Customer Reviews

Barefoot Gen, Vol. 2: The Day After

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I stumbled across this graphic novel in a used bookstore, not having any idea the impression it would make on me. This is an incredibly powerful story, very effectively told through the medium of comic art. It is an affirmation of the power of visual media, and an example of how comics can be used for much more than funnies and fantasies. It is also probably the most effective anti-nuclear material I have ever come across.

Keiji Nakazawa, Barefoot Gen: The Day After (New Society, 1988)

The story of Barefoot Gen, spunky atomic bomb survivor, continues in this second volume of the four-part series. It's not a stretch to predict that how you feel about The Day After will probably reflect how you felt about Barefoot Gen, without much variance.

The Day After (which, in fact, covers the next two days) opens just after the end of Barefoot Gen, and is concerned entirely with the survival of Gen, his mother, and his baby sister Tomoko. Gen's task during this time is to find food for the family, and this quest takes him on a number of small side adventures the present a much larger picture of the greater Hiroshima area after the bomb than the first book provided of Hiroshima before the bomb. Gen meets a number of different people, helps some, and learns that even after the bomb, when everyone around him is shrouded in misery and horror, the banality and prejudice around him doesn't disappear-- in fact, people are worse than they were beforehand. Nakazawa, as is his wont, tells us all this in his stories, and never allows his messages to get in the way of his storytelling. Ironically, Barbara Reynolds' introduction to this edition is a perfect contrast to Nakazawa's story; it's awfully-written, ham-handed, flat-out wrong (Reynolds harps on about American denial of responsibility for Hiroshima, and she's writing ten years or more after the release, and vast popularity, of John Hersey's Hiroshima) polemic whose sole purpose in inclusion, it seems, is to highlight how subtle Nakazawa is. Skip the introduction. Or, if you're a completist, read the book first and come back to the introduction afterwards, so it won't taint you.

This is very good stuff. Well worth your time. *** ½

Barefoot Gen: The Day After is volume two of a four part series. It tells the story of the day after the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima as seen through the eyes of seven year old Gen Nakaoka. Based on the real-life experiences of the author, Gen, his mother, and his newborn sister face the horrors of the day after the bomb. They have no food or shelter and are surrounded by the dead and dying. Even the soldiers sent in to gather and burn the dead bodies are succumbing to the radiation sickness and dying. No one understands what is happening and there is no one to turn to. Gen goes in search of food for his mother whose breast milk has dried up from malnutrition. Alone he faces the horror of the devastation and the destitution of the people of Hiroshima. This the hardest of the four books to read because the carnage of the day after the bomb is almost beyond belief. Gen's compassion, humanity, and determination makes this an inspiring book about the strength of the human spirit. Although the graphic scenes may turn some people off, this is still an important book for its message on the dangers of nuclear war.

The work has been wonderfully translated from the Japanese original: Hadashi no Gen. It was originally published in serial form in 1972 and 1973 in Shukan Shonen Jampu, the largest weekly comic magazine in Japan, with a circulation of over two million. The drawings are all in black and white. This US edition was published as part of a movement to translate the book into other languages and spread its message. It is a wonderful testimony to the strength of the human spirit and the horrors of nuclear war. There are a few introductory essays at the front of the book that help to put this book into perspective. It is a powerful and tragic story that I highly recommend for anyone interested in the topic.

Barefoot Gen Volume Two picks up where volume one leaves Gen just after the explosion of the atomic bomb over Hiroshima. It a gripping and very painful story of survival in the fist terrible time after the bomb devastated Hiroshima. For those that survived the bomb and the deadly radiation, life has now become a desperate fight for survival in a harsh and brutal world. If you have read Volume One, you cannot skip this one, just as you have to read Volume three and four too.

Just by glancing at its cover, Barefoot Gen appears to merely be a cheery Japanese comic book, or manga, as the medium is called in Japan. But the actual contents belie the surface of this exceptionally sad memoir. A story of the hard times war brings that culminates in the nuclear annihilation of Hiroshima, Barefoot Gen was written by an actual survivor of the bombing: Keiji Nakazawa.

This true story of a little boy in wartime Japan presents a view of what life was like for Japanese civilians at the height of World War II. It shows in great detail (a picture is worth a thousand words, as the saying goes) the effect the war had on the Japanese: malnutrition, bombings of almost all cities, etcetera, while still keeping in mind that Japan was also guilty of war crimes. But the end of Barefoot Gen is a nightmarish vision of the worst war crime of all: the dropping of a weapon of mass destruction on a heavily populated, civilian town.

The images of injured, haggard victims of the atom bomb moaning and weeping that are shown in this comic are terrible, but far more terrible still is the knowledge that this isn't fiction, it's a memoir. This really happened to women, babies, children and all other unsuspecting civilians. Although Barefoot Gen is not widely known, it is still arguably one of the best anti-war books on the subject, and highly recommended reading. By Elizabeth DeAngelis for Daisy Alliance

For Daisy Alliance by Elizabeth DeAngelis

My professor in college told us to get these books so I did not do it by choice but WOW I LOVE THESE BOOKS!!! I really love the way it teaches history through comics - yet you do not even realize you are reading "comics" it feels like a story book. I can't wait for my niece to be old enough because I am keeping these for her. Vol 1 & Vol 2

Volume 1 & 2 of Nakazawa's famous comic series about a boy called 'Gen' and his life in Hiroshima during the WWII and soon after the atomic bomb. The first two volumes of this series are probably the most important ones. After I read the first two volumes, I just had to lend them to everyone I knew. If you read this story, you'll realise how silly to hear some popular opiniton 'Dropping two atomic bombs in Japan was necessary to end the war'. Nakazawa says that each and every event is true. You'll see, for example, that two young brothers fight against each other for a little grain of rice. The bombs were dropped onto civilians in the middle of the two cities, and, in Hiroshima alone, 100,000 people, including western prisoners of war, were killed instantly, and the pain they suffered from afterwords was tremendous. The way some of Gen's family members, including a new born baby sister, were slowly dying is simply too sad to look at. But the reality is that it actually took place and was caused by human hands.
I sincerely hope that many people will find an opportunity to read this book at least once in their life-time, and I strongly believe that this book will enlighten the whole world with its message: 'what really happens when a nuclear bomb is dropped onto humanity', which hasn't really been talked about in history books for some reason. But I think it's time to face reality.

The title is not of my making, but is the epitaph for this, the second installment in Keiji Nakazawa's personal story of the bombing of Hiroshima in 1945. Volume 2 covers the immediate aftermath of the bombing, as survivors focus on disposing of the dead, caring for the wounded and seeking food and shelter. Gen, the book's young hero, encounters more than his share of gruesome sights - bloated corpses floating in rivers, burned remains of victims found in once-watery cisterns, radiation sickness and horrible deformities. Gen and his mother, grieving over their own losses, must scour the countryside for food for themselves and for Gen's newborn sister. But in an economy of bare sustenance, there is little room or pity for bombing victims looking for aid. Gen must use all his wits to beg, borrow or steal enough to stay alive. The legacy of the atomic bombing has begun. The bomb, which took a split second to detonate into a brilliant flash of terrible heat, now stalks its secondary victims with deliberation and ineluctability. "Barefoot Gen" chronicles real-life horror, far more horrible, grave and enduring than any science fiction.

The book's totally new and the price's low. I got the book just one day after I ordered. That's Cool!