Barefoot Gen 2

Dir: Toshio Hirata, Akio Sakai

1986

****

1983’s Barefoot Gen was something of a masterpiece with no other film like it. It followed the true experiences of author Keiji Nakazawa during the end of World War II when the Americans dropped the atomic bomb on the City of Hiroshima. The conclusion of the film left the viewers with a feeling of great hope and admiration, seeing that the determination of the survivors to rebuild and continue their lives as best they could after such catastrophic devastation was the reason we enjoy many of the freedoms and opportunities we do now. It also puts a lot of modern day life in to perspective for the majority of us, indeed so much has been done to prevent such a thing ever happening again and the horrors they endured should hopefully never happen again. It was left on a positive note, however, it was just assumed that everything went well for young Gen and that was good enough an ending. To be honest I could have lived with that but thankfully Nakazawa and co saw otherwise. A huge part of Hiroshima’s devastation came after the bomb landed, and this is often overlooked and forgotten. The film takes place three years after the first film and deals with the struggles that the people of Hiroshima faced for many years. While the first movie focused on the immediate effect of the bomb, Barefoot Gen 2 focuses on the long-term problems that faced the survivors, including the devastated economy and infrastructure, food shortages, unemployment, lack of housing, and the lingering effects of the atomic bomb's radioactive fallout. For most of the film we see Gen going about his school life, getting into trouble with his adopted brother Ryuta, hanging out with a local gang and helping his mother financially the best he can using the sort of unorthodox methods war time can bring. Once again, there is a light-hearted edge to the film through the eyes of Gen, even though the serious problems of the time unwind around him. The one thing dealt with directly from the outset is Gen’s resentment of Japan being under American military occupation, everything seems to occur to him later than it does everyone else. As bright as Gen is, he still subconsciously ignores the glaring issues that surround him, including the cancer that was killing his mother. The first film looked forward to the future with determination but Barefoot Gen 2 ended with caution and uncertainty as Gen wondered how he would survive on his own. Even though the film isn’t as strong as the first, the conclusion was a brilliant move from Nakazawa, as Japan suffered uncertainty for a great many years. Nakazawa himself survived the bomb with his mother and infant sister who died several weeks afterward. While his mother didn’t die until 1966, he spend fifteen years in poverty and hardship before moving to Tokyo, finding success as a cartoonist. It was only after his mother died did he reflect on his early memories of surviving the bomb. He first wrote about fictional survivors but then in 1972 he chose to portray his own experience directly in the story Ore wa Mita. He then followed it with his Barefoot Gen series that eventually filled ten volumes. The fictional Gen was a depiction of himself but certain experiences were more harrowing in the series than they were in real life, however, nearly everything had truth to it. Nakazawa moved from his own experiences to making critical statements about the militarization of Japanese society and on the sometimes-abusive dynamics of the traditional family. Unfortunately, Nakazawa was diagnosed with lung cancer just before he was set to work on a third Barefoot Gen film that would explore the characters young adulthood, dying in December 2012. The Barefoot Gen series is a special reflection and exploration of a dark time in human history that should be remembered and never repeated, Nakazawa made this universally clear to everyone.