Barefoot Jen: Volume One by Keiji Nakazawa

Nakazawa, Keiji.
Barefoot Jen: Volume One: A Cartoon Story of Hiroshima.
San Francisco:
Last Gasp of San Francisco, 2004.


This first volume of the Barefoot Gen series introduces the Nakaoka family, chronicling their lives in Hiroshima during the ongoing war against the Allied forces. Gen is a six year-old whose father believes Japan’s initial and continued participation in the war is both a mistake and a dishonorable move by Japanese leadership. Year of war having already passed, the Gen’s parents struggle to feed a family of five children. Though it eases the burden on mouths to fill, it is no less of a struggle emotionally when one son is sent into the countryside for safekeeping and the oldest son disobeys his father’s wishes and joins the military, only to later realize that his father’s disgust with the Japanese government is well-placed. All of these events occur around the misadventures of Gen and his little brother Shinji, a rambunctious pair that get into no end of trouble, but usually with the best of intentions. Becoming so familiar with such an emotional family makes the inevitable conclusion all the more horrific as the Enola Gay drops the first atomic bomb on the town and its inhabitants, destroying everything in its path and sending thousands to a painful, torturous death. The volume ends with this destruction, leaving the reader to discover what happens to the family in Volume Two: The Day After.

More fictional memoir than autobiography, Barefoot Gen is loosely based on Nakazawa’s experiences, the boy being referred to as his “alter-ego.” Where other graphic works often use narration to describe emotions and events, Nakazawa uses the manga style to place everything in plain view of the reader through action. Without a narrator, the reader gains a sense they are witnessing the story as it actually happens. Though the manga style can often be presented as more fantasy than reality, Nakazawa uses it as a device to make the situation more real, enhancing events to bring them closer to the reader. Ultimately, Nakazawa presents a case for peace and relates a story that leaves readers hoping such tragedies never happen again.