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12017-07-03T15:00:48-07:00Bradley J. Wilsond07e2adfeaea18284aa4bc3bb77cb735351313e91978510plain2019-08-02T11:52:02-07:00Ronae Matriano8ed24d71e6036affdb22f6e2fd0ec83a8e515e95On August 6, 1945, author Keiji Nakazawa was exposed to the atomic bomb in his hometown of Hiroshima. Following the death of his family members, he was spurred to tell his own tale of horror regarding the bombing. It was released as I Saw It! in 1972. After releasing his own personal story, Nakazawa returned to the experience to write a semi-fictionalized account of the aftermath of the atomic bomb. This retelling was Barefoot Gen (1973).
Barefoot Gen follows the young scion of the Nakaoka family, Gen, in his life before and after the bombing of Hiroshima. Often depicted in grisly detail, the comic ran for more than a year and was eventually collected in ten serialized volumes. In the story, Gen and his family live as pariahs in their neighborhood due to Gen's father's anti-war stance. As they struggle to survive, one day their lives are irrevocably changed as the first atomic bomb used on humans is dropped on the city. Now a crater of black ash and fire, Gen and his mother must rebuild their family in an uncertain world.
On that day, Gen and his family became hibakusha (people exposed to the a-bomb), and would forevermore occupy a new place in society. Barefoot Gen has been translated into multiple languages across the world and remains one of the important stories on the history of Hiroshima.
To date, there have been six film and TV versions of Barefoot Gen. For the purposes of this course, the 1983 animated film will be the focus of the discussion. Like Grave of the Fireflies, this is a story that the Japanese are often compelled to remake. As such, it becomes imperative to understand why that is.
