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Hiroshima: The Autobiography of Barefoot Gen

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 May 2025

Nakazawa Keiji  and
Richard H. Minear
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Hiroshima atomic bomb survivor Nakazawa Keiji's (1939-) manga Hadashi no Gen (Barefoot Gen, 1973-85) is one of the most powerful graphic novels ever produced. Running over 2000 pages, the manga is loosely based on the experiences of the author, who lost his father, sister, and younger bother to the bomb. Barefoot Gen has been enduringly popular and sold millions of copies. It has been adapted into other media numerous times including two harrowing animated films, which opened in Japan in 1983 and 1986 and are available in English translation from Geneon, a live action film trilogy in the 1970s, and a 2007 TV drama.

Type
Research Article
Information
Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 10 , Special Issue S3: Course Reader No. 3. War in Japanese Popular Culture , January 2012 , pp. 68 - 80
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2012

References

Notes

1 Gen is pronounced with a hard g and a short e, as in again, where the second syllable is pronounced to rhyme with then. Hadashi means barefoot. Hence, “Gen of the Bare Feet.” In the final chapter of this autobiography, Nakazawa explains the origin of the name: “I called the protagonist ‘Gen’ in the sense of the basic composition of humanity so that he'd be someone who wouldn't let war and atomic bomb happen again.” (Gen is the first half of the compound Genso, meaning chemical element.)

2 The Hiroshima Murals: The Art of Iri Maruki and Toshi Maruki, ed. John W. Dower and John Junkerman (Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1985).

3 “Hiroshima” no kuhaku—Nakazawa-ke shimatsuki (Tokyo: Nihon tosho sentā, 1987); ‘Hadashi Gen’ no jiden (Tokyo: Misuzu, 1995).

4 Nakazawa refers to his mother throughout as Mother/Mom, but on August 6 his father cries out to “Kimiyo.” The manga gives her name as Kimie. In the manga, she calls her husband “Daikichi”

5 Charles Pellegrino, The Last Train from Hiroshima: The Survivors Look Back (New York: Henry Holt, 2010). A New York Times account of the brouhaha that has greeted Pellegrino's book quoted Jeffrey Porter of the University of Iowa, “There's a hazy line between ‘truth’ and invention in creative non-fiction, but good writers don't have to make things up.” Motoko Rich, “Pondering Good Faith in Publishing,” New York Times, March 9, 2010, p. C6. For an extended discussion of the issues involved in this hoax, see my “Misunderstanding Hiroshima,” Japanfocus.org.

6 “Barefoot Gen, Japan, and I: The Hiroshima Legacy: An Interview with Nakazawa Keiji,” tr. Richard H. Minear, International Journal of Comic Art 10, no. 2 (fall 2008): 311-12. An excerpt from this interview is an appendix to this book.

7 Pellegrino, The Last Train from Hiroshima, 325. Without footnotes, without a list of interviewees and the dates of the interviews, Pellegrino's assertions are impossible to evaluate and hence virtually worthless. At best, those survivor accounts are sixty-year-old memories of the event, and intervening events and experiences have played a major, if undocumented, role.

8 This ditty was a take-off on the “Battleship March,” which had the syllable mo twice in its opening line. Imo is the Japanese word for potato.