Barefoot Gen Is Far More Than Just A Victim Narrative

By Anonymous


Fig: 1.1 A Dark Humor panel: Gen and Shinji Nakaoka put large P’s on their house to prevent their house from being attacked not realizing that in doing so they are marking their house to be attacked by the other villagers as the P is a symbol for the living quarters of American prisoners of war.

    

    For context, this is a continuation from another blog with the central theme of seeing comedy and Gag manga as a suitable medium to talk about and deal with trauma. Before reading this, I highly recommend going to that blog post, and I will link it here for anyone who is inclined. Without further ado, let us get into the deep complexities of Barefoot Gen. 

  

    In her book, The Long Defeat, Akiko Hashimoto discusses the different perspectives which came about post World War Two within Japan. One of these perspectives Hashimoto calls, Narrating Victims," which includes pieces of art from a sympathetic standpoint. In her writing, Hashimoto argues that one of the most significant examples of this type of narrative is BareFoot Gen. This manga takes place shortly prior to and after the bombing of Hiroshima day-to-day lives of those who survived. While yes, I agree that Barefoot Gen demonstrates, as Hashimoto puts it, the "absolute evil" (Hashimoto 11) nature of the war. There is far more to the story, which allows for the manga, in my eyes, to go beyond just being a Narrating Victims story. 


    To understand why Barefoot Gen is much more than just what Hashimoto describes, it is crucial to understand the origins of Barefoot Gen's creator Keiji Nakazawa. Nakazawa, throughout Barefoot Gen, depicts wartime atrocities from the perspective of the seven-year-old protagonist and is loosely based on Nakazawa's childhood. (CBLDF 1) However, what is often left out is the anti war sentiments that exist within Barefoot Gen. Nakazawa held nothing back in making Barefoot Gen. However, the part which gets slept on the most is the earlier sections of the manga, which are not only filled with silly comedic moments but also demonstrate a subtle yet very apparent anti war and Japanese government sentiment. 

The comedic side of Barefoot Gen Nakazawa purposefully has us follow the children cause mischief as a way for us to relate to them. However, at the same time, this forces us to consider the nature of what life was like in Hiroshima during wartime.

 

Fig:1.2: Gen Shinji and their father chatting while returning home hungry.

    

    One example of this comes from the manga panel above. We see the children make a light joke about their living situation surrounded by Japanese military forces, only to be interrupted by an air raid siren. This chaotic page is not only masterfully drawn, but the framing of the piece as a whole goes far beyond simply making the primary family victims; it is apparent that Nakazawa is commenting on the claustrophobic rule of the Japanese army during this time, a theme we see again in many other panels as the sun constantly looms above watching on. Many interpreted this sun as another symbol depicting the Japanese government at the time, demonstrating Nakazawa's criticism again that the government did not do enough to help the people affected by the bombings. Furthermore, even then, if you are not convinced that Nakazawa takes an anti-Japanese government stance in Barefoot Gen, all you would have to do is look to the main character's father who is quite literally beaten up and gets in trouble because he is acting against the war and proudly stands by that belief even when it puts his family in danger at the beginning of the story.


Fig: 1.3 Gen crying as the sun watches him in the distance.


The reason why I point this out is that Barefoot Gen is as much a critique of the Japanese government as it is a symbolic and sympathetic story about the Japanese people who suffered through the bombings. I would even go so far as to argue that Barefoot Gen is not only appealing to the Narrating Victims point of view but also to the Narrating Perpetrators, as Nakazawa does not hold back in making his government-based characters the cruelest and arguably the worst.

    Historian Hyodo Akiko suggests that "the intersection of the perpetrator and the victim as two sides of the same coin. While desensitization to violence is imperative to carrying out warfare…empathy for those compelled to carry out atrocities without excusing those atrocities" (Hashimoto 80) is essential. With the mix of anti-war sentiments alongside demonstrating the suffering that the bombing caused, Barefoot Gen meets Akiko's framework perfectly.

    Furthermore, Barefoot Gen is a perfect example of what my first blog post was trying to get at. The use of light comedy alongside tragedy works well in this narrative to both make the readers sympathetic towards the Japanese citizens who suffered while also holding the leaders in power accountable for their actions. What we ultimately get in all this is a narrative to reflect on and to work through when thinking about how war not only impacts governments but everyday citizens as well. Nevertheless, what do you think? Does Barefoot Gen question the actions of the Japanese government effectively? Moreover, can nations be brought together by actively thinking about and comedically characterizing the past?


Citations 

CBLDF, February 21 2019. http://cbldf.org/  Retrieved May 1, 2022 

(http://cbldf.org/2019/02/barefoot-gen-holds-sacred-place-in-history-both-as-truth-and-story/#:~:text=Baref).


Hashimoto, Akiko. 2015. The Long Defeat: Cultural Trauma, Memory, and Identity in Japan. New York: Oxford University Press.




 


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