Keiji Nakazawa

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Keiji Nakazawa ( Japanese 中 沢 啓 治 , Nakazawa Keiji ; born March 14, 1939 in Hiroshima , Hiroshima Prefecture , Japan ; † December 19, 2012 ibid) was a Japanese manga artist . As a young boy, he survived the atomic bombing on his hometown of Hiroshima , just over a kilometer from the hypocenter . Two decades later, Keiji Nakazawa drew his memories in the manga " Barefoot through Hiroshima " - it founded the genre of pāsonaru komikku , the manga based on a personal story, became a classic and an important memory book in Japan. His drawings are characterized by their unaffected simplicity, the clear structure of the panels and the often expressive expression of his figures. Keiji Nakazawa was one of the most famous opponents of nuclear power in Japan .

Life

Nakazawa was born in Hiroshima in 1939, the fourth of six children. His older sister died immediately when the atom bomb was dropped in his parents' collapsed house. His father and younger brother were trapped and unable to break free. Even his mother did not manage to clear away the debris from those who were still alive, so that it finally burned before her eyes. She was reluctantly brought out by a neighbor. On the same day, she gave birth to a girl who, however, died 4 months later - presumably of malnutrition. Nakazawa survived because the concrete wall of his school protected him from the atomic lightning. He has since suffered from diabetes mellitus and was listed as Hibakusha (atomic bomb victim) No. 0019760 by the Japanese authorities .

As a child, Nakazawa became interested in comics and discovered his talent for drawing - his father had worked as a painter. In 1948 he devoured the manga Shin Takarajima (The New Treasure Island) by Osamu Tezuka , published a year earlier, and began to repaint the drawings. This first encounter with the god of manga had a profound influence on his drawing style and narrative style. The work, which was very successful in post-war Japan, was the first manga that was not published as a thin booklet but in book form and was in the tradition of Western adventure novels. Tezuka later developed the story manga , which differed from the comics of western cartoonists in that it was structured in a longer story.

From now on, Nakazawa also wanted to become a mangaka. However, since his mother had no money for high school, he began an apprenticeship as a sign painter when he was 15 , hoping to get practice in sketching, lettering and coloring. After work he continued to draw his manga and repeatedly offered the adventure, samurai and historical dramas to publishers, won various prizes and became more self-confident. These early works did not yet reach the seriousness of his later work.

In 1961, at the age of 22, Nakazawa finally decided to make drawing his profession and moved to Tokyo . A year later he published Spark One , a combination of spy thriller and car racing, in Shonen Gaho magazine . This was followed by Uchu Jirafu (The Giraffe from Space), a science fiction series for Shonen King magazine . He then became an assistant to Naoki Tsuji , a popular mangaka, and published other stories of similar genres on the side - the magazines made no specifications.

In 1966 his mother died of the long-term effects of the bombing. There were no bones in her ashes, only small fragments - the radioactive cesium from the atomic bomb had completely decomposed her bone marrow. When Nakazawa found out about this, he was overcome with "irrepressible anger" at the Japanese warmongers who had waged a senseless war and ultimately provoked the dropping of the atomic bomb. But he couldn't forgive the Americans either for dropping the bomb.

From now on he began to deal intensively with the subject. In revenge for his late mother, he published a "Black Series", starting with Kuroi ame ni utarete (Under the Black Rain) in Manga Punch , a magazine for adults at the Hobunsha small publishing house . For the big publishers the stories, a total of 6 manga, were too radical. For fear of being persecuted by the CIA or the American government, they refused to publish the "political" work.

Nakazawa switched to Shukan Shonen Jump and started a series of stories such as Aru hi totsuzen (Suddenly One Day), Nanika ga okiru ( Something Happened ) or Heiwa no kane (Peace Bells ) to denounce war and the atomic bomb. The monthly edition of Shukan Shonen Jump started a series of autobiographical stories from its illustrators, and Nakazawa was asked to start. Ore ha mita (I've seen it), his 45-page autobiographical narrative, was well received by Tadasu Nagano , senior editor of Shukan Shonen Jump. Nagano encouraged him to draw a longer autobiographical series and so Nakazawa began his main work Hadashi no gen ( Barefoot through Hiroshima ) in the late 1960s . The main character, boy Gen Nakaoka, Nakazawa's alter ego, speaks out against war and the atomic bomb after his pacifist father burned alive in the rubble of his house.

Barefoot through Hiroshima appeared in Shōnen Jump from 1973 to 1974, but then switched to much lesser-known magazines. Parts of the series also appeared outside of Japan, for example in the USA in 1978 and in Germany in 1982, where they were the first manga ever published. Barefoot through Hiroshima ended in 1985. This was followed by the implementation of the story in a two-part animated film and a three-part real film.

In the mid-1970s, after Hiroshima's appearance of Barefoot , Nakazawa also began giving public lectures in which he spoke about his experiences as a Hiroshima survivor in front of students, teachers, and civic groups across Japan. Since fear of the spread of radiation sickness was widespread even in Tokyo , he had so far remained silent about it. The Japanese were very ignorant of the war and the atomic bomb. Concerned that anti-Americanism might spread, the government had published next to no information about the atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in school books.

At the end of the nineties, Nakazawa produced and directed a real- life film set in present-day Hiroshima - Okonomi Hatchan (Little Hatschi, the Okonomi-Baker). A second generation atomic bomb victim, a regular customer of the young Okonomi baker, gets into an argument with a Tokyo man because he is playing down the atomic bomb.

In 1996 Nakazawa visited the ghost town of Chernobyl and the nuclear power plant there - ten years after the disaster . He advanced to Block 4 and measured the radioactivity with a Geiger counter .

On the 60th anniversary of the atomic bombing, Carlsen Verlag published four of the eight volumes of Barefoot Through Hiroshima in German from 2004 to 2005 . In 2005 Nakazawa traveled to Germany to present some works at an exhibition in Hanover on the anniversary of the atomic bombing.

In September 2009, Nakazawa announced that he had given up drawing because his eyesight was now too limited due to diabetes-related retinal damage to the left eye and right-sided cataracts .

The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum hosted the exhibition " War through the Eyes of Children - With the Help of Barefoot Gen " from February 4 to July 11, 2011 .

During the Fukushima nuclear disaster , he said, "The power plants need to be shut down, now it is clear that they are not safe, as the government has always wanted us to believe."

Nakazawa died of lung cancer on December 19, 2012 .

Works

  • Spark 1 ( ス パ ー ク 1 , Supāku 1 ), 1963
  • Uchu Jirafu ( 宇宙 ジ ラ フ )
  • Ohayō ( お は よ う )
  • Okinawa ( オ キ ナ ワ )
  • Kuroi Ame ni Utarete ( 黒 い 雨 に う た れ て )
  • Aru Hi Totsuzen ni ( あ る 日 突然 に )
  • Aru Koi no Monogatari ( あ る 恋 の 物語 )
  • Okonomi Hachi-chan ( お 好 み 八 ち ゃ ん )
  • Shigoto no Uta
  • Ore wa Mita ( お れ は 見 た ), 1972
  • Barefoot through Hiroshima (は だ し の ゲ ン , Hadashi no Gen ), 1973–1985
  • Yakyū Baka ( 野球 バ カ )
  • Geki no Kawa ( ゲ キ の 河 )

Awards

  • 2004 Prix Tournesol, which has been awarded at the international comics salon in Angoulême since 1997 for works that a. deal particularly sensitively with values ​​of social justice.

swell

  1. ^ Art Spiegelman: "The comic and the bomb". Introduction. In: Barefoot through Hiroshima - Children of War, Carlsen Verlag GmbH, Hamburg 2005
  2. ^ Klaus Schikowski: "The great artists of the comics", Edel Germany GmbH, Hamburg 2009
  3. ↑ Keiji Nakazawa: "How barefoot came about through Hiroshima", foreword in: Barefoot through Hiroshima - The day after. Carlsen Verlag GmbH, Hamburg 2005
  4. ↑ The Hiroshima Disaster in Japanese Comics , SPIEGEL 6/1982, p. 163
  5. ↑ Interview with Keiji Nakazawa, Alan Gleason, 2003, in “Barefoot through Hiroshima - Fight for Survival”, Carlsen Verlag GmbH, Hamburg 2005.
  6. ↑ Keiji Nakazawa: "How barefoot came about through Hiroshima", foreword in: Barefoot through Hiroshima - The day after. Carlsen Verlag GmbH, Hamburg 2005
  7. ↑ Interview with Keiji Nakazawa, Alan Gleason, 2003, in “Barefoot through Hiroshima - Fight for Survival”, Carlsen Verlag GmbH, Hamburg 2005.
  8. ↑ Keiji Nakazawa: "How barefoot came about through Hiroshima", foreword in: Barefoot through Hiroshima - The day after. Carlsen Verlag GmbH, Hamburg 2005
  9. ↑ Interview with Keiji Nakazawa, Alan Gleason, 2003, in “Barefoot through Hiroshima - Hope”, Carlsen Verlag GmbH, Hamburg 2005.
  10. ↑ Barefoot Gen's Nakazawa Drops Sequel Due to Cataract , Anime News Network, September 15, 2009
  11. ↑ Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum Special Exhibition. "War through the Eyes of Children" With the Help of Barefoot Gen ". Hiroshima Peace Culture Foundation, archived from the original on July 10, 2011 ; accessed on August 27, 2014 .
  12. ↑ [Nora Reinhardt: The neighing of the horses. The mirror No. 13/28. March 2011. page 132]
  13. ↑ Barefoot Gen Manga Creator Keiji Nakazawa Passes Away. In: Anime News Network. December 24, 2012, accessed December 25, 2012 .

literature

  • Stefan Semel: Keiji Nakazawa ; in: Reddition No. 44, Barmstedt 2006, pp. 46–51

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Nakazawa, Keiji
ALTERNATIVE NAMES 中 沢 啓 治 (Japanese)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Japanese manga artist
DATE OF BIRTH March 14, 1939
PLACE OF BIRTH Hiroshima , Japan
DATE OF DEATH December 19, 2012
Place of death Hiroshima