News

by Masanori Wada and Fumiyasu Miyano, Staff Writers

The controversy arising from the decision by Hiroshima City’s Municipal Board of Education to eliminate the Barefoot Gen manga from its peace-education teaching materials for elementary school children continues to grow. The education board’s explanation about the decision indicated, “Some parts of the publication made approaching the reality of the atomic bombing difficult.” In response, however, many have expressed skepticism and argue that the reality can be understood more clearly and precisely because of the publication’s manga format. The board of education needs to provide a more detailed explanation about its decision to eliminate the information.

The board of education has developed unique materials for its peace-education program, which began in fiscal 2013, for use at the city’s public elementary, junior and senior high schools. The program used scenes from Barefoot Gen in the teaching materials for third-grade elementary school students. The materials included scenes including the following three: When Gen, the protagonist, earns pocket change by performing rokyoku (recitation of stories accompanied by a shamisen) on the streets to support his poor family; when Gen steals carp from a pond to provide food for his pregnant mother; and when Gen’s father, who was trapped under their house after the bombing, shouts at Gen to escape as the fires close in. Such scenes help students empathize with Gen’s emotions and learn about family bonds.

According to the board of education, since fiscal 2019, six years after the program’s initiation, meetings have been held with 13 specialists and school principals to review the overall program contents. For the first two scenes described above, some argued they did not match the lives currently experienced by children and that the scenes might be misleading. A proposal put forth at the meeting involved excerpting other scenes from the manga for use in the teaching materials, but the members ultimately decided to replace the entirety of the Barefoot Gen scenes, even the last of the above three, based on the idea that, “Adopting certain scenes from the manga isn’t enough for students to understand the reality of the atomic bombing.”

After the Chugoku Shimbun and its website reported the city decision to delete the Barefoot Gen contents from the teaching materials on February 16, the board of education’s offices received 67 opinions from the public by 4 p.m. the next day, February 17. Of that total, only one opinion expressed support for the decision.

In addition, more than 6,000 comments were posted on the “Yahoo News” website, which had published the Chugoku Shimbun’s original article, as of the evening on February 17. Some of the comments read, “The brutality that forced people to survive in whatever way they were able made me realize the cruelty of war”; and “The manga series contains some extreme descriptions, but it is still a masterpiece that depicts the war and post-war life in a straightforward way.” Most comments expressed skepticism about the board of education’s explanation for the decision, arguing they had learned of the terror of the atomic bombing and war after reading the book in childhood.

In a similar vein, the municipal board of education in Shimane Prefecture’s Matsue City decided in 2012 to limit access to the Barefoot Gen series at school libraries based on the explanation that some of the publication’s extreme descriptions were not appropriate for children, a decision the board later withdrew. With such a history as a backdrop, it is hard to understand the reason for the elimination of the information provided by Hiroshima City’s Municipal Board of Education, which is why the controversy continues to reverberate today.

Seiko Mimaki, associate professor at the Graduate School of Doshisha University and a specialist in the field of peace education, posted a comment on the Yahoo website, in which she provided an analysis of the situation and explained her feeling that Barefoot Gen was widely popular given that its message was well-suited to the manga format, touching on the fact that the publication has been translated into 24 languages around the world. As to the Hiroshima board of education’s decision to delete the content, Ms. Mimaki added, “Given the current situation in the world in which there is still fear of war and nuclear weapons, I hope the board will reconsider how Barefoot Gen should be passed on to future generations.”

The Hiroshima Municipal Board of Education’s Guidance Section 1 indicated that, “Feedback made us once again aware how people continue to consider Barefoot Gen as an important publication to convey the reality of the atomic bombing.” The guidance section added, “The board of education is not rejecting the work itself. We want to continue passing on the story to future generations by continuing the efforts to have school librarians introduce the book to children, among others.”

New teaching materials to be introduced starting in fiscal 2023 depict an A-bomb survivor’s experience of having lost parents and a younger sister in the atomic bombing, which happened the day after a family photograph had been taken of them. The materials describe the work done by that survivor’s daughter, who took on her mother’s experience in the atomic bombing and is now sharing it with others as a volunteer guide. The materials include photos of her and space in which children can freely write about their impressions of the information.


Comment by Misayo Nakazawa, 80, wife of Keiji Nakazawa, author of Barefoot Gen

My husband depicted the terror of the atomic bombing through his own experience in an approachable way for children. If that style of storytelling doesn’t fit the present era, nothing can be done, but it’s disappointing that children will lose the opportunity to start reading his work. In the story, Gen didn’t steal carp because he wanted to; rather, he was driven by a strong desire to help his pregnant mother. If that’s not understandable, other scenes from the publication should be used instead. I want to hear the board of education’s detailed reasoning as to why the manga is not considered appropriate as a teaching material.

(Originally published on February 18, 2023)