Books › Barefoot Gen, Vol. 1
Barefoot Gen, Vol. 1
294 pages
A harrowing, deeply human testament to survival and the devastating civilian cost of war.
What it feels like
Reading this manga is an exercise in profound, creeping dread, anchored by an incredibly resilient emotional core. Long before the sky falls, the atmosphere is thick with the oppressive weight of wartime poverty, starvation, and the suffocating grip of hyper-nationalism. You sit with the Nakaoka family through their daily humiliations and fierce devotions, knowing exactly what awaits them in August 1945. The storytelling is earnest and unflinching, utilizing a deceptively classic, expressive art style that makes the eventual descent into visceral, unimaginable horror all the more shattering. It is a heavy, essential experience that will resonate deeply with readers of autobiographical graphic history who value raw, passionate testaments to human endurance and the urgent necessity of peace.
- Mood
- dread-soaked
- poignant
- oppressive
- resilient
- Tone
- earnest
- unflinching
- didactic
- passionate
- Pace
- steady
- Themes
- civilian cost of war · loss of innocence · familial devotion · dangers of nationalism · survival and resilience
- The writing
- Raw and deeply expressive, pairing deceptively cartoonish character designs with visceral, unflinching depictions of historical horror.
- The arc
- Begins with the grinding, oppressive struggle of wartime poverty and builds toward an unimaginable, world-shattering trauma.
- Who it's for
- Readers drawn to essential, autobiographical anti-war literature that refuses to look away from the darkest moments of human history.
Content notes
- graphic violence
- war trauma
- starvation
- political persecution
- death of children
- nuclear devastation
About the book
Hiroshima City, Hiroshima, Japan. Spring 1945. Six-year-old Gen Nakaoka lives with his father—who is adamantly opposed to the war that is claiming the lives of so many of his fellow countrymen—his mother, his sister Eiko, and his younger brother Shinji; his two older brothers, Akira and Koji, have evacuated to the country and gone to work in the munitions factories, respectively. As Gen's father becomes increasingly outspoken against the war, he is labeled as a traitor to the Empire along with Gen and the rest of his family. All around them, friends and neighbors, teachers and classmates, turn against the Nakaoka family. The war effort has already made food scarce, but surviving in a poor household among few friends and hundreds of enemies proves to be an ordeal like none that the generally playful Gen has faced before. His life is being turned inside out, but neither Gen nor any of the people in Hiroshima could imagine the horror that the coming August will bring...
A now-classic manga, Hadashi no Gen (Barefoot Gen) is based on author Keiji Nakazawa’s own experiences as a young boy in Hiroshima at the end of World War II. Gen's tale is a deep, harrowing read about the effects of war on a civilian population and what it takes to survive in a world on fire. This edition uses a translation by Project Gen, a team of volunteers formed in the 1970s with the mission of providing a complete English translation of Hadashi no Gen so that a wider audience around the world could read its message.
Description from Open Library.
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