Hiroshima: the Autobiography of Barefoot Gen ヒロシマ−−は だしのゲン自伝
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Volume 8 | Issue 39 | Number 1 | Article ID 3416 | Sep 27, 2010 The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Hiroshima: The Autobiography of Barefoot Gen ヒロシマ−−は だしのゲン自伝 Richard Minear, Nakazawa Keiji Hiroshima: The Autobiography of translation of the manga. It has now appeared Barefoot Gen in a second, complete translation (Last Gasp, 2004–2009). Volume I has an introduction by Nakazawa Keiji Art Spiegelman, creator of Maus. Spiegelman begins: “Gen haunts me. The first time I read it Translated and Edited by Richard H. was in the late 1970s, shortly after I’d begun Minear working on Maus. Gen effectively bears witness to one of the central horrors of our The Asia-Pacific Journal is honored to offer a time. Give yourself over to . this preview of Hiroshima: The Autobiography of extraordinary book.” R. Crumb has called the Barefoot Gen by Nakazawa Keiji, including series “Some of the best comics ever done.” Richard Minear’s introduction and a chapter of Wikipedia has articles on Barefoot Gen and the book, with Nakazawa’s manga illustrations. Keiji Nakazawa and on the films, theanime, and the television drama. On YouTube, the Translator’s Introduction anime sequence of the dropping of the bomb—in English—has racked up more than Richard H. Minear one hundred thousand views, and the rest of the anime is also available. There are Many in the English-speaking world need no translations into Dutch, Esperanto, German, 1 introduction to Barefoot Gen. They have read Finnish, French, and Norwegian, with others in the manga, available in ten volumes in fine the works. translation, or they have seen the animated movie, available on YouTube and elsewhere. The Autobiography of Barefoot Gen may well Barefoot Gen is already international. It started come as a surprise to those in the English- in Japan, as a manga serial, in 1973. Then a language world who don’t read manga or watch relatively unknown manga artist, Nakazawa anime. I hope it will lead them to seek out both Keiji completed the serial in 1985. By then it versions. Even those who already know had grown into a ten-volume book. Barefoot Barefoot Gen may wish to relive that story in a Gen’s Japanese readers number in the many different genre. After all, manga has its tens of millions. And there have been film conventions, and they differ from the versions: a three-part live-action filmconventions of prose autobiography. In his (1976–1980), a two-part anime (1983 and introduction to the ten-volume English 1986), and a two-day television drama (2007). translation of the manga, Spiegelman mentions There is a book of readers’ responses, Letters the “overt symbolism” as seen in the to Barefoot Gen. On GoogleJapan, “Hadashi no “relentlessly appearing sun,” the “casual Gen” returns more than two million hits. violence” as seen in Gen’s father’s treatment of his children, and the “cloyingly cute” What has its impact been outside of Japan? In depictions. Under the latter category the late 1970s there was a first, partial English Spiegelman discusses the “Disney-like 1 8 | 39 | 1 APJ | JF oversized Caucasian eyes and generallyof all ages, this may be the single most neotenic faces.” Neotenic?Webster’s accessible account of the Hiroshima Encyclopedic Dictionary (1989) defines neoteny experience. Needless to say, it is Nakazawa’s as “the retention of larval characters beyond account, and it is colored by his biases. These the normal period; the occurrence of adult include an intense aversion to the wartime characteristics in larvae.” Spiegelman has the Japanese government and its policies, domestic latter definition in mind: consider our cover and foreign, and an understandable hatred of and its faces of Gen, age six, and Tomoko, a few the American military that dropped the atomic months old. bomb on Hiroshima. Apart from the illustrations he drew specifically This translation preserves the character and for the autobiography, those conventions do not quality of the original. To reach the broadest apply to Nakazawa’s autobiography. Beyond possible English-language audience, I have left the conventions Spiegelman mentions, I would few Japanese terms beyond manga and anime comment that even though hewrites of the untranslated. I have even translated the term extreme hunger that most Japanesehibakusha as “bomb victim” or “bomb victims.” experienced in 1945, hedepicts all of his I have deleted specific place names where it characters as remarkably well-fed. Such is also was possible to do so without altering the the case with the almost Rubenesque figures in narrative. I provide maps of Nakazawa’s the Hiroshima screens of Iri and Toshi Hiroshima, a limited number of footnotes, and Maruki.2 Nakazawa had no formal training in five excerpts from Barefoot Gen. But these art, but perhaps conventions of the art world additions are not essential to a thoughtful trumped memory. reading of the book. As an appendix I include The autobiography has appeared in twoan excerpt from an interview with Nakazawa editions. It appeared first in 1987, with the title that took place in August 2007. The Void That Is “Hiroshima”—Account of the This book is a translation of Nakazawa Keiji’s Nakazawa Clan. Nakazawa revised that version prose autobiography. It also includes, between and reissued it in 1995 in the version that I 3 the prose chapters, four-page excerpts from have translated. It poses few problems of translation, but I should mention one issue: the Nakazawa’s graphic novel Barefoot Gen. The names of family members. Throughout the complete Barefoot Gen fills ten volumes, a total autobiography, Nakazawa refers to his older of some twenty-five hundred pages. These brothers as “Oldest brother” and “Next oldest excerpts are intended to give readers who have brother.” I have identified them always by not read it a taste of the manga. given names, Kōji and Akira. He uses given Graphic novels are works of art with their own names consistently for his older sister, Eiko, and baby sister, Tomoko. He refers to his conventions and perspectives. They are not younger brother throughout as Susumu. (The “creative nonfiction,” an oxymoron I manga calls him Shinji. Susumu and Shin are encountered for the first time in a discussion of 5 alternate readings of the same character.)4 a recent fraudulent book on Hiroshima. They are fictional even if based on actual events. Nakazawa’s Autobiography of Barefoot Gen Like Spiegelman’s Maus, Barefoot Gen is an makes compelling reading. Mark Selden has artistic representation of reality. Compare written that it is “in certain ways the most Barefoot Gen and this autobiography, and riveting book we have on the bomb.”numerous contrasts emerge. Nakazawa himself Suitable—if that’s the right word—for readers has pointed to one important one: 2 8 | 39 | 1 APJ | JF What differs about the death of my neighborhood as Dr. Hachiya.” It’s as if a father from Barefoot Gen is that I historian of the European holocaust were to myself wasn’t at the scene. Mom treat one of the characters in Art Spiegelman’s told me about it, in gruesome Maus as a real person.7 detail. It was in my head, so in the manga I decided to have Gen be Barefoot Gen is art. This book is autobiography. there and try to save his father. Even if, as a genre, autobiography is notorious Mom always had nightmares about for a bias in favor of the author, sheer it. She said it was unbearable—she fabrication is beyond the pale. RM could still hear my brother’s cries. Saying “I’ll die with you,” she locked my brother in her arms, but no matter how she pulled, she couldn’t free him. Meanwhile, my brother said, “It’s hot!” and Dad too said, “Do something!” My older sister Eiko, perhaps because she was pinned between beams, said not a thing. At the time, Mom said, she herself was already crazed. She was crying, “I’ll die with you.” Fortunately, a neighbor passing by said to her, “Please stop; it’s no use. No need for you to die with them.” And, taking her by the hand, he got her to flee the spot. When she turned back, the flames were fierce, and she could hear clearly my brother’s cries, “Mother, it’s hot!” It was unbearable. Mom told me this scene, bitterest of the bitter. A cruel way to kill.6 Gen’s presence at a crucial moment when Nakazawa Keiji was absent is not the only difference. To sustain the twenty-five hundred The Day of the Flash and Boom pages of Barefoot Gen, Nakazawa invented subplots. One example is the character Kondō August 6, 1945, Monday. B-29s had flown over Ryūta, who appears nowhere in theHiroshima twice the night before, and air raid autobiography. Astonishingly, the recentsirens had sounded constantly. I awoke fraudulent book treats Ryūta as a real person, unhappy that I hadn’t gotten enough sleep. The including him, for example, in his appendix weather the morning of August 6 swept that “The People”: “A five-year-old Hiroshima unhappiness away. The sky was cloudless and orphan, unofficially adopted into the family of absolutely clear, bright sunlight pierced our Keiji ‘Gen’ Nakazawa. He lived in the same eyes, and houses and trees stood out as if 3 8 | 39 | 1 APJ | JF painted in primary colors. My eyes felt as if At that time the elementary school we were they’d been washed clean, and my unhappiness going to had no summer vacation; we had to go over lack of sleep vanished, too.