

Keiji Nakazawa, Barefoot Gen (New Society Publishing, 1983)

Keiji Nakazawa's four-volume graphic epic Barefoot Gen has become legendary in the field of graphic literature, and also, in no small way, out of it. While many Japanese artists working in every medium have examined the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and their aftereffects, Nakazawa, who lived in Hiroshima at the time the bombs were dropped, has an understandably closer perspective than most others who have tried it. For sheer power, Barefoot Gen's only rival in the subgenre is the similarly legendary Grave of the Fireflies.

This eponymous first volume takes us through the life of Gen, an elementary school student, and his family in the months before the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima. Gen's father, while not a pacifist, is notorious in town for his speaking out against the war, which gets him and his family branded traitors. Because of this, they don't have an easy life. The family members try to find various ways to survive in the face of shunning at best, and aggression at worst, from the rest of the townspeople.

Do you need to be told that this is a book that's going to hit you in the face like a sledgehammer with its message? The artistry, or lack of same, in the delivery is the place where Grave of the Fireflies is clearly superior to Barefoot Gen, but while Nakazawa is not above letting his message get in the way of his story on occasion, it never happens for too long a period of time. Nakazawa's characters are well-drawn, and the story spends more time focused on its characters than on its message. There is a lot to be liked here, and a good deal to be mulled over, as well. Well worth your time. ****


Quite a moving tale of survival in horrible conditions.   February 9, 1999
4 out of 4 found this review helpful

Defying anyone who would call a graphic novel simply a comic book, the Barefoot Gen series is a great work of art at many levels. Together with "Maus," these series immortalize mistakes that can never again be allowed to be repeated.