Hiroshima

by Nakazawa Keiji

  The Meeting with Editor-in-Chief N.[11]

  Meeting N., the founding editor-in-chief of Boys’ Jump, filled me with gratitude: I had found the person in my manga life who understood me best. Advice from editor N. broadened my imagery incredibly. I’d met many editors in chief of major magazines before, but they’d searched out the weaknesses of my work and pointed out only its flaws. No one had given me criticism that would improve it. On the way home, I’d often thought, “That jackass is editor in chief of a manga magazine?!”

  When I’d taken my work to show it to publisher K., he’d told me haughtily, “We publish only the work of major manga artists. It’s ten years too soon for a newcomer like you to come to us!” I’d returned boiling mad, thinking I’d never again take work to him, that I’d die first. Soon after its founding, Boys’ Jump overtook those haughty weeklies, its circulation leaving them far behind. Thrown for a loop by the Boys’ Jump editorial policy of using only newcomer artists, they quickly set out to imitate it. I was disgusted. It was a case of “how the mighty have fallen!”

  After publishing in the very second issue of Boys’ Jump, I drew light manga. It was a relief to be liberated a bit from the suffocating theme of the atomic bomb. At the time, will-power manga were at their peak, and manga aimed at macho males were popular—intense stories in which the protagonist endures harsh training to become strong. Reading such manga made me puke. Lots of offensive words that embarrassed readers, stories puerile to the point of foolishness—it made me mad as a manga artist. As a counter, I thought, how about a nerdy, weak boy? I composed tales of a nerdy guy: Guzuroku—Let’s Burn, Guzuroku March. These drafts editor N. okayed on the spot. I was shocked by his decisiveness. Soon afterward, imitating Guzuroku, other magazines began to run manga with nerds as protagonists. I felt great: “Told you so!”

  April 1970. Grim articles abounded in the press—stalemate in the Vietnam War; pro or con on the 1970 Security Treaty; from the previous fall, the issue of the reversion of Okinawa to Japan in 1972 without nukes, on the same footing as the rest of Japan.[12]

  I had no choice but to concern myself with nuclear issues. My anger about the atomic bomb returned quickly. I asked my editor, “How about letting me do a manga on the atomic bomb?” For reference I showed him my work from Manga Punch. N. praised Manga Punch: “I’m glad they were willing to run this.” And he said to me, “Okay, let’s do it.”

  In Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the time, second-generation bomb victims were dying of the aftereffects of the atomic bomb, and I was uneasy lest my daughter, too, have aftereffects. I wanted to deny them—“Aftereffects? What aftereffects?”—but facts are facts, and you have to accept them coolly. I experimented with a single-issue work, sixty pages long—Suddenly One Day. I gave my feelings as a parent to the protagonist, a second-generation bomb victim. I showed the rough sketches to editor N. I sat opposite N. and watched uneasily, thinking he’d likely say no. As he read, editor N. grabbed tissues from his desk and blew his nose—snort, snort!—time and again. I was astonished to realize editor N. was weeping. When he finished reading, he said, “Add another twenty pages! Make it an eighty-pager!”

  For manga weeklies at the time, eighty pages was an enormous page count for a single-issue story. He pointed out several passages that I needed to work on, and he also expanded my imagery several times over. He said, “This is the first time I’ve been so moved by rough sketches.” Suddenly One Day appeared in Boys’ Jump, which proper parents always pointed to as “a lowbrow manga magazine.” I realized anew the value of the “lowbrows.”

  Mail poured in virtually every day, from all over Japan, from adults and from students in college, high school, junior high, grade school, even kindergarten. Readers’ letters filled a cardboard carton. I sorted the letters and read them. No matter what the age group, more than half the letters spoke of shock at the subject matter: “The atomic bomb as you drew it in Suddenly One Day—is that fact? I didn’t know that the atomic bomb caused such enormous destruction.” I was shocked. I’d thought that textbooks contained accounts of the bomb, that of course they taught the reality of the bomb in school, in civics and history classes. But the exact opposite was true. People didn’t know a thing about the atomic bomb. In the face of this basic lack of knowledge, it was disgusting to hear successive prime ministers state, “Japan is the only country to suffer atomic bombing.” The letters taught me just how ignorant the Japanese were about the bomb. It didn’t surprise me to learn that even in Hiroshima half the children didn’t know the facts about the bomb.

  Readers encouraged me to tell more about the bomb, and so did editor N.: “Each year for a week or more, they convene a huge assembly on the abolition of nuclear weapons, and they argue. If they read Suddenly One Day, they wouldn’t need a lot of argument.”

  A letter came from a grade school teacher in Niigata. A pupil had brought Boys’ Jump into the classroom, and he’d said angrily, “Never bring manga to class!” The pupil had responded, “But some manga are good!” and showed him Suddenly One Day. He got a great shock; he thought he’d received a blow to the head. He passed it around to teachers in the staff room and had them read it, and they were all astonished. On a school day during summer vacation, he’d spread out my work in front of the pupils and talked to them about the atomic bomb. They followed him easily, and when he consulted with other teachers, a plan surfaced to turn Suddenly One Day into a slide show. His letter asked my permission. I told him to go ahead if it served his purpose. Later I learned that they’d figured it was more effective for the pupils to read it in manga form and abandoned the idea of a slide show. Readers’ reactions varied widely, and I was impressed by the numbers and energy of the readers of the manga weeklies. The downside was that it got harder for me to draw about the atomic bomb.

  When I drew scenes of the atomic bombing, the cruel realities of the atomic bomb came back to me, one after the other: the stench of rotting corpses, the stench of pus flowing from burns. My mood darkened, as if I was trapped in a hole with no way to get out. I grew utterly depressed. What’s more, in introducing Pelted by Black Rain and other works, the Asahi newspaper wrote that I was a Hiroshima bomb victim, and my image as atomic bomb manga artist spread. A coarse-mouthed neighborhood woman said to me, “Go ahead and write about your relatives. Me, I’d never bring shame to my own family!” She criticized my wife, “You married a bomb victim. He’ll die soon of aftereffects of the atomic bomb, and then you’ll be in a fix!” My wife shook with anger.

  Taking those thoughts, too, into consideration, my wife asked me to stop writing about the atomic bomb. I also disliked being labeled “atomic bomb manga artist,” and I wanted to stop drawing manga about the atomic bomb. But on the other hand, my anger toward the war and the atomic bomb grew and burned all the more. The city was full of avant-garde coffee shops, people dressed in psychedelic colors, hippies; on international antiwar day, Shinjuku Station was occupied by protesters and set ablaze. With the university struggles that occurred one after the other and the 1970 struggle over the Security Treaty, Tokyo was in an uproar.

  Having been selected in a drawing for city-managed apartments on the eastern edge of Tokyo, we were finally able to get a two-room place. In advance of the reversion of Okinawa to Japan scheduled for 1972, I wanted to tackle the true nature of the specter that is war. I asked my editor, “Can I do something about Okinawa?” Editor N. gave his okay right off and advanced me money for travel to Okinawa and for materials. Having read up on Okinawa and hammered the stuff into my head, I set off.

  I went through the procedures for foreign travel—I got a passport and a visa—and landed at Naha Airport.[13] Chain-link base fences stretched endlessly on both sides of the road, the whole way from the airport to Naha City, until I got to the hotel on International Road. The latest planes took off for Vietnam. Warships clogged the harbor. The route was a weapons expo. I’d seen the bases at Iwakuni near Hiroshima and Yokota near Tokyo and had imagined Okinawa would be like the
m, but I was astonished at the unimaginable size of the U.S. bases. It was as if the people of Okinawa lived on a mere spot of land among the bases.

  At Kadena Air Base I got out my camera to take a picture of B-52s taking off, and a patrol car came rushing up, red light flashing and guards with carbines. It was further confirmation that Okinawa was really America. Their land having been stolen for use as bases, farmers tilled their fields and grew crops right up to the fences. Children learned at school amid the incredibly loud noise. Racial fights took place between blacks and whites on the streets of Koza. Squat munitions storehouses contained nuclear weapons. Okinawa had been turned into a battlefield. It might explode at the slightest touch and Okinawa itself vaporized instantly. I trembled at the thought.

  Walking the battlefield of southern Okinawa, where artillery shells had poured down like iron rain, I peered into a foxhole in the field. I was overcome, thinking, “They crouched in so small a hole to keep from getting torn apart in the violent bombardment?” Fear oppressed me. As I imagined the wretched people fleeing across the battlefield, these images superimposed themselves on the images of me fleeing atomic hell, and I had trouble breathing. As I walked about Okinawa, the only battleground in the Pacific War in which land fighting involved Japanese civilians, the cruelty of war, war’s screams enveloped me. I returned to Tokyo in a very dark mood. I realized the issues involving Okinawa were too large for a single manga artist to treat.

  My editor asked me, “How’s the Okinawa work coming?” At the point of tears, I replied, “Let me off, please. Okinawa’s utterly impossible to draw. You even advanced me money for materials, so I apologize.” In fact, I did suffer greatly trying to make a manga about Okinawa. With the persuasion and advice of my editor, I tried again to draw Okinawa. All I could do was draw honestly what I’d actually seen, so I made it a report on Okinawa, entitled “Okinawa,” and published it in Boys’ Jump. Mail poured in from readers. Once again I realized the power of the “lowbrow weeklies.” Many letters were filled with prejudice and naive Japanese thinking about war: “The Okinawans speak Japanese? I thought they spoke only English,” and the like.

  I understood clearly just how biased many Japanese were about Okinawa. They forgot that during the war it was damaged so thoroughly and that after the war it was occupied by the U.S. army and was cast off from Japan proper. Given that many Japanese didn’t even know the facts of the atomic bombing of Japan, that wasn’t surprising. A cocky letter came from a young Self-Defense Forces man: “Okinawa is forever crucial as an important base for the defense of Japan proper, so even after reversion, we’ll keep the current bases; we’ll take over and defend Japan. It’s not something for manga artists like you to get worried about. Don’t complain about Okinawa.” I got angry. I got savage: “If we leave it up to young Self-Defense Force members like you who don’t know the reality of war, there’s no telling what will happen!”

  Usually I’m astonished when I see Self-Defense Forces people. Seeing them, fodder for American and Japanese merchants of death profiting from the manufacture of weapons, I want to thunder, “Don’t waste the taxpayers’ money!” If you want to defend the country, then reforest barren lands and turn them green; clean up polluted rivers and bring the fish back. That would be a true Self-Defense Force. The only way to defend Japan is peaceful diplomacy, talking with all countries. I was there when the atomic bomb fell, and I knew more than I ever wanted to know about the reality of the atomic bomb. I’m convinced the Self-Defense Forces serve no purpose and aren’t needed.

  Another thing about Okinawa angered me. I’d thought that Okinawa was occupied by the United States after Japan’s defeat, but I read an article that according to U.S. documents, in negotiating the terms of defeat and seeking clemency for himself, the emperor had said it was okay to hand over Okinawa to the United States. My blood boiled all over again. “Dumb emperor! How could you say that about Okinawa so nonchalantly?” I was astonished. Under the banner of “for the emperor,” how many Okinawans died senseless deaths? How many Okinawan young people and residents had pledged loyalty to the emperor—“Long live the emperor!”—and died? I’d collected data on the subject, so I knew the nauseatingly cruel conduct carried out in the name of the emperor. I wanted to grab the emperor by the collar, throw him into a foxhole on the battlefields of southern Okinawa, and show him the suffering of those who died.

  Turning Okinawa into Okinawa was hard work, and I suffered doing it, but I was grateful to editor N. for having had me draw Okinawa. Afterward my editor encouraged me to do a serial of Suddenly One Day, and I composed a story of a second-generation bomb victim, titled Something’s Up, eighty pages long. The reaction was enormous. More than half of all the letter writers said they hadn’t known the true facts about the atomic bomb. And they encouraged me to teach them more of the truth, of what really happened. Then I published a single-issue sixty pager, Song of the Red Dragonfly, about an old man whom the atomic bomb left without relatives.

  As I continued to draw the atomic bomb, I grew depressed and bitter, so for a while I tried a change of pace, abandoning the topic of the atomic bomb and drawing lighthearted stories. But after a while, my anger and my grudge against war and the atomic bomb bubbled up again, and I realized, “You still haven’t exhausted your hatred of the atomic bomb!” In September 1971 I was asked to do a yearlong serial for the Sunday edition of Red Flag, and I published Song of the Clang-Clang Trolley.[14] It depicted relations between a bomb victim trolley man and a second-generation bomb victim. It got very good reviews. They told me it got more response than any manga serial the party organ had ever published, and they asked me to keep the serial going. Though I was delighted, I was exhausted from thinking only about the atomic bomb for a year. So I declined and told them I wanted to end it, as per contract, at one year.

  I heard from Boys’ Jump editor N., who’d read the Sunday serial: “If you can compose for other papers, compose for Jump!” I owed him, so I could only agree. Editor N. said, “There are a great many editors in the publishing world, but I’m the only one who really understands you.” I was grateful to editor N. himself for having advised me how to create this new manga field. I was filled with gratitude that I’d been blessed with a really good editor. Anger toward the atomic bomb bubbled up again, and running headfirst into my anger—“Damn! Damn!”—I continued to draw the atomic bomb theme: Our Eternity, Song of Departure, Song of the Wooden Clappers, One Good Pitch.

  August 6, 1971. The memorial ceremony for the atomic bomb. Emperor and empress bowed at the cenotaph and visited bomb victims at a facility for bomb victims. An article reported what he said to them: “He was utterly sympathetic and hoped that world peace would continue. Learning that many citizens are still receiving treatment went to his heart. In the future, he hopes that you will have cheerful feelings for one another, continue your treatment, and quickly regain your health.” I read it in Tokyo and boiled over: “What gall! How can bomb victims have cheerful feelings? Atomic bomb sickness has no medical solution. If there were an easy solution, why would they suffer? This suffering happened on your watch, didn’t it?” I trembled with rage: “By attending the Hiroshima ceremony, you want to relegate the atomic bomb to the past and buy a get-out-of-jail-free card for your war guilt. But I won’t let you!” I was so angry at those minor functionaries who’d picked well-behaved bomb victims to sit there in the emperor’s presence and who carried out the ceremony, I could have puked.

  October 1972. Boys’ Jump Monthly decided to have each manga artist draw his autobiography, and I was urged to be leadoff batter and do the first issue. I was flustered. I declined: “Draw my autobiography? How embarrassing! Impossible!” The editor kept at me, arguing that I should set my life down in manga form. I thought it over and published in Boys’ Jump Monthly a single-issue, forty-five page autobiography, I Was There. The reviews were good, but for me it was sheer embarrassment. A letter contained this reader’s apology to me: “Nakazawa was always doing atomic bomb man
ga, so I thought he was a hateful manga man always advertising himself and profiting off the atomic bomb, but reading I Was There and realizing he had experienced the atomic bomb and was drawing the truth, I felt sorry I’d doubted him.” My own feelings were complicated and dark.

  Editor N. read my autobiography and said, “In forty-five-pages, single-issue format, you depicted only a fraction of what you really have to say. You still have much more to say. Please use this autobiography as draft and do a long serial for Boys’ Jump!” He encouraged me: you choose the serial length you want; I’ll guarantee you’ll get the page count you want. I could only agree. I was full of gratitude to editor N., who had given me a place to publish earlier. Moved, I started in on a long serial on my autobiography. Up till then, I’d published many atomic bomb manga, but I’d always wanted to stress the prewar years, something that had been impossible because of page count.

  How do wars begin? Who plans wars? I’d long thought it wasn’t possible to talk of war and atomic bombs without depicting the process whereby free speech and action and thought were stolen away under emperor-system fascism and Japan plunged into aggressive war. So my thoughts ballooned: I wanted to depict in depth Japan’s dark politics of terror, including Dad’s horrible experience of being arrested by the Thought Police, as well. My feelings ripened, too. I asked for my wife’s cooperation: “This next serial I’m really going to do it, so there’ll be hateful letters and phone calls, and bad guys may come calling, so be careful. If they want a fight, I’ll fight them to the finish.” I too firmed up my resolve and set to work.

  The Birth of Barefoot Gen

  June 1973. Using my own life and introducing as protagonist my alter ego, “Gen,” I began to draw Barefoot Gen. I portrayed my family as it actually was; I made “Gen” roam the atomic wasteland barefoot. 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 an atomic bomb happen again.[15] I began the serial in the pages of Boys’ Jump. In drawing Gen, I went back to prewar and wartime Hiroshima. One after the other, scenes came floating up: the streets of Hiroshima on which I’d wandered, starving; our neighborhood; the guys I’d fought with. In the manuscript I ran about, all over Hiroshima. And I raised my voice to sing Mom’s favorite tune, “Life is short.”