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A review by iffer
Barefoot Gen Volume 1: A Cartoon Story of Hiroshima by Keiji Nakazawa
3.0
From a historical perspective, both of the history of World War II, and the progression of graphic storytelling, as well as as a wrenching autobiography Barefoot Gen, is indispensable. The last pages of Barefoot Gen, Vol. 1 are hard to read, and I'm amazed at Nakazawa's resilience as a human being, ability to find hope in the future, and courage in sharing his story, which needed (and needs) to be told.
However, it's difficult for me to rate my reading experience as a contemporary reader since political opinions have shifted over the decades, and manga writing and drawing has progressed since the time that Barefoot Gen was published. In a way that made me uncomfortable, Barefoot Gen read like my elementary textbook, which is to say that the anti-war sentiments expressed felt overly palatable for an American and British audience. Art Spiegelman mentions this in his Introduction (which is better than any review that I could write, so you should really read *that*), writing that "by locating the casues ofo the bombings exclusively i nthe evils of Japanese militaristic nationalism rather than in the Realpolitik of Western racism and cold-war power-jockeying, Nakazawa may make the work a little too pleasurable for American and British readers," and I agree. It is also feasible that one of the reasons for such great appeal of Barefoot Gen in in the 1970s were that these sentiments paralleled the thoughts and feelings of Americans during and shortly after the US presence in Vietnam, most notably the idea that young boys were being thrown at the frontlines when rich men were lining their pockets and getting fat while others were experiencing hardship.
Part of the problem is that Barefoot Gen is, literally and figuratively, drawn with broad strokes, in part to provide comic relief and pacing to a set of stories that could easily become unbearably bleak. At least for my preferences, though, Barefoot Gen often falls, due to some combination of simple writing, bubbly drawing, and comic relief, just short of what it needs to be to achieve maximum emotional impact and levity.
However, it's difficult for me to rate my reading experience as a contemporary reader since political opinions have shifted over the decades, and manga writing and drawing has progressed since the time that Barefoot Gen was published. In a way that made me uncomfortable, Barefoot Gen read like my elementary textbook, which is to say that the anti-war sentiments expressed felt overly palatable for an American and British audience. Art Spiegelman mentions this in his Introduction (which is better than any review that I could write, so you should really read *that*), writing that "by locating the casues ofo the bombings exclusively i nthe evils of Japanese militaristic nationalism rather than in the Realpolitik of Western racism and cold-war power-jockeying, Nakazawa may make the work a little too pleasurable for American and British readers," and I agree. It is also feasible that one of the reasons for such great appeal of Barefoot Gen in in the 1970s were that these sentiments paralleled the thoughts and feelings of Americans during and shortly after the US presence in Vietnam, most notably the idea that young boys were being thrown at the frontlines when rich men were lining their pockets and getting fat while others were experiencing hardship.
Part of the problem is that Barefoot Gen is, literally and figuratively, drawn with broad strokes, in part to provide comic relief and pacing to a set of stories that could easily become unbearably bleak. At least for my preferences, though, Barefoot Gen often falls, due to some combination of simple writing, bubbly drawing, and comic relief, just short of what it needs to be to achieve maximum emotional impact and levity.