Once more I was stunned. “Why should teachers and residents be happy?” I was amazed. I despised the foolish teachers who would celebrate and be grateful to the ringleader who turned Hiroshima into a burned-out waste, who stole our homes, killed our relatives, made us suffer and suffer while he himself had it easy in safety. The new constitution had been promulgated, and referring often to Article 9, the renunciation of war, teachers taught us that Japan had been reborn a new country that did not arm itself or use force, one that sought peace. But what they were doing, worshipping the emperor as a god as in the old order, was militarist education. It was “old wine in a new jug.”
The next day I said to Mom, “He was the ringleader in wrecking our whole family, pushing us down into the depths of poverty, causing us to moan every day—and we should wave a flag for His Nibs?” I went to school without making a flag. As a cold wind blew, all the school’s pupils, each one holding the flag he’d made, were lined up along the riverbank at the eastern end of Aioi Bridge. It was the route the emperor’s car would take on his way to worship at Gokoku Shrine at the castle. Nervous teachers flew about among the pupils, straightening and restraightening the row. I watched them with disgust. I thought of the human being, the emperor. I thought of Hiroshima, with countless bodies buried all around in the rubble. What was the emperor feeling in this place? I was shocked that he could look calmly at these ruins. The emperor, I concluded, must be a cold-blooded, insensitive person. If he were a normal human being, he wouldn’t be able to see the sights in Hiroshima, riding in comfort in a car through this site of the horror brought on by the war he himself started. He wouldn’t be able to face the ruins.
From a distance came shouts of “Banzai! Banzai!” and the emperor’s car appeared. The teachers ordered us to shout “Banzai!” and wave the flags. I could see him through the car window: he had on a black coat, with a white scarf about his neck, and he was waving his soft hat to the people lining the road. In the instant the car passed in front of me, I felt the impulse to leap at the emperor, set my teeth in his neck, and kill him. I got hot all over even in the cold wind; I was so worked up I had sweat on my back: “This guy! How dare he kill Dad and Eiko and Susumu! How dare he consign the rest of us to life in the depths!” I shook in my fury, my whole body hot with anger, and I glared at the emperor. With my worn clog, I kicked a piece of tile lying at my feet. It hit a tire and bounced back.
I desperately repressed my rage amid the flags teachers and pupils waved, amid the shouts of “Banzai!” That scene I engraved on my heart; I’ll never forget it as long as I live. The teachers and citizens waving flags to the emperor seemed utterly foolish. I knew the fearsomeness of “education,” that apparatus that brainwashed the Japanese people, that beat militarism into them.
In the next day’s paper, I read an article saying that with the emperor’s visit to Hiroshima, the residents hoped to rise above the disaster of the atomic bomb. I roared: “Ridiculous! To place your hopes of life on such a shitty emperor! If you want us to have hopes of living, then bring us a bushel of rice!” A distasteful expression on her face, Mom said sternly that I should stop criticizing the emperor. Mom had learned from experience, draining the dregs from when Dad had been arrested and locked up by the Special Police. I really hated that attitude of simply giving up: “yield to superior power,” “there’s nothing for it but. . . .” I couldn’t bear to live with bowed head and not to go against the establishment, to be a toady as a strategy for getting ahead in the world.
Encountering New Treasure Island
In order to earn a bit more, Mom stopped painting for Uncle H. and turned to needles, making use of a craft she’d learned as a girl. Needles and pins were a product for which Hiroshima Prefecture was noted. Mom could grasp dozens of finished needles in one hand and sort good from bad. It wasn’t something just anyone could do. A person whose palms sweated easily was said to have a “salty hand” and couldn’t get work in the industry. If your palms sweated, they got salty, and the pins rusted and were no good. At good times, Mom often hummed popular romantic tunes from the twenties. In particular, she loved the Gondolier’s Song: “Life is short.
. . .”[4] She sang as she looked at the needles in her palm. When she was in a good mood, I was truly happy.
Although Mom and Ko¯ji were working hard, we were still poor. It was not uncommon for wages to be delayed and for us to go several months without cash income. During such times I worked hard to increase my own small earnings, gathering metal, glass, and bricks from the burned-out waste. I could sell copper and brass and lead in particular at a high price, so even on my way to school, I always kept my eyes peeled for these metals. If I saw something that looked promising, I’d scratch it on the pavement. Copper shone red when scratched; brass shone yellow. Rejoicing—“Red!” “Yellow!”—I’d tuck it away in my pocket, take it home, and save it up. Then I’d sell it to a metal dealer and earn a few pennies.
With that money I’d buy a penny’s worth of sweet potato jelly and go to the movie house that had opened in front of Hiroshima Station and, entranced, watch the old silent films. The storyteller came by each night and I would watch, enthralled, my heart racing.[5] I got to know the storyteller and took on the job of walking around clapping the clappers to summon an audience. I went around the neighborhood—Clap! Clap!—summoning the children. In return, I got to watch for free and was given a chopstick wrapped in pickled seaweed and dipped in malt syrup. The storyteller prided himself on narrating with seven different voices. Enraptured by his impassioned performance, I worshipped him. Golden Bat and Little Big Man were hits that transported the children of the ruins during the postwar period.
There was a comic saying, “With the new education, we’re good only at baseball.”[6] I, too, loved sandlot baseball. We used cotton army gloves in place of mitts, and we broke off tree branches and peeled the bark to make bats. To make balls, we wrapped string around the glass balls from lemonade bottles.[7] We ran about barefoot on the burned waste, among the shards of glass and pebbles, immersed in three-base baseball. We threw ourselves about recklessly.
One day I encountered a terrific manga book; it changed my life. Artwork by Sakai Shichima, story by Tezuka Osamu: New Treasure Island.[8] A classmate had brought New Treasure Island to class and was reading it. Around him gathered a human wall, one child’s head beside the next, unmoving. I too was one of them, waiting for the owner to turn the page, following the frames intently. The boy who owned the book was a stinker, and he’d close the book or take forever to turn the page. I’d read along, getting angry and scolding him, “Turn the page! Open it wider!” New Treasure Island unveiled a truly fresh and adventurous dream. I wanted to read what happened next and couldn’t wait for recess to come. To get the owner to turn the page, I toadied to him and flattered him. Thrilled, I lost myself in reading it.
I wanted to read New Treasure Island at my leisure, all by myself, and pleaded with him earnestly to let me borrow it. But he refused stubbornly: “If I let you, Dad’ll scold me!” So I asked, “Well, then, tell me where you bought it!” He replied, “Dad went to Osaka on business and bought it for me there!” I couldn’t go all the way to Osaka to buy it, but I was utterly in love with New Treasure Island and had to have a copy. I made the rounds of all the bookstores in the heart of the city, on Hatcho¯bori, and at the Hiroshima Station plaza, scanning the bookshelves, eyes peeled.
Finally, at a small bargain bookstore at Yokogawa Station, I spotted New Treasure Island on a shelf, and I was madly happy. I grabbed the money I’d saved up selling scrap metal—I always kept it in my pocket so I’d be able to buy the book—and thrust it at the bookstore man. I always squeezed the ten yen notes, so they were all crinkled.[9] I’ll never forget my joy and excitement when the long-desired New Treasure Island was finally mine. I danced my way home and immersed myself in it. I read it hundreds of times, thousands of times. I memorized the icon at the top of the page where the main character rode on a giant snake. I memori
zed the text, of course, even the sound of the drums of the attacking natives.
New Treasure Island is an important work—you simply can’t write the postwar history of manga without including it. During the war, of course, there were manga. But I didn’t find those manga all that fascinating. New Treasure Island was so dazzling that for me it might as well have been the very first manga. Today’s manga boom got its start with New Treasure Island.
New Treasure Island was issued in 1947 and is said to be the single best seller of the early postwar era. I learned later that it sold between four and five hundred thousand copies. The author’s name engraved itself on my heart and never faded. For me, “Tezuka Osamu” was godlike. For a long time we didn’t read the characters of his given name “Osamu;” among Ko¯ji and the children, it was “Jimushi” or “Harumushi.”[10]
Collecting scrap metal, saving up my money, I searched intently for Tezuka’s works and bought them all. Pistol Angel, Twenty Tobies, Enchanted Forest, Big City Metropolis, Lost World of the Last Century, The World of the Future, Faust, Crime and Punishment: every one of Tezuka’s works, so numerous as to be uncountable, had an impact on me.
Dad had been an artist in traditional ink painting, and from my earliest days I’d been fond of seeing and drawing pictures. I hated virtually all my schoolwork and liked only the art class. There’s an adage, “Become expert at what you love.” I’d become a manga fanatic, and it wasn’t enough simply to read them. I wanted to draw them myself. I began to copy lots of them and develop my own style of drawing. With enormous excitement, I devoted myself to drawing manga. No matter how poor you are, the day you spread your wings and set off into a world of your own is truly fulfilling, impossibly happy. I couldn’t buy expensive sketch paper, so I’d wander the black market at Hiroshima Station plaza and tear down movie posters and the like, take them home, cut them to size, sew them into a notebook, and draw manga on their blank backs.
Day after day I drew manga. I became a movie fan, too. The worlds of manga and movies, I thought, seemed mutually intelligible. The construction of the film image and the manga frame, the use of words, the ways of presenting the progress of the drama and building tension, and the like: there were tons of things in film to learn from. Wanting to learn, I watched the screen intently.
In Matoba-cho¯, right next to Hiroshima Station, there was a movie house that split the week between old foreign movies and Japanese movies. The price of admission was the odd sum of two yen ninety-nine sen. According to the tax law, if you charged three yen, you had to add tax, so this odd price avoided the tax. Playing hooky from school or after school, I’d grab three yen and, not wasting any of it on tram fare, plod barefoot on my frequent visits to the movie house. There I saw countless films. And I gained a great storehouse of treasure—the philosophy, ideas, and history necessary for life. The messages I learned from films were far more significant and useful than the lessons I learned at school.
At that theater I saw virtually all the famous prewar films and engraved them scene-by-scene on my heart. In particular, I’ll never forget The Hunchback of Notre Dame—the adroitness of its camera angles against the backdrop of Notre Dame, the power of its drama. It was remade later starring Anthony Quinn and Gina Lollobrigida. In Japanese cinema, The Far Side of the Mountain and Silver Peaks had a permanent impact.[11]
I memorized, too, the names of actors, more and more of them. All the Japanese actors and actresses, of course.[12] Gary Cooper, Tyrone Power, James Cagney, Randolph Scott, Clark Gable, Robert Taylor, Alan Ladd, Humphrey Bogart, John Wayne. Susan Hayward, June Allyson, Ava Gardner, Deborah Kerr, Piper Laurie, Martha Hayes. I stored countless names in my memory. Chaplin, the Mutt-and-Jeff combo Abbott and Costello, the Marx Brothers, Bob Hope, Danny Kaye—all were important characters useful in comic manga.
As I came to love film, my desire to draw manga increased. We were forbidden by the school to go to see movies alone, without father or older brothers, but had I obeyed that rule, I would never have become the person I am today. I saw countless movies, so they were a great source of inspiration in drawing manga. Teachers and well-intentioned fathers and older brothers believed that if kids went to the movies on their own, they’d turn into delinquents. I hated people who held that crazy idea so much it made me want to throw up. Sitting on the stage, the shadow of my head falling on the screen, I watched films that forbade admission to people younger than eighteen because of sexual content or violence.[13] To say that children would immediately run amok if they saw such films! Or that on seeing a gangster film they’d suddenly become no-goods! I had no love for a school that had such simplistic, silly ideas.
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.
At the Hatcho¯bori trolley stop was Hiroshima’s only seven-story department store. On its seventh floor there was a movie theater, and there I saw famous films like Beauty and the Beast and Black Narcissus.[14] If you went out onto the roof garden, Hiroshima lay spread out, a panorama. By 1950, the burned-out ruins of atomic desert were completely covered by huts. I was stunned by the power of man’s drive to live. Three or four years earlier, this burned-out store had housed many moaning burned and injured bomb victims, but year by year it was rehabbed, and high-class goods came to be displayed, more and more, on the store’s counters. It was a great playground for us. From early in the morning on vacation days, we’d ride the elevator, going up and down over and over again. In summer we’d run about the store virtually naked, wearing only loincloths. The store clerks were amazed and disgusted.
The area around this store was also the site of gangster fights. In summer these thugs swaggered about, sunglasses glittering, in bright aloha shirts and loud, colored belly bands. Although Hiroshima hoisted the banner “Peace City Reconstruction,” Hiroshima gangster fights increased dramatically; it was an ironic Hiroshima, the desire for peace coexisting with murder. Outwardly, year by year the scars left by the atomic bomb were covered over, and it became a gaudy city, but inwardly, the excruciating groans from the atomic bomb and its aftereffects were pushed deep into the background.
At our house, too, we installed shutters and sliding screens to divide the rooms, and our furniture increased by two or three items. We installed classy mats on our floors, and it became a bit more like home.
As for the lyric “Life Is Short” of the Gondolier’s Song that Mom sang when she was in a good mood, little by little her singing grew more beautiful. A man proposed to Mom. Worried lest Mom abandon us and run off, we were unbearably uneasy. Each time he appeared, I glared at him. I was overjoyed to hear Mom’s reply, “I definitely won’t remarry until the children are on their own!” But the unease remained, and mornings as soon as I opened my eyes, I looked at the sliding screen into the kitchen. When I saw it dyed red by the light of the stove and Mom silhouetted against the light, I relaxed.
Mom and Ko¯ji kept working as hard as they could, but we were still poor. I was so struck by the pathos of Mom’s working from early to late that I wanted to go right out and get a job and earn money so things would improve a bit. But on being convinced that my job prospects would suffer if I didn’t complete compulsory education, I went to school, albeit reluctantly.
The Korean War broke out (1950), and suddenly the metal industry prospered. Lead, copper, and brass rose in value and began to sell for a lot. I ran about the ruins of Hiroshima, eyes peeled, looking for metal. The money from that went for my own school materials, drawing manga, movie admissions, and the like. I couldn’t say to Mom, “Give me money.” As a fifth grader, I had the spirit of independence, of providing for myself, and I was no mean worker. I was confident I could support myself.
R
ealizing that in order to make manga storylines I needed to read more, I went often to the rental libraries and consumed novels of all kinds. I read Yoshikawa Eiji’s historical novels, and they set my fifth-grade heart racing. I admired the clever structure of Miyamoto Musashi, and I read Osaragi Jiro¯’s Demon of Kurama and Nomura Kodo¯’s Zenigata Heiji utterly enthralled.[15]
The school still had no library, so each of us brought in his own books, and we made a class library. It was only a few books, and it was hard to wait your turn. The grade school shared the building with a junior high, so there were morning and afternoon sessions. But as schools were built in the various parts of Hiroshima, the number of pupils decreased, glass was set in the window frames, the twisted metal was cleared from the schoolyard, the buildings repaired, and finally the atmosphere became a school-like one, of going to school and learning. No sooner had this happened than I graduated. I said my good-byes both to the milk supplied by the Occupation army and to the school lunch’s single roll. Because the milk was supplied by America, I’d thought it was full of nutrition, so I’d downed even what others left in their cups.
I have only bitter, unhappy memories of that school. A particularly sad memory was of the sports days that began in the fall. The lunch break was truly tough. On this day, people made fancy box lunches, and classmates scattered to their families in the stands, gobbled down their sushi and scrambled eggs, and talked and laughed happily with their families. Watching them was very hard. My lunchbox held barley rice, and it was barley bran—unhulled at that—what people fed to cows and other livestock. I squeezed hard, trying to make that barley into rice balls, but it crumbled and slipped between my fingers and wouldn’t hold together. When it finally hardened, I wrapped it in paper and brought it to school, but I wasn’t brave enough to unwrap it and eat it in front of people. It was too different from their lunches.
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