MovieChat Forums > Hadashi no Gen (1992) Discussion > If anyone thinks this film is 'Pro Japan...

If anyone thinks this film is 'Pro Japanese'...

posted 15 years ago by ak726
2 replies | jump to latest

...read the words of the author of the manga on which this is based:

In a 2003 interview with Alan Gleason in The Comics Journal #256, Nakazawa remembered, "I was enraged that the bomb had taken even my mother's bones. All the way on the train back to Tokyo, I couldn't stop thinking about it. I realised I'd never thought seriously about the bomb, the war and why it happened. The more I thought it, the more obvious it was the Japanese had not confronted these issues at all. They hadn't accepted their own responsibility for the war. I decided from then on, I'd write about the bomb and the war, and pin the blame where it belonged."

http://www.paulgravett.com/articles/059_nakazawa/059_nakazawa.htm

He ain't blamin' America...

[–] Budismydog 13 years ago

It sounds like he's not necessarily blaming all of Japan but more like he's blaming the Japanese government and military. After all in the movie, Gen's dad says that the "our government is run by madmen." In my opinion, author is saying that Japanese civilians like the characters in the story had to pay for their government's actions. I think its pro innocent "Japanese civilians" and con "Japanese government". That's just my opinion on it.

[–] lunacyregnant 10 years ago

Indeed. If you think to Gen's father, he says it all in both the film and manga. He is continuously outspoken about the government leading them into a futile war they won't win, and their neighbors turn on Gen's family, leading them to be outcasts and unable to buy necessities they need such as food prior to the atomic bomb being dropped. The father is vocally anti-war which infuriates the neighborhood that are loyalists to Hirohito and Tojo. Apparently the family was beginning to starve when the bomb was dropped. I don't know how true the character of the father is to Keiji Nakazawa's father in real life, but my guess would be that the things the father was saying in both film and manga were Nakazawa's personal thoughts/beliefs of the war.

If it's been fifteen years or more, it's no longer a spoiler.