Barefoot Gen

Keiji Nakazawa

Keiji Nakazawa's four-volume graphic epic Barefoot Gen has become legendary in the field of graphic literature, and also, in no small way, out of it. While many Japanese artists working in every medium have examined the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and their aftereffects, Nakazawa, who lived in Hiroshima at the time the bombs were dropped, has an understandably closer perspective than most others who have tried it. For sheer power, Barefoot Gen's only rival in the subgenre is the similarly legendary Grave of the Fireflies.

This eponymous first volume takes us through the life of Gen, an elementary school student, and his family in the months before the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima. Gen's father, while not a pacifist, is notorious in town for his speaking out against the war, which gets him and his family branded traitors. Because of this, they don't have an easy life. The family members try to find various ways to survive in the face of shunning at best, and aggression at worst, from the rest of the townspeople.

Do you need to be told that this is a book that's going to hit you in the face like a sledgehammer with its message? The artistry, or lack of same, in the delivery is the place where Grave of the Fireflies is clearly superior to Barefoot Gen, but while Nakazawa is not above letting his message get in the way of his story on occasion, it never happens for too long a period of time. Nakazawa's characters are well-drawn, and the story spends more time focused on its characters than on its message. There is a lot to be liked here, and a good deal to be mulled over, as well. Well worth your time.