Hiroshima (26 page)

Where in this life can you find the sweet and gentle world of children's fairy tales? If you hide harsh reality from children and sugarcoat war and the atomic bomb, they'll wind up thinking naively, “So war and the atomic bomb are not so bad after all?” Writers who choose that path make me angry. It's an eye-for-an-eye world. I think it would be a very good thing if, seeing the cruelty of the atomic bomb, more and more children throughout Japan cry, “I'm terrified!!” “I don't like this!” “I don't want to see it again!” I hope that if the number of children who hate to see the words “war” and “atomic bomb” increases, they won't repeat in their lifetimes the experiences we went through. Do those people imagine that if war comes, if atomic bombs are dropped, there'll be time for the artistic discussion of fairy tales and the like? In an instant all that will be wiped out. I was disgusted: what un-serious, silly artists! It turned my stomach that A., who gave himself airs as a man of the fine arts, thought he could get on his high horse and tell someone else to stop.

To be accepted into that manga group of A. and his fellows, you had to be recommended by three manga
artists. A. said self-importantly that okay, he'd recommend me. I thought, “Eat shit!” I puked at the thought that anyone would want to be accepted into that group. I believe in belonging to no group. I think it's an unfortunate thing to be constrained by the rules or the pressure of the group and not be able to speak your mind. I don't associate with other manga artists. That's because I'm unhappy associating with fellow cartoonists—it's as if I'm only seeing myself. It's when I associate with people from professions with which I'm not acquainted that I learn and gain.

Slanderous voices like that of A. came to my ears, but I didn't respond to them. Instead, I thought, “Say what you will!” Even if I worked my whole life, I couldn't dispel my hatred of war and the atomic bomb; knowing that, I kept drawing
Gen
.

I drew what happened on the day the bomb fell. Even my editor reacted negatively to the harsh scenes that unfolded in the burned-out ruins of atomic wasteland: he said, “It's horrible.” But I continued to struggle, unable to re-create the truth that was still burned onto my retinas. Quite the opposite of the editor, I wondered: “Wishy-washy depictions like these make such an impact on him?” With each episode, as I drew pictures of maggots wriggling in burns or the putrefaction of corpses, readers grew increasingly uncomfortable. I became dejected and decided to change my drawing, even though the result wasn't realistic. If, merely because they get uneasy, people won't follow the story, why draw it? So I drew it in much softer fashion.

The speed of the weeklies' cycle dumbfounded me. The days were tough. I continued to be pursued by deadlines, and my killer schedule exhausted me. I hated the production system, where you hire lots of assistants to produce the manga. I couldn't bear to be like the manga artists who have several monthly and weekly magazines. As in a factory production line, they hire dozens of assistants and set the manuscript on a conveyor belt. The only way was for me to draw my own story myself, difficult though it was. I couldn't talk myself into working in a drab manga factory.

As the weeklies became established and the demand for manga grew, the method of producing manga became established: bring together authors responsible only for the stories and manga artists who did the drawings to suit.
It was the method used in making movies and was said to be the trend of the times. But I didn't want to become a manga man who takes someone else's stories and churns out drawings like so much wallpaper. To my mind, manga should be the unified expression of your own ideas and emotions.
I couldn't take the cheerlessness of drawing pictures for a story that wasn't my own.
I couldn't go along with the “anything for a buck” mentality. In that sense, I plodded along, self-confident, with the help of my wife and, at crunch time, temporary assistants.
I prided myself on my method even when people told me, “You're old-fashioned.”

I continued to draw criticism of the emperor system and censure of the United States for dropping the atomic bomb, so I thought I'd get plenty of harassment. But I was disappointed that
Gen
provoked neither a single polemic nor the harassment I'd anticipated.

Then came the oil shock. It brought a shortage of paper and economic chaos. The page count of the weeklies suddenly shrank, and the page count of manga books was reduced time and again. Told to keep
Gen
to thirty-page installments and many times to skip an installment, I grew unhappy, thinking, “This happens just when the story is developing!” My exhaustion became extreme, and the energy to draw
Gen
disappeared.
At that point, founding editor N. was promoted and left the scene, and I got
Jump
to let me stop
Gen
, even though it was still unfinished; it had run in
Jump
for eighteen months.
I realized
Gen
was not at the top of fan popularity in
Jump
.
In the harsh world of commercial magazines, unpopular works got cut one after the other. I was indebted to editor N. and the others for
Jump
's conscience in continuing to run
Gen
even though it wasn't popular.

I hoped to regain my health and resume the serialization of
Gen
, but for the moment I'd lost the energy to draw
Gen.
The manuscript of
Gen
came back, and I packed it away in the storeroom.
Rereading my own work made my flesh crawl.
It was really tough. I grew dejected—“I really am lousy!” Issues of magazines carrying my work I immediately stuck in a drawer.
Ideas for
Gen
continued to rattle around inside my head, but for a change of pace I drew light works. Six months passed.

Gen
and Beyond

Year by year, the U.S.–U.S.S.R. nuclear arms race grew more fierce, and in desperation I found fault with both sides: “Yeah, let's have more and more nukes. Both of you go all the way, and we'll all die!” I boiled over: “You think there are winners and losers in a nuclear war?! Damn fools!” One day I got a phone call from reporter Y. at the
Asahi
newspaper. He covered things atomic and had learned that there was a manga titled
Barefoot Gen.
He asked, “Won't you let me read it for my own enlightenment?” I was puzzled—“Why should work I did six months ago be useful now?”—but I said okay.

Pulling from the drawer issues of
Boys' Jump
that carried
Gen
, I piled up eighteen months' worth. While I worked,
reporter Y. sat in a chair behind me, mumbling and shifting back and forth in his chair as he read
Gen
.
I thought that was a strange way to read, but I kept on working.
When it began to get dark, Y. had read nearly half of
Gen
and said, “I'd like to come back tomorrow morning and read.” He put me on the spot.
With someone sitting behind me, I was distracted and couldn't work, but reluctantly I said okay.
Next day Y. read the ensuing installments of
Gen
and mumbled a lot.
All that shifting in his chair and muttering: it was really strange.

Only afterward did I understand that Y. was crying as he read
Gen
.
Embarrassed to show tears, he kept shifting in his chair to hide the fact that he was crying.
He mumbled to hide his sobs.
Once he'd read all of
Gen
, Y. asked me, “Why not issue
Gen
as a book from the company that published it as a serial?”
I explained the restraints under which commercial publishing operates.

My
Okinawa
had been serialized in
Jump
. To turn it into a book, I'd reduced the page count and drawn a four-color cover, and it was ready for the presses to roll; we'd be able to put it on sale right away.
I too rejoiced that for the first time my work would appear in book form.
But the process of turning
Okinawa
into a book came to a sudden stop. Afterward, I learned the reason from those in charge.
A work with heavy political coloring that questioned real war and atomic bomb was okay in a weekly because it vanished after that week; as a book, it would remain the company's product and give the company a bad image. So the company couldn't publish it.
I learned there was pressure from above:
“We can't produce works that oppose the current government!”
It was the same as the self-censorship of the commercial magazines.
I lost hope. I was appreciative of the attitude of the editors who'd been good enough to carry through with the serialization of
Okinawa
and
Barefoot Gen
.
That was the explanation why there was absolutely no way to turn
Barefoot Gen
into a book.

Y. was avid to turn
Barefoot Gen
into a book.
He talked with groups and people he knew.
I'd never experienced such friendly assistance from anyone outside manga publishing.
Y. approached bomb victim groups, too, and pushed the idea of a book aimed at those who hadn't seen the serial version, arguing that
Gen
was significant because it had communicated the war and atomic bomb candidly to twenty million Japanese.

If the decision was made to publish
Gen
as a book, Y. said, he wanted to write articles about the process.
I, too, thought it would be a shame if the manuscript of
Gen
wound up buried in the storeroom, and I asked acquaintances whether they knew of a willing publisher.
I was given introductions to several publishers, but the conventional wisdom held that atomic bomb stuff didn't sell, so they didn't take the project on.
At that point, from a conversation with an acquaintance, I learned of a press that would publish it as a book.
It was a publisher who had absolutely no connection with manga, who specialized in academic texts and textbooks.

May 1975. The book version of
Gen
went on sale. Y.'s article about
Gen
was reported widely in the arts pages. Triggered by his article, the mass media—TV, radio, and the rest—joined in. Demolishing the conventional wisdom that atomic bomb stuff didn't sell, the four volumes of
Barefoot Gen
sold in a rush. The number of
Barefoot Gen
's readers increased several times over.

Then, aware that
Gen
was incomplete and that the structure of the rest was all set, Y. gave me an introduction to a magazine that would serialize
Gen
.
It was the monthly
The People
, a magazine that ran hard stories and works, and I felt out of place. But I was grateful to Y., and in September 1975 in
The People
, the first installment of the postwar part began. Serialization in
The People
ended after one year.
It folded because of poor management. The postwar part of
Gen
ended in midstream.

Although I was puzzled that the reaction to
Gen
was so huge, I searched for a magazine to complete the unfinished serialization of
Gen
.
Publisher S., an acquaintance, introduced me to the monthly
Literary Review
, and it ran the postwar part of
Gen
for about three and a half years, but the editor in chief told me, “I can't pay you, so please stop.”
Gen
came to a halt once more.
I was asked by
Education Review
whether I might do an eight-part manga. I asked them to run
Gen
, and
Education Review
ran it for three and a half years. Even though I was ruining my health, I finally completed it.
From the start of serialization, it had taken fourteen years.

Even I agree that that was an astonishingly long time. In book form
Gen
became ten volumes, and they quickly made the rounds among children. In libraries, they were read so much that the copies became dog-eared and broken. For a manga man, that was the highest honor. Manga are destined to be read once then chucked. I was truly grateful for readers' letters, saying things like “I've read it twenty times.”

Thank you to the female college student from Akita who, having read
Gen,
is taking part in the antinuclear movement.

Thank you to the Sendai housewife who said that if I kept writing
Gen
, she'd keep reading it no matter how many years she had to wait.

Thank you to the many girls who saw the anime of
Gen
and sobbed, “I'm terrified!”
You all really understood foursquare the horror of war and atomic bomb.