Manga and the Atomic Bomb: Barefoot Gen Returns
This story originally appeared in PW Comics Week on Nov. 29, 2005 Sign up now!
By Kai-Ming Cha -- Publishers Weekly, 11/29/2005
Before Japanese manga and graphic novels became household items, before anyone was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for comics, there was Barefoot Gen, Keiki Nakazawa's epic account of the horror of the Hiroshima atomic bomb. Barefoot Gen was one of the first Japanese comics to be translated and brought to American shores, in the early 1980s. Now, for the first time in the U.S., all 10 volumes of the manga series will be published and marketed to American readers. Last Gasp, the well-known publisher and distributor of American underground comix, has already republished volumes 1-4 of the series; volumes 5 and 6 are slated for fall of 2006.
Gen, which means "roots" in Japanese, is the eight-year-old protagonist of Barefoot Gen; he witnesses the atomic destruction of Hiroshima and its aftermath. Nakazawa was six years old in 1945 when his hometown, Hiroshima, was bombed. Nakazawa has written that "the family scenes, characters, and various episodes that appear in Gen are all real people and events that I saw, heard about, or experienced myself." Barefoot Gen was first serialized in 1972-73 in Weekly Shonen Jump magazine in Japan after Nakazawa did an autobiographical comic story called "I Saw It" (Ore wa Mita) for the same publication.
Last Gasp editor Colin Turner says the new edition makes the series, "accessible to people who might not pick up a book about [Japan during WWII]. Younger readers can digest the subject matter. It doesn't take away from the power of [Nakazawa's] statement." This year Gen was nominated for an Eisner for Best U.S. Edition of Foreign Material but lost to Osamu Tezuka's Buddha biography. Last Gasp, which also publishes Pure Trance by Junko Mizuno, plans to publish a few manga titles this year.
Originally Barefoot Gen found an audience among antiwar advocates and peace activists in America. Volumes 1-4 of Barefoot Gen were first published in the early 1980s by New Society Publishers, a company with ecological and antinuclear leanings. Translation was provided by Project Gen, a volunteer organization founded in 1976 specifically to translate volumes 1-4 for an American audience. With the English translation, Gen was also picked up by Penguin UK.
Last Gasp is also looking to introduce the series to a new generation of readers, says Alan Gleason, former coordinator of Project Gen. "Now, it's the fans of comics, a different market—the sort of market that Last Gasp aims for." Gleason also notes that the U.S. market for Japanese comics has changed dramatically since Gen was first published. "Now that manga are a big deal in the US, Gen has enjoyed more mainstream acceptance, albeit on an unusual topic even for manga."
So far, volume one of Gen sold out its initial print run of 3,000 copies. Last Gasp has also released a new edition of volumes 1-4 that features new translation by Project Gen and includes 20 pages of the comic that had been edited out of the earlier editions. Four thousand copies of the new edition of volume one have been sold and the company recently printed 3,000 more. Volume two will also see another print run. Project Gen will continue to provide the translations for the series.
The organization, currently headed by Namie Asazuma, still sees the series as a comic with an important political message. "Volumes 1-4 of the story are too terrible and tragic," says Asazuma. "But Gen gradually notices and feels the importance of peace. He tells us the terror of the nuclear weapons. We would like to introduce these comic books for the peace."
Nakazawa's series is said to have influenced American alternative and literary comics artists, including Maus creator Art Spiegelman, who wrote the foreword for Barefoot Gen. Alan Gleason, former coordinator of Project Gen who worked on the original translation of the series, says, "It set an example for the use of cartoons to describe horrific factual events."
