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My Life: Interview with Keiji Nakazawa, Author of “Barefoot Gen,” Part 10 

“Kuroi Ame ni Utarete” (“Pelted by Black Rain”)

by Rie Nii, Staff Writer

Atomic bombing finally appears in manga

Keiji Nakazawa had never created a manga about the atomic bombing before.

I had hidden the fact that I experienced the atomic bombing. The mere words “A-bomb experience” made me smell the odor of rotting bodies. I had only wanted to run away from it all.

In Tokyo, when people became aware of the A-bomb survivors around them, the survivors suffered severe discrimination. In my case, others started to avoid sitting next to me or holding the rice bowls I had touched, saying they could “get infected with radiation.” These days, the sufferers of the accident at the nuclear power plant in Fukushima have faced similar problems.

After his mother’s funeral, Mr. Nakazawa reflected on the war and the atomic bombing.

The atomic bombing even deprived me of my mother’s bones. After her funeral, I was returning to Tokyo from Hiroshima, rocking on the night train, and trying to get at the heart of the war and the atomic bombing. As I thought about it, I continually arrived at the same questions: Have we resolved the issue of Japan’s responsibility for the war? And have we resolved the issue of the atomic bombing? It occurred to me then that none of it had been resolved.

And so I became convinced that I had a duty to confront the issues of war, the atomic bombing, and the responsibility of the Japanese emperor. I felt as if my mother was telling me, “You have a role to play. Face the atomic bombing squarely and create a manga that can be left behind for others.” With this in mind, I let out my deepest feelings in creating the manga “Kuroi Ame ni Utarete” (“Pelted by Black Rain”). I finished it in a week. It’s a kind of revenge story about a young man who starts to kill barbaric Americans after he suffers the atomic bombing.

But Mr. Nakazawa had difficulty getting the story published.

I brought the manuscript to the big publishers, but all the editors I met with turned it down. “It’s good,” they said. “But it’s too explicit.” The envelope containing the manuscript then sat around, untouched and collecting dust.

Meanwhile, our first daughter was born in January 1967. As I needed money to raise her, I began drawing manga that would sell well and earn me a good income.

One day I looked at the envelope and the idea occurred to me: “I don’t have to stick to big publishers. As long as my work can interest people, and make them feel something, that’s enough.”

So I approached a publisher known for publishing erotica. I was glad to find out that the chief editor was really good at what he did. After reading my manuscript, he told me, “We should do it.” But he went on: “But Mr. Nakazawa, I have to warn you that the CIA [the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency] might arrest us if we publish this manga.” I responded: “I would be happy to be arrested.” In this connection, though, I made one request of the editor: Don’t include the words “atomic bomb” on the cover. I didn’t want readers to be swayed by preconceptions. I just hoped that they would touch the truth of the bombing through reading it.

(Originally published on July 19, 2012)

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