Beautiful new softcover edition available now from Last Gasp!
Cartoonist Keiji Nakazawa was seven years old and living in Hiroshima in the early days of August 1945 when the city was destroyed by an atomic bomb dropped by the U.S.A. Starting a few months before that event, his ten-volume saga shows life in Japan after years of war and privations, as seen through the eyes of seven-year-old Gen Nakaoka.
In the tenth and final volume: The year is 1953. Now an apprentice sign painter, Gen has become a skilled artist, while his friends run a thriving dressmaking business. Gen falls in love for the first time, but fails to notice that a good friend has been caught in the clutches of drug addiction. Heartbreak and loss await Gen as the atomic bomb continues to wreak havoc on the lives of people in Hiroshima years after the fact. Yet these tragedies also inspire Gen to move to Tokyo to pursue his career as an artist.
Some of the best comics ever done... Nakazawa, I'm sure, will be considered one of the great comic artists of this century.
Robert Crumb
Nakazawa's graphic presentation of what it was like to survive the atomic bombing of Hiroshima should be required reading for all citizens, beginning with the President. Perhaps then we might gain the maturity to stop such madness.
Hunter and Amory Lovins, Friends of the Earth
Nakazawa was born in Hiroshima, and was six years old when the city was destroyed by an atomic bomb in 1945. All of his family members who had not been evacuated died in the bombing, except for his mother, and an infant sister who died several weeks after the bombing. Compelled to tell his story in the memory of his family, Keiji Nakazawa is best known for his epic tragic history Barefoot Gen.
