Hiroshima: The Autobiography of Barefoot Gen

by Keiji Nakazawa, Richard H. Minear (Translation)

This compelling autobiography tells the life story of famed manga artist Nakazawa Keiji. Born in Hiroshima in 1939, Nakazawa was six years old when on August 6, 1945, the United States dropped the atomic bomb. His gritty and stunning account of the horrific aftermath is powerfully told through the eyes of a child who lost most of his family and neighbors. In eminently readable and beautifully translated prose, the narrative continues through the brutally difficult years immediately after the war, his art apprenticeship in Tokyo, his pioneering "atomic-bomb" manga, and the creation of Barefoot Gen, the classic graphic novel based on Nakazawa's experiences before, during, and after the bomb. This first English-language translation of Nakazawa's autobiography includes twenty pages of excerpts from Barefoot Gen to give readers who don't know the manga a taste of its power and scope. A recent interview with the author brings his life up to the present. His trenchant hostility to Japanese imperialism, the emperor and the emperor system, and U.S. policy adds important nuance to the debate over Hiroshima. Despite the grimness of his early life, Nakazawa never succumbs to pessimism or defeatism. His trademark optimism and activism shine through in this inspirational work.

Genres: History, Japan, Graphic Novels, Nonfiction, Manga, Memoir, Biography

214 pages, Paperback

First published October 2, 2010

About the author

Keiji Nakazawa (中沢啓治; Nakazawa Keiji) was born in Hiroshima and was in the city when it was destroyed by an atomic bomb in 1945. All of his family members who had not evacuated died as a result of the explosion after they became trapped under the debris of their house, except for his mother, as well as an infant sister who died several weeks afterward. In 1961, Nakazawa moved to Tokyo to become a full-time cartoonist, and produced short pieces for manga anthologies such as Shōnen Gaho, Shōnen King, and Bokura.
Following the death of his mother in 1966, Nakazawa returned to his memories of the destruction of Hiroshima and began to express them in his stories. Kuroi Ame ni Utarete (Struck by Black Rain), the first of a series of five books, was a fictional story of Hiroshima survivors involved in the postwar black market. Nakazawa chose to portray his own experience directly in the 1972 story Ore wa Mita, published in Monthly Shōnen Jump. The story was translated into English and published as a one-shot comic book by Educomics as I Saw It.
Immediately after completing I Saw It, Nakazawa began his major work, Hadashi no Gen (Barefoot Gen).This series, which eventually filled ten volumes, was based on the same events as I Saw It but fictionalized, with the young Gen as a stand-in for the author. Barefoot Gen depicted the bombing and its aftermath in graphic detail, with Gen's experiences being even more harrowing than Nakazawa's own. It also turned a critical eye on the militarization of Japanese society during World War II and on the sometimes abusive dynamics of the traditional family. Barefoot Gen was adapted into two animated films and a live action TV drama.
Nakazawa announced his retirement in September 2009, citing deteriorating diabetes and cataract conditions.He cancelled plans for a Barefoot Gen sequel. In September 2010, Nakazawa was diagnosed with lung cancer and in July 2011, metastasis from lung cancer was found. He died on December 19, 2012.

Reviews

[Rahul · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 Stars
The autobiography of one of my favorite manga creator and his life . Surely at the same time it is both depressing as speaks about the the drop of nuclear bomb and its monstrous aftermath. but also inspiring how Mr. Nakazawa stood amidst the rubble left after the bombing, seeing his family dying (brother, sister and father) , started rebuilding his life with his mother stricken in poverty and absolutely dreadful conditions and grew up to to create manga to make the world understand what war does and why nuclear energy should be completely abandoned despite so much resistance to his bravery.

[Susmita · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book will make you angry. It will also make you worry. This book will tear you apart.

Nakazawa, a political manga cartoonist, tells his story of surviving the A-bomb attack on Hiroshima in this intense autobiography.

Nakazawa does not sugarcoat, because sugarcoating war does not help anyone. Prepare to read a grisly account of the bombing and its aftermath. Nakazawa not only writes about the horrors of the war itself but also about how war strips away all humanity. The section about children bullying him because he was an A-bomb survivor and neighbours not coming to the aid of his family following the Hiroshima bombing are shocking and a testament to the utterly vile nature of human beings.

I have not read his Barefoot Gen series or any others, but this autobiography has given me insights that I was so far completely ignorant about.

A must read.

Many lines from the book stayed with me, this one in particular summarises Nakazawa's emotion the most:
War in particular exacerbates man's ugliness, and it suddenly flares up and spreads. That's why I can't forgive those who start wars that plunge human beings into a condition lower than animals.

[Ci · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am aghast. As strange as this sounds, this novel was heavy subject matter but it so starkly put, that it made the read easier. Deeply saddened to know the harsh ground realities of the atomic bomb. I am shook from within. Recommend it highly.

[Linda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Maybe not the most well written autobiography, but absolutely worth reading. Not for the faint of heart though.

[Steph · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow, I never knew a nonfiction book (albeit an autobio) could be so riveting. It was an easy read, and a good story, although it feels wrong to call it a "good story" when all the terrible things that happened are true. The parts about the bombing are by far the most dramatic and affecting chapters. I can't believe the horrors of the immediate aftermath of the bomb, with the descriptions of the victims all over the place: bloated in the river, moaning in the fields, burned black in the streets. It's just terrible. I feel much more educated about this tragedy now than I was before, and I hope nothing like this ever happens again.

[Anastasia Kay · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the darkest autobiographies I have ever read. Following the story of a young boy who survived an atrocity that occurred in humanity. To the moment where the bomb dropped, and to the passing of his mother — one is forced to relive the occurrence of war, and the inhumane survival that kicks in within society.
A beautiful yet twisted story, that made me want to read it over and over again. There was not a section where a tear was not shed, or a prayer was not thought.
Absolutely wonderful. RIP to Keiji.

[Sliss · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you are interested you've likely already made it through at least one of the ten Barefoot Gen volumes. You've already seen the melting flesh and the maggots so perhaps you won't be shocked by what you read (who knew that crayfish were such lovers of human flesh?) but you'll learn a great deal about how and why Nakazawa inked Gen's story. Totally absorbing, often horrific and incredibly poignant.

[Eric Hinkle · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wanted to read the original manga, but I could only find this, the author's autobiography. Now I really need to read the manga.

It's a harrowing and heated telling of his days leading up to the bomb, during the bomb, and his difficult career afterwards. Having been a first grader when the bomb hit, and losing half of his family, plus seeing an entire city burned to the ground and thousands of burnt corpses and walking corpses trailing yards of dangling skin behind them with their eyeballs bouncing against their cheeks...it's plain to understand why he never forgot about those days and why so much of his work is obsessed with it, and why he was forever so full of anger and frustration at the Emperor system and the Japanese government and people afterward for trying to sweep it under the rug. It's a scathing indictment of those times, and of the attitudes which still exist today. His ultimate questions: When will the lesson be learned? Can I influence enough people by my work, or must there must another tragedy for us to learn our lesson?

When not writing about the war, there's a large chunk of fascinating insight into his work - his absolute manga mania and film obsession which drove him to put in millions of hours of work into his art. His love and dedication is inspirational, and his love of all humanity is heartbreaking. I doubt few artists have been as dedicated as he was. Thankfully, he writes about it quite well.

Some highlighted bits:

"In the unsteady lamplight, I saw Mom. Face full of grief, she was staring at the skulls of Dad [and my brother and sister]. That face with its thousand emotions frightened me, and I was quick to pull the blanket up over my head. Poor woman, repressing her desire to raise her voice and weep and cry!"

"Where in this life can you find the sweet and gentle world of children's fairy tales? If you hide harsh reality from children and sugarcoat war and the atomic bomb, they'll wind up thinking naively, 'So was and the atomic bomb are not so bad after all?' Writers who choose that path make me angry. It's an eye-for-an-eye world. I think it would be a very good thing if, seeing the cruelty of the atomic bomb, more and more children throughout Japan cry, 'I'm terrified!' 'I don't like this!' 'I don't want to see it again!' I hope that if the number of children who hate to see the words 'war' and 'atomic bomb' increases, they won't repeat in their lifetimes the experiences we went through."

"When I saw Walt Disney's Snow White, I couldn't forget it. For weeks afterward, scenes came to mind, one after the other. Moreover, learning that it was made, in color, before the war, I was speechless at the splendor of America's power. To go to war with that America! I had no sympathy for the bunch of fools who were Japan's wartime leaders. That Japan would lose was a foregone conclusion."

"Once we finished bowing to the [Emperor], we sang the anthem, and in each classroom they handed out red-and-white candy. On the way home after we were dismissed, I ate the candy at one gulp. I told myself that if I turned it quickly into shit, fertilizer for the field, even the hated candy would serve a purpose. And I went home yelling words that were popular then among the children: 'I, your emperor, have farted. You, my subjects, smell it. Hold your noses and step back! Proclamation signed and sealed!'"

[Aaron · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nakazawa Keiji became known worldwide for his Barefoot Gen manga, which captured the horrors of the bombing of Hiroshima through the eyes of his family and himself. He was six years old when the bomb was dropped. In this autobiography, Nakazawa tells a more direct tale of his live in a written narrative rather than graphic novel format. Though much of the content is similar, the reader does get to seem some minor diffrences between what happened to Keiki and what happened to Gen. The results are still very interesting, and this proved to be a nice companion to read after reading the whole Barefoot Gen series.

The text is translated by an American academic named Richard Minear, and he does a nice job of working to place the content in context. This includes presenting some sample pages from the graphic novels to help tell the story and further explain some things that happened in history from a broader perspective. The result really shows how important Nakazawa's work really is to understanding the perspective of atomic bomb survivors.

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

This autobiography is hard to read in its chilling descriptions of the horrors of the atomic bomb, but in the same sense, it is this graphic retelling of these horrors that make it important to read. Even having visited the peace museum in Hiroshima, I felt that I got a better sense for the terrifying destruction of the bomb after reading Nakazawa’s descriptions of not only his observations, but also his personal opinions. I would recommend this autobiography to anyone who hasn’t had other opportunities to learn, in detail, about the human suffering caused by war and by atomic bombing.

[Jonathan Jonsson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This isn't the polished manga version which offsets some of the terrible reality with heroic speeches and beautiful drawings. This is raw horror. Walking burnt flesh with skin hanging off. Hunting for fat crabs who have feasted on human flesh to alleviate the starvation. The contempt and discrimination aimed at survivors. American researchers coming to your house to ask for the corpse of a loved one for "research". This story is fueled by righteous anger, a fury strong enough to vibrate off the page. And he's right.

[Asher Brown · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nakazawa used his life to tell the story he was uniquely positioned to tell. This autobiography separates the fact from fiction in Barefoot Gen and gives a realistic accounting of life as a child in Hiroshima before and after August 6, 1945. Nakazawa tells an important reality that should not be forgotten.

[Purnima · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful, moving, disturbing and sad all at the same time. Reminds you of the futility of war and there is no winner either way, everyone loses.

[Aurora · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really affecting.

[Jimgosailing · Rating 5 out of 5]

Even if you’ve read the Barefoot Gen manga, this is still an informative read. Nakazawa provides more information here about his experiences than what is shared in the manga, so, although there’s some repetition, the new material is worth the read.

Truly horrifying (I’ll let you read his account of his mother’s cremation for her funeral in the 1960’). But he’s so gentle in his telling, he gives it an accessibility.

[Marsha · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nakazawa Keiji was born in Hiroshima in 1939, and as a small child, he experienced destruction and death when the United States dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. In his autobiography, he writes of his experiences, wherein he lost his father and siblings, who became trapped under the debris of his home. His mother tried to save her children, but did not have the strength to lift the debris, and others who tried to help could not do so either. And the home went up into flames burning Nakazawa's family alive.

Nakazawa’s mother, who was pregnant, went into labor from the shock and gave birth to his little sister who died four months later. The horrific aftermath of the city killed thousands, and left others horribly burnt, and blinded.

When Nakazawa moved to another town for schooling, and so his mother could try and find work and food, they were treated as outcasts. Nakazawa was bullied by classmates for having been exposed to radiation.

Inspired by Osamu Tezuka's comics, being a cartoonist sparked Nakazawa’s interest. In 1961, Nakazawa moved to Tokyo to pursue his desire. Nakazawa became famous for his ten volume manga series, “Barefoot Gen” which tells about the bombing of Hiroshima and the aftermath. “Barefoot Gen” is loosely based on the author’s life and he made some fictional changes. I first read the first books of the series and saw a movie based on the graphic novels when I lived in San Francisco in the late 1980s/1990s. His books are quite an empowering representation of history and how distressing the bombing of Hiroshima was to the people who lived through it.

When Nakazawa was dating his wife and getting serious with her, he was afraid that she would not marry him. When they had their first child, they were concerned as there was a chance that their child could be born mutated due to Nakazawa’s radiation exposure. Fortunately his child was healthy. However, Nakazawa did pass away from the effects of lung cancer at the age of 73 in 2012.

[Andy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I remember when I high school, we were taught that ALL Japanese people during WWII believed that Hirohito was a god and they would fight to the last man. My, how stupid I felt believing that for even a second. While there was plenty of propaganda to suggest that Hirohito was indeed a god, there were plenty of people who opposed that notion and opposed Japan entering the war. It reminded me that American textbooks and class lectures are heavily biased and important information is omitted. It is preferable to read all ten volumes of Barefoot Gen to get some of the references. Though, this book has some pages straight from the Manga. What I got from the manga and this autobiography was not only that the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were horrendous, but that placing ANY one person/government on a pedestal is extremely dangerous. Unfortunately, we have yet to learn this lesson sufficiently. Pre-war Japan government and post-war government seemed eerily similar to Post-9/11 America. Both governments entered wars for corporate interests, both governments have violated the rights and privacy of its citizens in the name of security and patriotism, and the anyone who spoke out against their respective governments have been called traitors and have faced harassment.

One thing that bugged me about this autobiography was that Nakazawa skimmed through his life after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. While we all know of him for surviving the bombing and subsequently writing pretty vivid manga pertaining to the atomic bombing, I felt like there could've been more about his activism against war and a bit more about Project Gen.

[Ben Williamson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hiroshima- By Keiji Nakazawa
This book went through Keiji’s life and the experience of the bombing at Hiroshima. It started when he was a little boy, how he lost his father to the war. There were many hardships that his family faced after that. His mother had a low income, but still did everything she could for her children. They lived with minimal food and not many treats. When the bomb hit Hiroshima, Keiji’s family were all killed apart from him and his mother. The next part of their lives was horrible, all the survivors witnessed the horrors of the aftermath, and had to help clean up burning corpses, clear away all the rubble and debris left by the huge explosion. From this book I realized only part of the pain and suffering the survivors from Hiroshima felt.

[Marianne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Of course I had heard about Barefoot Gen before, nevertheless I didn't feel compelled to read the series until now. This story behind Barefoot Gen adds a whole new dimension to the character. Nakazawa has a way of telling his life's story with such detail and ease which makes his experience of the atomic bomb accessible and understandable. Furthermore, I felt inspired, reading about Nakazawa's determination in his journey to become a professional manga artist. This book has left me wanting to explore his other works as well as the works of the people that inspired him.

[Lauren · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book mainly deals with his early years and the emotional struggle it was to write the manga Barefoot Gen (Hadashi no Gen), and I felt that a lot of the rest of his life was skimmed over. But I imagine it's a hard thing to constantly rehash the trauma of his youth, and for all the anger in him, he seems to have been a rather private person, so I can't blame him for putting a limit on what he was willing to reveal.

[Edward Sullivan · Rating 4 out of 5]

An insightful and compelling autobiography by the Hiroshima stomic bomb survivior and creator of the Barefoot Gen manga series.

[Citesc · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good eye opening read, but too much about manga and too little about the bomb...

[Nick · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's alright--definitely informative. I think I would rather have just read the manga, though.

[Iain Martin · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the most moving accounts of war and survival I have read in a long time. Fascinating. If you appreciated Elie Wiesel's "Night" this will be of interest.

[MackofallTrades13 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing! Will definitely incorporate in the 8th grade curriculum!

[Keith Bowden · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've been rereading/reading the complete Barefoot Gen books, and wanted to get more of the story of the man who grew up into and out of that holocaust. Barefoot Gen is fictionalized somewhat, but is very much based on Keiji Nakazawa's life and experiences. The manga and the prose here are incredibly moving, and it's abominable that anyone can be cavalier in discussing the potential use of nuclear weapons ever again.

Nakazawa's life and career are absorbing; I wish his autobiography could have been twice as long.