Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Experiences of Abandonment and Repeating Faces of the Dead: Modern Japanese Society and Traumatic Memories in Keiji Nakazawa's Barefoot Gen

Experiences of Abandonment and Repeating Faces of the Dead: Modern Japanese Society and Traumatic... Experiences of Abandonment and Repeating Faces of the Dead Modern Japanese Society and Traumatic Memories in Keiji Nakazawa’s Barefoot Gen Akihiro Yamamoto Introduction Gen Nakaoka, the hero of Barefoot Gen, is a rare emotional hero. He laughs, he cries, he sings, and he gets angry. Emotional is perhaps a com- monplace description of the shōnen manga, which are aimed at the young male teenage demographic, but Gen deceives people and he behaves vio- lently. It is also of great interest that he openly shows his fury toward the emperor and the militarism of the past and the present. In short, the brunt of his emotions is directed at speci fic historical events and the groups that brought them about, not toward some straightforward and abstract evil as is oft en the case with manga for young males. Th e speci fic historical event is the situation in Hiroshima before and aft er the atomic bomb was dropped on the city. On August 6, 1945, there were about 350,000 residents and military per- sonnel in Hiroshima. Th ey included people with roots on the Korean pen- insula, in Taiwan, and on the Chinese mainland, as well as a small number http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Journal of Literature and Trauma Studies University of Nebraska Press

Experiences of Abandonment and Repeating Faces of the Dead: Modern Japanese Society and Traumatic Memories in Keiji Nakazawa's Barefoot Gen

Download PDF
18 pages

Loading next page...
 
/lp/university-of-nebraska-press/experiences-of-abandonment-and-repeating-faces-of-the-dead-modern-YaI0t2YxeB

References

References for this paper are not available at this time. We will be adding them shortly, thank you for your patience.

Publisher
University of Nebraska Press
Copyright
Copyright © University of Nebraska Press
ISSN
2045-4740

Abstract

Experiences of Abandonment and Repeating Faces of the Dead Modern Japanese Society and Traumatic Memories in Keiji Nakazawa’s Barefoot Gen Akihiro Yamamoto Introduction Gen Nakaoka, the hero of Barefoot Gen, is a rare emotional hero. He laughs, he cries, he sings, and he gets angry. Emotional is perhaps a com- monplace description of the shōnen manga, which are aimed at the young male teenage demographic, but Gen deceives people and he behaves vio- lently. It is also of great interest that he openly shows his fury toward the emperor and the militarism of the past and the present. In short, the brunt of his emotions is directed at speci fic historical events and the groups that brought them about, not toward some straightforward and abstract evil as is oft en the case with manga for young males. Th e speci fic historical event is the situation in Hiroshima before and aft er the atomic bomb was dropped on the city. On August 6, 1945, there were about 350,000 residents and military per- sonnel in Hiroshima. Th ey included people with roots on the Korean pen- insula, in Taiwan, and on the Chinese mainland, as well as a small number

Journal

Journal of Literature and Trauma Studies – University of Nebraska Press

Published: May 29, 2019

There are no references for this article.