Hiroshima

by Nakazawa Keiji

  Boy’s Magazine and Boys’ Sunday were the founding fathers of manga weeklies and boasted of their circulation. But in the blink of an eye Boys’ Jump overtook them and overwhelmed them, selling consistently one million, then two million copies. This circulation even became a source of public concern. I was absolutely delighted that Jump sold. My work caught the eye of many readers, and it was good for them to encounter the reality of war and the atomic bomb. Barefoot Gen was heavy subject matter, and I knew perfectly well it wouldn’t become a big popular hit. But steadily, if rather inconspicuously, Gen attracted fans.

  I got letters. From adults—“I remember the suffering of war and don’t want there to be another war.” From grade school pupils—“I pity Gen, who was starved for food, so I’d like to give him my food.” People thanked me for Gen—“You’ve rendered the wartime give-and-take between parent and child smoothly.” Editor N.’s second-in-command told me, “When I take Jump home with me, my mother reads only Gen.” A young editor assigned to me just out of college had thought little of being assigned Gen—war was no concern of his. But as the book’s installments advanced, he realized that war destroyed all that is human, and he wept over Japan as it tumbled down the slope to defeat. In a state of high excitement, I drew the panels that told Gen’s story.

  One time, I was with other manga artists; they formed a group. One of them, A., said to me, “Enough with the atomic bomb manga!” He said, “They’re too cruel, too shocking, for children! They’re not good for them!” He said, “Manga have to give children dreams!” A. had received publisher S.’s prize for children’s manga and said proudly that his own manga, which featured pigs flying through the air, were good manga. I was aghast and nearly puked: how can I associate with these worthless people?

  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 war 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. Do those people imagine that if war comes, if atomic bombs are dropped, there’ll be time for the artistic discussion of fairy tales and the like? In an instant all that will be wiped out. I was disgusted: what un-serious, silly artists! It turned my stomach that A., who gave himself airs as a man of the fine arts, thought he could get on his high horse and tell someone else to stop.

  To be accepted into that manga group of A. and his fellows, you had to be recommended by three manga artists. A. said self-importantly that okay, he’d recommend me. I thought, “Eat shit!” I puked at the thought that anyone would want to be accepted into that group. I believe in belonging to no group. I think it’s an unfortunate thing to be constrained by the rules or the pressure of the group and not be able to speak your mind. I don’t associate with other manga artists. That’s because I’m unhappy associating with fellow cartoonists—it’s as if I’m only seeing myself. It’s when I associate with people from professions with which I’m not acquainted that I learn and gain.

  Slanderous voices like that of A. came to my ears, but I didn’t respond to them. Instead, I thought, “Say what you will!” Even if I worked my whole life, I couldn’t dispel my hatred of war and the atomic bomb; knowing that, I kept drawing Gen.

  I drew what happened on the day the bomb fell. Even my editor reacted negatively to the harsh scenes that unfolded in the burned-out ruins of atomic wasteland: he said, “It’s horrible.” But I continued to struggle, unable to re-create the truth that was still burned onto my retinas. Quite the opposite of the editor, I wondered: “Wishy-washy depictions like these make such an impact on him?” With each episode, as I drew pictures of maggots wriggling in burns or the putrefaction of corpses, readers grew increasingly uncomfortable. I became dejected and decided to change my drawing, even though the result wasn’t realistic. If, merely because they get uneasy, people won’t follow the story, why draw it? So I drew it in much softer fashion.

  The speed of the weeklies’ cycle dumbfounded me. The days were tough. I continued to be pursued by deadlines, and my killer schedule exhausted me. I hated the production system, where you hire lots of assistants to produce the manga. I couldn’t bear to be like the manga artists who have several monthly and weekly magazines. As in a factory production line, they hire dozens of assistants and set the manuscript on a conveyor belt. The only way was for me to draw my own story myself, difficult though it was. I couldn’t talk myself into working in a drab manga factory.

  As the weeklies became established and the demand for manga grew, the method of producing manga became established: bring together authors responsible only for the stories and manga artists who did the drawings to suit. It was the method used in making movies and was said to be the trend of the times. But I didn’t want to become a manga man who takes someone else’s stories and churns out drawings like so much wallpaper. To my mind, manga should be the unified expression of your own ideas and emotions. I couldn’t take the cheerlessness of drawing pictures for a story that wasn’t my own. I couldn’t go along with the “anything for a buck” mentality. In that sense, I plodded along, self-confident, with the help of my wife and, at crunch time, temporary assistants. I prided myself on my method even when people told me, “You’re old-fashioned.”

  I continued to draw criticism of the emperor system and censure of the United States for dropping the atomic bomb, so I thought I’d get plenty of harassment. But I was disappointed that Gen provoked neither a single polemic nor the harassment I’d anticipated.

  Then came the oil shock. It brought a shortage of paper and economic chaos. The page count of the weeklies suddenly shrank, and the page count of manga books was reduced time and again. Told to keep Gen to thirty-page installments and many times to skip an installment, I grew unhappy, thinking, “This happens just when the story is developing!” My exhaustion became extreme, and the energy to draw Gen disappeared. At that point, founding editor N. was promoted and left the scene, and I got Jump to let me stop Gen, even though it was still unfinished; it had run in Jump for eighteen months. I realized Gen was not at the top of fan popularity in Jump. In the harsh world of commercial magazines, unpopular works got cut one after the other. I was indebted to editor N. and the others for Jump’s conscience in continuing to run Gen even though it wasn’t popular.

  I hoped to regain my health and resume the serialization of Gen, but for the moment I’d lost the energy to draw Gen. The manuscript of Gen came back, and I packed it away in the storeroom. Rereading my own work made my flesh crawl. It was really tough. I grew dejected—“I really am lousy!” Issues of magazines carrying my work I immediately stuck in a drawer. Ideas for Gen continued to rattle around inside my head, but for a change of pace I drew light works. Six months passed.

  Gen and Beyond

  Year by year, the U.S.–U.S.S.R. nuclear arms race grew more fierce, and in desperation I found fault with both sides: “Yeah, let’s have more and more nukes. Both of you go all the way, and we’ll all die!” I boiled over: “You think there are winners and losers in a nuclear war?! Damn fools!” One day I got a phone call from reporter Y. at the Asahi newspaper. He covered things atomic and had learned that there was a manga titled Barefoot Gen. He asked, “Won’t you let me read it for my own enlightenment?” I was puzzled—“Why should work I did six months ago be useful now?”—but I said okay.

  Pulling from the drawer issues of Boys’ Jump that carried Gen, I piled up eighteen months’ worth. While I worked, reporter Y. sat in a chair behind me, mumbling and shifting back and forth in his chair as he read Gen. I thought that w
as a strange way to read, but I kept on working. When it began to get dark, Y. had read nearly half of Gen and said, “I’d like to come back tomorrow morning and read.” He put me on the spot. With someone sitting behind me, I was distracted and couldn’t work, but reluctantly I said okay. Next day Y. read the ensuing installments of Gen and mumbled a lot. All that shifting in his chair and muttering: it was really strange.

  Only afterward did I understand that Y. was crying as he read Gen. Embarrassed to show tears, he kept shifting in his chair to hide the fact that he was crying. He mumbled to hide his sobs. Once he’d read all of Gen, Y. asked me, “Why not issue Gen as a book from the company that published it as a serial?” I explained the restraints under which commercial publishing operates.

  My Okinawa had been serialized in Jump. To turn it into a book, I’d reduced the page count and drawn a four-color cover, and it was ready for the presses to roll; we’d be able to put it on sale right away. I too rejoiced that for the first time my work would appear in book form. But the process of turning Okinawa into a book came to a sudden stop. Afterward, I learned the reason from those in charge. A work with heavy political coloring that questioned real war and atomic bomb was okay in a weekly because it vanished after that week; as a book, it would remain the company’s product and give the company a bad image. So the company couldn’t publish it. I learned there was pressure from above: “We can’t produce works that oppose the current government!” It was the same as the self-censorship of the commercial magazines. I lost hope. I was appreciative of the attitude of the editors who’d been good enough to carry through with the serialization of Okinawa and Barefoot Gen. That was the explanation why there was absolutely no way to turn Barefoot Gen into a book.

  Y. was avid to turn Barefoot Gen into a book. He talked with groups and people he knew. I’d never experienced such friendly assistance from anyone outside manga publishing. Y. approached bomb victim groups, too, and pushed the idea of a book aimed at those who hadn’t seen the serial version, arguing that Gen was significant because it had communicated the war and atomic bomb candidly to twenty million Japanese.

  If the decision was made to publish Gen as a book, Y. said, he wanted to write articles about the process. I, too, thought it would be a shame if the manuscript of Gen wound up buried in the storeroom, and I asked acquaintances whether they knew of a willing publisher. I was given introductions to several publishers, but the conventional wisdom held that atomic bomb stuff didn’t sell, so they didn’t take the project on. At that point, from a conversation with an acquaintance, I learned of a press that would publish it as a book. It was a publisher who had absolutely no connection with manga, who specialized in academic texts and textbooks.

  May 1975. The book version of Gen went on sale. Y.’s article about Gen was reported widely in the arts pages. Triggered by his article, the mass media—TV, radio, and the rest—joined in. Demolishing the conventional wisdom that atomic bomb stuff didn’t sell, the four volumes of Barefoot Gen sold in a rush. The number of Barefoot Gen’s readers increased several times over.

  Then, aware that Gen was incomplete and that the structure of the rest was all set, Y. gave me an introduction to a magazine that would serialize Gen. It was the monthly The People, a magazine that ran hard stories and works, and I felt out of place. But I was grateful to Y., and in September 1975 in The People, the first installment of the postwar part began. Serialization in The People ended after one year. It folded because of poor management. The postwar part of Gen ended in midstream.

  Although I was puzzled that the reaction to Gen was so huge, I searched for a magazine to complete the unfinished serialization of Gen. Publisher S., an acquaintance, introduced me to the monthly Literary Review, and it ran the postwar part of Gen for about three and a half years, but the editor in chief told me, “I can’t pay you, so please stop.” Gen came to a halt once more. I was asked by Education Review whether I might do an eight-part manga. I asked them to run Gen, and Education Review ran it for three and a half years. Even though I was ruining my health, I finally completed it. From the start of serialization, it had taken fourteen years.

  Even I agree that that was an astonishingly long time. In book form Gen became ten volumes, and they quickly made the rounds among children. In libraries, they were read so much that the copies became dog-eared and broken. For a manga man, that was the highest honor. Manga are destined to be read once then chucked. I was truly grateful for readers’ letters, saying things like “I’ve read it twenty times.”

  Thank you to the female college student from Akita who, having read Gen, is taking part in the antinuclear movement.

  Thank you to the Sendai housewife who said that if I kept writing Gen, she’d keep reading it no matter how many years she had to wait.

  Thank you to the many girls who saw the anime of Gen and sobbed, “I’m terrified!” You all really understood foursquare the horror of war and atomic bomb.

  Thank you to the many people who nurtured Gen and supported me. You have my sincere gratitude.

  The History of Hiroshima Prefecture says, “Before the war, there was an antiwar movement in Kanzaki.” Kanzaki is where our house was. The reference is to the antiwar activities of Dad and the others. Just recently, a monument was erected to “unsung soldiers” on Peace Boulevard in Hiroshima. It lists the names of those who carried on antiwar activities despite official repression and who died in the atomic bombing. Their names are listed, and they are enshrined together. Those who erected the monument inform me that on the list is Dad’s name, Nakazawa Terumi.

  Life is short—fall in love, young woman,

  Before the red fades from your lips,

  Before the hot blood cools within you.

  There’s no tomorrow.

  —Yoshii Takeshi

  The Gondolier’s Song that Mom sang is my theme song. I resolve from now on to my dying day to keep drawing works that fill in the void of Hiroshima, the void which, fill it though I try, can never be filled. And I tell myself that this time I’ll be the one singing the Gondolier’s Song Mom sang.

  As the child of Nakazawa Terumi and Nakazawa Kimiyo, I swear I’ll keep singing.

  [1]In 1960 Prime Minister Kishi Nobusuke rammed through the Diet (Japan’s legislature) a renewal of the U.S.–Japan security arrangement. Mass protest led to the death of one protester and the cancellation of President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s planned trip to Japan.

  [2]Yanaka is two JNR (Japanese National Railways) stops north of Ueno. At the 1961 exchange rate, 30,000 yen was less than $100.

  [3]Yoshinaga Sayuri (b. 1945), singer and movie star. The Yanaka Ginza was Yanaka’s (much smaller) version of Tokyo’s Ginza, a shopping and entertainment district.

  [4]Kokintei Shinsho¯ (1890–1973), master of comic monologues.

  [5]In a major collision on May 3, 160 people died and 296 people were seriously injured.

  [6]The author has misremembered here: the kidnap took place in 1964, not 1963.

  [7]A combination of the names Hirohito and Hitler, intended to tie the Japanese emperor closely to Japan’s wartime ally Adolf Hitler.

  [8]Beginning in 1964, Japan’s bullet trains ran—at first only between Tokyo and Osaka—at speeds up to 180 mph. They shortened the travel time between those two cities from nearly seven hours to just over three.

  [9]Waga seishun ni kuinaki (1946); Subarashiki Nichiyo¯bi (1947); Ikiru (1952).

  [10]In Japanese funerary practice, once the body has been cremated, the relatives pick out the major bones and place them in an urn.

  [11]Nagano Tadasu.

  [12]The U.S.-Japan Security Treaty of 1960 came up for revision; Okinawa remained under total U.S. control until 1972. Both the U.S. and Japanese governments claimed that there were no nuclear weapons on Japanese soil or on American warships in Japanese waters, but that claim was not true.

  [13]Okinawa had been Japanese territory since at least 1873, but from 1945 to the reversion in 1972, Okinawa was U.S. territory, an
d the Japanese needed both passport and visa to travel there.

  [14]Akahata (Red Flag) is the organ of the Japan Communist Party.

  [15]Gen is the first half of the compound Genso, which means chemical element.

  Afterword

  Barefoot Gen was born as a manga based on my actual experience. It became a picture book and a children’s book. It also became a documentary, an animation, a stage play, and an opera. Indeed, Gen’s been running around in many shapes and forms.

  Barefoot Gen was serialized in Weekly Boys’ Jump twenty-one years ago, in 1973. That, in human terms, means it’s about to become an adult.

  Next year (1995) will be the fiftieth year since the end of the Pacific War, and it will be the fiftieth anniversary of the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. On the major occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the atomic bombs, the media will treat it at length.

  But even if they treat it at length on the fiftieth anniversary, once the fiftieth is past, interest will probably ebb like the tide. The media will stop covering it—“The story of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima is over”; “We can stop talking about the war now.”

  There are the bomb victims, and there are those who have suffered damage from nuclear weapons all over the world. The globe has been contaminated by nukes. So long as one atomic bomb exists, Hiroshima will remain an issue.