For our third blossay, I chose to review Barefoot Gen (Hadashi no Gen) directed by NAKAZAWA Keiji, a short animated film
on the Little Boy bomb dropped on Hiroshima, and the related manga. As
a forewarning, I do recommend people to watch this – however there are
significant trigger warnings to be aware of, including the display of the animation
of the bomb and its impacts on human bodies. With that said, I will move into a
short synopsis of the film.
The film opens with a short explanation on the
context of the war leading up to 6 August 1945, the day the Little Boy was
dropped. It explains that Japan’s mainland has come under fire from terror bombing,
a tactic used to essentially bomb an area into surrender from demoralization
and terror due to the political and industrial infrastructure being hamstrung
or more often obliterated. One might recall back to Grave of the Fireflies
(Hotaru no Haka) on the firebombing of Kobe that we watched earlier this
semester as a prime example of the nature of terror bombing. The film continues
with the protagonist, Gen Nakaoka and his family all discussing this and wondering
why they haven’t been attacked yet, as the cities surrounding them have received
no small of bombing and aerial terror. The family lives in poverty, struggling
to make ends meet and having to let Gen and his siblings often go hungry,
particularly so their pregnant mother Kime can eat. She sickens due to
malnourishment and Gen and his little brother Shinji end up stealing a large
carp (koi) to feed her, as their neighbor Bokusan tells them the blood is incredibly
nutritious, although they are caught by the owner. He eventually lets them take
the fish and explains to their parents what good sons they have, and to treat
them well; they are the prime example of what many at the time would’ve called dutiful,
good sons that honor their family. They bring it home and their mother eats it,
and all seems somewhat well. Then the bomb is dropped on 6 August. Gen is knocked
out and later comes to, and discovers the corpse of a classmate. He makes his
way onto the street, shouting for help, or even just to find people – and a
crowd of wounded come stumbling out of the fog, who are so disfigured that Gen
thinks they are hungry ghosts, spirits in Japanese folklore who have come back
from the dead due to their lives being unfulfilled. He makes his way back to
his mother, who is trying to save their family from the wreckage of their house;
sadly, they fail to do so, and the husband, Shinji, and sister die. Kime soon
after gives premature birth to a baby girl they name Tomoko due to the shock of
the bomb, and Gen tries to find sustenance for them both. They are discovered
by Ryuta Kondo, another survivor, who looks like Shinji, and they take him in. The
Japanese government surrenders after another bomb is dropped on Nagasaki. The two
eventually find work taking care of an older man suffering from severe burns
and make enough money to buy several bags of canned milk. They make their way back
to Gen’s mother and Tomoko, who has died due to extreme malnourishment. Gen,
Ryuta, and Kime set a tiny boat, much like one Shinji and Gen built and agreed
to sail the morning of 6 August, floating down the nearby river, and the film
ends.
Barefoot Gen displays an important reality of war – it
is hellish, ugly, and brutal. The level of violence that is done to human
bodies by atomic warfare is horrifying, from the crowd of survivors walking out
of the mist that remind one of George Romero’s zombies, to people jumping in the
river to find some level of relief. The violence extends to killing people Kime
and Gen try to help by giving them water to drink, only for them to die of the
shock that it triggers within their bodies. It extends to victims getting
maggots in their burn scars and wounds. It extends to the anxiety Gen experiences
when he finds his hair falling out and pictures in his mind’s eye the soldier
he tried to save who died of pika and becomes fearful of the same thing
happening to him, crying in his mother’s arms that he doesn’t want to die. We see
Gen call out to his dead father and siblings numerous times throughout the later
half of the film to update them of various things – Tomoko being born and later
dying, for example. I think it’s also interesting that Gen immediately blames
himself for Tomoko’s death, when she was likely doomed from birth. Premature
births are no easy condition to tend to even in hospital, let alone near ground
zero after an atomic blast where the child would be affected by the residual radiation
and black rain. She appears quite small even for a baby, and I have to wonder
if this might be indicative of a really low birth weight, one of the major
factors in determining whether a premature infant will survive. In summary, the
level of violence inflicted by the bomb extends far beyond the immediate death
toll of 80,000 people taken in the blast.
The manga expands on a few plot points that were not
quite as well explained in the movie. For one, Gen’s father’s antiwar views and
opinions of patriotism get explained a lot more in the manga, as are the
punishments for holding these views. The leadup to the bombing is better paced,
as well – interspersed with Gen’s life is explanation of the development of
Little Boy, as well as frames of a clock ticking on the day of the bombing leading
up to that horrific moment. It creates an anxiety over what is about to happen,
despite the fact that one likely knows what’s coming. Another difference is
that in the manga, Kime and Gen watch their family burn to death, whereas in
the film they are obscured by falling timber.
It was equal parts horrific and interesting to
learn that the film is a mostly autobiographical work of Nakazawa’s experiences
surviving the bombing of Hiroshima and his life as a hibakusha. In an interview
with MOTOFUMI Asai, he expands upon his experiences – in one part he explains
that his mother was alone in watching their family burn. In a public outing
near the end of his life reflecting on his work and legacy, he remarks that “What
can’t people understand? We are living
with the danger of total annihilation…
What a stupid thing. We want a
world without nuclear weapons, and we hibakusha pass this torch on to you. I am 72.
I will die. Go back to the U.S.
and tell a lot of people what you learn here” (Cassano). It is horrifying to
think that soon, there will be no one left to tell people of their experiences
as hibakusha. We must not forget their stories, even if we can’t understand nor
ever will understand the pain and the agony and the suffering these poor people
underwent. We must continue to tell their stories, for the hibakusha are a
dying people – just over a mere 120,000 remain of which I’m sure COVID-19 has
helped cut down, out of the million that survived the blast. We have to pick up
that torch and tell our families, friends, and mere strangers of the horrors of
atomic warfare, otherwise history will be forgotten and repeated, and that
cannot be allowed to happen.
References:
“Bombing of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 18 Nov. 2009, https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/bombing-of-hiroshima-and-nagasaki.
Cassano, Carly. “Keiji
Nakazawa's Barefoot Gen, Hiroshima Peace Memorial, Japan: Literary Traveler.”
Literary Traveler | Explore Your Literary Imagination, 21 Jan. 2013,
https://www.literarytraveler.com/articles/barefoot-in-hiroshima/.
Nakazawa, Keiji, and Asai
Motofumi. “Barefoot Gen, the Atomic Bomb and I: The Hiroshima Legacy.”
Translated by Richard H. Minear, The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, The
Asia-Pacific Journal, 2021, https://apjjf.org/-Nakazawa-Keiji/2638/article.pdf.
Nakazawa, Keiji. “Manga:
Barefoot Gen Volume 01.” Internet Archive, Internet Archive, 2021, https://archive.org/details/manga_BarefootGen-v01.
Yamaguchi, Mari.
“Hiroshima Marks 76th Anniversary of US Atomic Bombing.” AP NEWS, Associated
Press, 6 Aug. 2021, https://apnews.com/article/2020-tokyo-olympics-sports-health-coronavirus-pandemic-bombings-a58423a31cc48ce49f142f3cc71eeffe.
