Keiji Nakazawa
Barefoot Gen is about the bombing and its aftermath in graphic detail but also turned a critical eye on the militarisation of Japanese society during World War II and on the sometimes abusive dynamics of the traditional family.
Keiji Nakazawa was born on March 14, 1939. He was born in Hiroshima which was destroyed by an American atomic bomb on August 6 and 9, 1945 when Keiji Nakazawa is still 6 years old. August 1945. All his family member that didn’t evacuate died except his mother and his infant sister who died weeks after the bombing.
His family moved to Tokyo in 1961so Nakazawa became a full-time cartoonist and made short pieces for manga such as Shōnen Gaho, Shōnen King, and Bokura. in 1966.The first of a series of five books, were a fictional story of Hiroshima survivors involved in the postwar black market.
Nakazawa chose to portray his own life in 1972 story Ore wa Mita. The story was translated into English and published as a one-shot comic by Educomics as I saw It which explained the bombing in Hiroshima
After publishing I saw It, Nakazawa started working on his major work はだしのゲン also known as Barefoot Gen. This series, which eventually filled ten volumes (six volumes in the English translation), was based on the same events as I Saw It but fictionalised, with the young Gen as a stand-in for the author.
Barefoot Gen has been split into two animated films and a live action TV show about the bombing is Hiroshima. The
“I have to admit it. I cried, I cried a lot while watching this masterpiece of animation. The horror of the war and the apocalypse of the atomic bomb, engulfed my eyes and my soul so deep inside. It always should be remembered: the first casualty of war is innocence. Hadashi no Gen is a masterpiece, a legacy for the whole humanity. I have read many stories and talked to some survivors from the atomic bombs and I have to say that this movie is the first one that get so poignantly close to what happened on that August, 1945. The only thing I wanted to say at the end of the movie was:"I am sorry, I am sorry that I am human and that I can be so limited...I am sorry…"”
by fabaio-46
22 July 2005