Hiroshima (24 page)

January 1967. Our first daughter Eiko was born in a Hiroshima hospital. “This year will be good. Hang in there!” With that thought in mind, I went back to Hiroshima to see the baby. I was shocked when I saw her face. When I first saw it, her face seemed the spitting image of Mom's. Akira's wife too was astonished. I sensed the mystery of blood ties. Bringing the baby with us, we returned to the one-room, nine-by-twelve apartment in Shiina-machi, and I resumed drawing day and night. The baby cried, so I drew in the middle of the night, too.

My wife's uncle, who lived in Tokyo, died of old age. I witnessed his cremation. I wanted to check once more the workings of crematory ovens. It still bothered me greatly that no bones had remained after Mom's cremation. After this cremation, when the remains were pulled out and lay atop the stand, there were large bones that corresponded precisely to the human body. Without a doubt, Mom's bones had been eaten away by radiation. On the road home, my anger at the atomic bomb bubbled up once more.

In June of that year, learning that China, too, had become a nation with nuclear weapons, I grew angry: “Humans really are fools!” Watching on television, I was astonished to see Chinese soldiers rushing into the nuclear test site. “How dumb! Going into a site full of radiation.” I was terrified. I thought, “Those soldiers will die of sudden-onset leukemia or cancer.” As I watched the screen, I thought to myself: the lesson of Hiroshima and Nagasaki hadn't been learned.

We needed money to raise the baby, and I devoted myself for all I was worth to drawing manga that would sell. I continued to earn money for animations of television programs—
The Guardsman
,
The Picture Book of Ultra-Seven
,
Gamera vs. Gyaos
,
Son of Godzilla,
Monster Gampa.
In a pause in my work, my eye fell on the dust-covered manuscript of
Pelted by Black Rain
beside my desk, and I pulled it out and reread it. And I realized how foolish I'd been. I thought, “Why had I insisted on finding a major publisher? Even a magazine that's third- or fourth-rate will do. If it's in print, someone will read it. If even one person reads my work and hears what I want to say, that will count as success, that will have value. Indeed, the third-rate magazines may make more sense. If no one can read it, it has no significance.” I took
Pelted by Black Rain
around to
Manga Punch
, one of the many comic manga magazines published at the time that aimed at young men. It was a magazine that the PTAs and good parents of the world would likely target as bad, as “dirty.”

My meeting with
Manga Punch
's editor in chief, H., was a truly lucky break. He read
Pelted by Black Rain
, was moved by it, and said right away he'd run it. He decided it all so quickly I was almost disappointed. How could it be that this work that had such long, tough sailing when I took it around to other publishers was accepted so simply?

Editor H. told me that for publishing
Pelted by Black Rain
, “You and I may be arrested by the C.I.A. Reconcile yourself to that.” I was stunned. I asked, “What's the C.I.A. got to do with it?” He replied with a smile, “We're publishing a work that indicts the atomic bomb harshly, so we'd better assume the United States will interfere. I'm ready to be arrested with you.” I answered, also with a smile, “That's fine with me!” And I made a request about the publication: “Under no circumstances put the subtitle, ‘atomic bomb,' on the cover!” I didn't want readers to be thinking from the first that this was an “atrocity manga.” From the first, I thought it better to fool the readers into thinking that this is a hardboiled manga, the exciting story of a murderer and let them encounter the facts of the atomic bomb in the process of reading. I was ecstatic to have met an understanding editor, and on my way home, I skipped on the sidewalk.

The day the
Pelted by Black Rain
issue went on sale was pure joy. As soon as it appeared, I got a phone call from editor H. He told me, “I just had a phone call from manga
artist T. He's read your work, and he cheered us on, ‘Well done!' There were tears in his voice.” I was delighted. Utterly delighted. It was good to know that there really is a manga
artist who understands me. An editor for another publisher let me know his candid reaction: “As I read
Pelted by Black Rain
, I began to tremble with anger.”

Pelted by Black Rain
, the first atomic bomb manga
,
got good reviews, so the editor encouraged me to do a “black” series. Gratefully, I published a series that vented my anger about the atomic bomb:
The Black River Flows
,
Beyond Black Silence
,
A Flock of Black Pigeons
. I also published a social-themed manga in
Manga Action Extra
, another magazine for young people, and work went well. But drawing exclusively manga with only oppressive themes was tough, and I began to suffocate. I had wanted to become a manga artist because I yearned to draw children's manga; I really wanted to draw for children's magazines. So I took a manga about boxing to the editors at
Boys' Jump
, right after it was founded.

The Meeting with Editor-in-Chief N.
[11]

Meeting N., the founding editor-in-chief of
Boys' Jump
, filled me with gratitude: I had found the person in my manga life who understood me best. Advice from editor N. broadened my imagery incredibly. I'd met many editors in chief of major magazines before, but they'd searched out the weaknesses of my work and pointed out only its flaws. No one had given me criticism that would improve it. On the way home, I'd often thought, “That jackass is editor in chief of a manga magazine?!”

When I'd taken my work to show it to publisher K., he'd told me haughtily, “We publish only the work of major manga artists. It's ten years too soon for a newcomer like you to come to us!” I'd returned boiling mad, thinking I'd never again take work to him, that I'd die first. Soon after its founding,
Boys' Jump
overtook those haughty weeklies, its circulation leaving them far behind. Thrown for a loop by the
Boys' Jump
editorial policy of using only newcomer artists, they quickly set out to imitate it. I was disgusted. It was a case of “how the mighty have fallen!”

After publishing in the very second issue of
Boys' Jump
, I drew light manga. It was a relief to be liberated a bit from the suffocating theme of the atomic bomb. At the time, will-power manga were at their peak, and manga aimed at macho males were popular—intense stories in which the protagonist endures harsh training to become strong. Reading such manga made me puke. Lots of offensive words that embarrassed readers, stories puerile to the point of foolishness—it made me mad as a manga artist. As a counter, I thought, how about a nerdy, weak boy? I composed tales of a nerdy guy:
Guzuroku—Let's Burn,
Guzuroku March
. These drafts editor N. okayed on the spot. I was shocked by his decisiveness. Soon afterward, imitating
Guzuroku
, other magazines began to run manga with nerds as protagonists. I felt great: “Told you so!”

April 1970. Grim articles abounded in the press—stalemate in the Vietnam War; pro or con on the 1970 Security Treaty; from the previous fall, the issue of the reversion of Okinawa to Japan in 1972 without nukes, on the same footing as the rest of Japan.
[12]

I had no choice but to concern myself with nuclear issues. My anger about the atomic bomb returned quickly. I asked my editor, “How about letting me do a manga on the atomic bomb?” For reference I showed him my work from
Manga Punch
. N. praised
Manga Punch
: “I'm glad they were willing to run this.” And he said to me, “Okay, let's do it.”

In Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the time, second-generation bomb victims were dying of the aftereffects of the atomic bomb, and I was uneasy lest my daughter, too, have aftereffects. I wanted to deny them—“Aftereffects? What aftereffects?”—but facts are facts, and you have to accept them coolly. I experimented with a single-issue work, sixty pages long—
Suddenly One Day.
I gave my feelings as a parent to the protagonist, a second-generation bomb victim. I showed the rough sketches to editor N. I sat opposite N. and watched uneasily, thinking he'd likely say no. As he read, editor N. grabbed tissues from his desk and blew his nose—snort, snort!—time and again. I was astonished to realize editor N. was weeping. When he finished reading, he said, “Add another twenty pages! Make it an eighty-pager!”

For manga weeklies at the time, eighty pages was an enormous page count for a single-issue story. He pointed out several passages that I needed to work on, and he also expanded my imagery several times over. He said, “This is the first time I've been so moved by rough sketches.”
Suddenly One Day
appeared in
Boys' Jump
,
which proper parents always pointed to as “a lowbrow manga magazine.” I realized anew the value of the “lowbrows.”

Mail poured in virtually every day, from all over Japan, from adults and from students in college, high school, junior high, grade school, even kindergarten. Readers' letters filled a cardboard carton. I sorted the letters and read them. No matter what the age group, more than half the letters spoke of shock at the subject matter: “The atomic bomb as you drew it in
Suddenly One Day
—is that fact? I didn't know that the atomic bomb caused such enormous destruction.” I was shocked. I'd thought that textbooks contained accounts of the bomb, that of course they taught the reality of the bomb in school, in civics and history classes. But the exact opposite was true. People didn't know a thing about the atomic bomb. In the face of this basic lack of knowledge, it was disgusting to hear successive prime ministers state, “Japan is the only country to suffer atomic bombing.” The letters taught me just how ignorant the Japanese were about the bomb. It didn't surprise me to learn that even in Hiroshima half the children didn't know the facts about the bomb.

Readers encouraged me to tell more about the bomb, and so did editor N.: “Each year for a week or more, they convene a huge assembly on the abolition of nuclear weapons, and they argue. If they read
Suddenly One Day
, they wouldn't need a lot of argument.”

A letter came from a grade school teacher in Niigata. A pupil had brought
Boys'
Jump
into the classroom, and he'd said angrily, “Never bring manga to class!” The pupil had responded, “But some manga are good!” and showed him
Suddenly One Day
. He got a great shock; he thought he'd received a blow to the head. He passed it around to teachers in the staff room and had them read it, and they were all astonished. On a school day during summer vacation, he'd spread out my work in front of the pupils and talked to them about the atomic bomb. They followed him easily, and when he consulted with other teachers, a plan surfaced to turn
Suddenly One Day
into a slide show. His letter asked my permission. I told him to go ahead if it served his purpose. Later I learned that they'd figured it was more effective for the pupils to read it in manga form and abandoned the idea of a slide show. Readers' reactions varied widely, and I was impressed by the numbers and energy of the readers of the manga weeklies. The downside was that it got harder for me to draw about the atomic bomb.

When I drew scenes of the atomic bombing, the cruel realities of the atomic bomb came back to me, one after the other: the stench of rotting corpses, the stench of pus flowing from burns. My mood darkened, as if I was trapped in a hole with no way to get out. I grew utterly depressed. What's more, in introducing
Pelted by Black Rain
and other works, the
Asahi
newspaper wrote that I was a Hiroshima bomb victim, and my image as atomic bomb manga artist spread. A coarse-mouthed neighborhood woman said to me, “Go ahead and write about your relatives. Me, I'd never bring shame to my own family!” She criticized my wife, “You married a bomb victim. He'll die soon of aftereffects of the atomic bomb, and then you'll be in a fix!” My wife shook with anger.

Taking those thoughts, too, into consideration, my wife asked me to stop writing about the atomic bomb. I also disliked being labeled “atomic bomb manga artist,” and I wanted to stop drawing manga about the atomic bomb. But on the other hand, my anger toward the war and the atomic bomb grew and burned all the more. The city was full of avant-garde coffee shops,
people dressed in psychedelic colors, hippies; on international antiwar day, Shinjuku Station was occupied by protesters and set ablaze. With the university struggles that occurred one after the other and the 1970 struggle over the Security Treaty, Tokyo was in an uproar.

Having been selected in a drawing for city-managed apartments on the eastern edge of Tokyo, we were finally able to get a two-room place. In advance of the reversion of Okinawa to Japan scheduled for 1972, I wanted to tackle the true nature of the specter that is war. I asked my editor, “Can I do something about Okinawa?” Editor N. gave his okay right off and advanced me money for travel to Okinawa and for materials. Having read up on Okinawa and hammered the stuff into my head, I set off.