Article 26546 of rec.arts.anime:
From: Carl_Horn@library.tmc.edu
Newsgroups: rec.arts.anime
Subject: Keiji Nakazawa and Japan in W.W. II
Date: 23 Jul 92 14:53:00 GMT
Lines: 51

The guest of honor who had to impress me the most at the AnimExpo was
Keiji Nakazawa. The first manga I ever bought, back in junior high
school, was one of the English editions of Barefoot Gen. This was well
before the days, of course, of First's LONE WOLF AND CUB, or even Miyako
Matsuda-Graham and Toren Smith's fan translation of Urusei Yatsura, Vol.
1--do you remember that one? In those days (And that's the way it was
and we liked it!) an article in Epic Illustrated on Go Nagai was the
American manga fan's media event of the year.

Like APPLESEED, Barefoot Gen is about the world's most advanced weapons
technology--but it's not about the users of it, it's about the victims
of it, who ain't in Olympus, either, but in a city and a country that
have been blasted apart. It is also about how hard it is to resist war,
and how peace sometimes takes more courage (the year I bought the book,
Anwar Sadat reminded us of that). And it is about the legacies of war
and the struggle to survive against people whom not even an atom bomb
will change for the better. It's much more hardcore than Urotsukidoji
could be, because it's real.

So, I gripped this book I'd had for ten years and stood in line for
Nakazawa. I was hell of nervous, but not, maybe, for the usual fan
reasons. It hit me that this was the first survivor of the atom bomb
that I had ever met. He wasn't the kind of GOH who you laugh nervously
to and request a sketch of Priss or Rally. No idol singers on the
soundtrack of Barefoot Gen. No latex kits.

But, fortunately, the whole raison d' etre of Barefoot Gen is that you
shouldn't buy into a system of death. Therefore, the important thing is
living. So he signed it with a smile and I was really ready to say domo
arigato gozaimashita.


A little known fact in the United States was that Japan had the most
developed biological warfare program of any nation in World War Two.
3,000 prisoners, Chinese, Manchurian, Korean and Russian died in
Auschwitz-style experiments at one camp in the Japanese-occupied
Manchuria. A handful of captured American flyers were also murdered in
this way at Kyushu University. The Japanese developed a sophisticated
air-drop system for typhus and anthrax bacilli, which they tested on
Chinese fields. When the war was over, they destroyed as much evidence
as they could and fled with their data to Japan. MacArthur's chief of
intelligence, in conjunction with the head of our own BW program at Fort
Detrick, Maryland, struck a deal with the head of the Japanese program
to get his data in exchange for freedom from prosecution. This story, by
the way, was not broken by Americans, but by two Japanese reporters, who
wrote a book about it, "The Devil's Gluttony," that became a bestseller
in Japan. It isn't that Japanese adults aren't aware of wartime
atrocities--it's just that it's not necessarily taught to the children
in school.

--Carl Horn
...........

Article 462 of rec.arts.manga:
From: shogun@sutro.SFSU.EDU (Mike M. Tatsugawa)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.anime,soc.culture.japan,rec.arts.manga
Subject: Re: Keiji Nakazawa
Date: 23 Jul 92 20:47:56 GMT
Organization: San Francisco State University
Lines: 44

In article <9207231703.AA08768@tmcpcnet.tmc.edu> Carl_Horn@library.tmc.edu writes:
>The guest of honor who had to impress me the most at the AnimExpo was
>Keiji Nakazawa. The first manga I ever bought, back in junior high
>school, was one of the English editions of Barefoot Gen. This was well
>before the days, of course, of First's LONE WOLF AND CUB, or even Miyako
>Matsuda-Graham and Toren Smith's fan translation of Urusei Yatsura, Vol.
>1--do you remember that one? In those days (And that's the way it was
>and we liked it!) an article in Epic Illustrated on Go Nagai was the
>American manga fan's media event of the year.

Keiji Nakazawa was the GoH who impressed me the most and got the least
attention.  The generation gap between him and the fans was obvious.
I spoke to one mother who told me that she grew up with Nakazawa's
message and that he spoke for her generation.  She DRAGGED her son
over to Expo and his autograph table so that he could meet Nakazawa.

My father was in Hiroshima hours after the bomb fell looking for
relatives.  He never spoke of Hiroshima.  He just said that it was
horrible.  After being desensitized by documentaries for years, I
found that Barefoot Gen (Hadashi Gen) finally put Hiroshima into a
human perspective.  No more pictures of melted obento boxes or frozen
watches, but human beings dying.

The funny thing is that a lot of people who saw his comic thought that
it was disgusting how he showed the deaths.  What many fail to realize
is that that is his message.  War is inhumane.  The atomic bomb may
have been its ultimate tool.  The country that drops it is irrelevent,
all that matters is that the civilians suffer.  Gen was not a story or
comic, it was an autobiography and a method of therapy that helped not
only Nakazawa, but also many survivors come to terms with the horror.
It is strange how the people who were horrified at Gen came to get
sketches of Gokuu or came last year for Boomer designs.  A suppose
that the mass media has desensitised them.

I, personally, would love to see him come back to Expo '93, but
unfortunately, the new generation (the one with the purchasing power),
doesn't understand his message.  When he came, he honestly expected
that nobody would know who he was and that nobody would want
autographs or sketches.  He was pleasantly surprised, but it's a pity
that more people don't know and worship him instead.

Just my .08.

Mike
............

Article 475 of rec.arts.manga:
From: macross@foretune.co.jp (Michael House)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.anime,soc.culture.japan,rec.arts.manga
Subject: Re: Keiji Nakazawa
Date: 24 Jul 92 05:24:11 GMT
Organization: Foretune Co., Ltd.  Tokyo, Japan
Lines: 37

In article <1992Jul23.134759.2357@nic.csu.net> shogun@sutro.SFSU.EDU (Mike M. Tatsugawa) writes:
>In article <9207231703.AA08768@tmcpcnet.tmc.edu> Carl_Horn@library.tmc.edu writes:
>>The guest of honor who had to impress me the most at the AnimExpo was
>>Keiji Nakazawa. The first manga I ever bought, back in junior high
>>school, was one of the English editions of Barefoot Gen. This was well
>>before the days, of course, of First's LONE WOLF AND CUB, or even Miyako
>>Matsuda-Graham and Toren Smith's fan translation of Urusei Yatsura, Vol.
>>1--do you remember that one? In those days (And that's the way it was
>>and we liked it!) an article in Epic Illustrated on Go Nagai was the
>>American manga fan's media event of the year.
>
>Keiji Nakazawa was the GoH who impressed me the most and got the least
>attention.  The generation gap between him and the fans was obvious.
>I spoke to one mother who told me that she grew up with Nakazawa's
>message and that he spoke for her generation.  She DRAGGED her son
>over to Expo and his autograph table so that he could meet Nakazawa.

I consider myself lucky that I was able to meet and talk with Nakazawa
in person.  After having read all the translated Gen, I bought all of the
original (ten volumes to date) and read them in less than two months.
I could not put the story down.  Just thinking of that story moves me, as
few things in my life ever have.  Nobody should have to live through what
he and the other people in his story lived through, but I envy his ability
to convey those experiences so powerfully--scenes of otherwise good
people driven to inhuman acts by an inhuman situation left their mark.

By the way, I asked Nakazawa if he intends to continue the series
(the first ten volumes constitute only Part 1 of the story), and he said
that he is currently looking for a magazine in which to serialize it.
I hope he finds one soon, so that we can start reading Hadashi no Gen,
Part 2.

							--Michael House,
							Director/Supervisor,
							AnimEigo, Inc.
							macross@foretune.co.jp