"Barefoot Gen, Volume One" by Keiji Nakazawa.
© Last Gasp of San Francisco
Mania Grade: A
Story and art by: Keiji Nakazawa
Publisher: Last Gasp
Rating: Older Teen (16+)
Price: $14.95
Story and art by: Keiji Nakazawa
Publisher: Last Gasp
Rating: Older Teen (16+)
Price: $14.95
Barefoot Gen, Volume One
By: Nadia OxfordReview Date: Wednesday, June 13, 2007
One of the most frightening things about war is how rapidly destroyed homes and families dissolve into cold statistics. Armed with numbers on paper, it's easy to get into nationwide pissing contests over the real definition of tragedy. Even world leaders play the numbers game when they assess the power of nuclear weapons: "Only" seventy thousand people died in the blast when the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, whereas conventional air raids wiped out far more. "Only" about two percent of the bomb's victims died of radiation poisoning.
Barefoot Gen, an autobiographical manga by Keiji Nakazawa, is a jarring tonic for anyone who has ever been tempted to downplay the atrocity of war or nuclear weapons. The manga stars a young boy named Gen who lives in Hiroshima at the edge of World War II. Gen's large family faces the same war-related problems as everyone else in Japan: Food is scarce while propaganda is plentiful. There are still good times to be had during the hardship, but Gen's problems are compounded by his father's disdain for the war, which doesn't sit well with his fiercely nationalistic neighbours.
Most of volume one (subtitled "A Cartoon Story of Hiroshima") establishes Gen as a character and introduces his family. Gen himself illustrates a clear difference between Japanese and American culture. He and his brothers are very quick to use physical violence to dole out punishment to his gossipy neighbours, yet it's hard not to cheer for him. Gen never backs down, never gives up and has a very strong sense of right versus wrong; it's this same determination that helps him survive the inevitable cataclysm that occurs at the end of the volume.
Nakazawa doesn't glorify war, nor does he draw it in shades of black and white, so to speak. One subplot follows Gen's brother Koji after he volunteers for the Navy in hopes of diluting the ridicule his family suffers because of his father's pacifism. On route to basic training, Koji hears the story of a fated kamikaze pilot who was bullied into joining and fears for his old mother and his fiancée.
Barefoot Gen's story takes a very savage turn once Little Boy drops on Hiroshima. Gen's father, sister and younger brother burn alive in the nuclear firestorm, and the shock causes his pregnant mother to go into labour. At the very end of the volume, Gen delivers his new sister while Hiroshima burns around him.
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