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.
