Keiji Nakazawa

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Keiji Nakazawa
Born 1939
Hiroshima
Nationality Japanese
Occupation Manga artist
Known for Barefoot Gen

Keiji Nakazawa (中沢 啓治 Nakazawa Keiji?, born 1939) is a Japanese manga artist and writer.

He was born in Hiroshima, and was in the city when it 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.

In 1961, Nakazawa moved to Tokyo to become a full-time cartoonist, and produced short pieces for manga anthologies such as Shonen Gaho, Shonen King, and Bokura.

In 1966, following the death of his mother, Nakazawa returned to his memories of the destruction of Hiroshima and began to express them in his stories. Kuroi Ame ni Utarete (Struck by Black Rain), the first of a series of five books, was a fictional story of Hiroshima survivors involved in the postwar black market. In 1972, Nakazawa chose to portray his own experience directly in the story "Ore wa Mita" ("I Saw It"), published in Monthly Shonen Jump (In 1982, the story was translated into English and published as a one-shot comic book by Educomics as "I Saw It").

Immediately after finishing "I Saw It", Nakazawa began his major work, Hadashi no Gen (Barefoot Gen). This series, which eventually filled ten volumes (six volumes in English translation), was based on the same events as "I Saw It" but fictionalized, with the young Gen as a stand-in for the author. Barefoot Gen depicted the bombing and its aftermath in graphic detail, but also turned a critical eye on the militarization of Japanese society in the World War II years, and on the sometimes abusive dynamics of the traditional family. Barefoot Gen was made into an animated film, released in 1983. It was followed three years later by a sequel.

[edit] Works

Comics

Black Series

  • Kuroi Ame ni Utarete [Struck by Black Rain] (Volume 1)
  • Black River (Volume 2)
  • Black Silence (Volume 3)
  • Struck by Black Rain (Volume 4)
  • Struck by Black Rain (Volume 5)
  • Ore wa Mita [I Saw It]

Peace Series

  • Aru Hi Totsuzen ni (One Day, Suddenly)

Barefoot Gen Series

  • Gen of Hiroshima (Issue 1)
  • Gen of Hiroshima 2 (Issue 2)
  • Barefoot Gen #1: A Cartoon Story Of Hiroshima
  • Barefoot Gen #2: The Day After
  • Barefoot Gen #3: Life After The Bomb
  • Barefoot Gen #4: Out Of The Ashes
  • Barefoot Gen #5: The Never-Ending War
  • Barefoot Gen #6: Writing the Truth
  • Barefoot Gen #7: (Not published in English)
  • Barefoot Gen #8: (Not published in English)
  • Barefoot Gen #9: (Not published in English)
  • Barefoot Gen #10: (Not published in English)

Others

  • Yakyu Baka [Baseball Fool]
  • Geki no Kawa [Geki's River]

[edit] See also

[edit] External links