Manga about war and the atomic bomb
3The Telling · 111How manga artists who lived through the war, and those who came after, have told its story, from Barefoot Gen to In This Corner of the World.
3Reduced, this question gives 3. It sits on The Telling with the rest of an act of telling.
Artists who were there
Many of the artists who built modern manga lived through the Second World War as children or soldiers. Osamu Tezuka was a teenager in Osaka during the air raids; Shigeru Mizuki fought on the island of New Britain and lost his left arm; Keiji Nakazawa was six when the atomic bomb fell on Hiroshima. Their experience shaped what they drew.
Barefoot Gen
Nakazawa's Barefoot Gen (1973–1987) is the most famous war manga. It tells the story of the bombing of Hiroshima and its aftermath through a boy whose family is destroyed, as Nakazawa's was. Its unflinching images of the bomb's effects have made it both a classic and a subject of controversy.
The soldier's view
Mizuki's Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths (1973) is based on his own unit, ordered to make a suicidal charge and condemned when some survived. He later drew a long history of the Shōwa era, mixing his own life with the nation's. Their tone is bitter, humane and sometimes darkly funny.
Tezuka
Tezuka returned to the war many times. Adolf (1983–1985) follows three men named Adolf, including Hitler, in a story of the Holocaust and Japan's alliance with Germany.
Later generations
Artists born long after the war have approached it differently. Fumiyo Kōno's Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms (2003–2004) is about the long shadow of Hiroshima, and her In This Corner of the World (2007–2009) shows ordinary life in wartime Kure, adapted as an acclaimed film in 2016.
Why it matters
Manga have been one of the most powerful ways of remembering the war in Japan, especially for young readers, and their testimony has reached readers around the world.
Where this explainer is shelved
Set against the Pythagorean table, the question totals 111. Reduced, that is 3. The weight sits in “atomic”, which carries 25 on its own and reduces to 7.
The 3 governs communication, creativity, and the public stage. The reference files it as an act of telling. It is a lens rather than a verdict, but it is a consistent one: the 3's instinct to turn everything into a story worth telling is the pressure under this explainer.
Beneath the 3 sit two smaller figures: 5 in the vowels, 7 in the consonants. Change underneath, inquiry on the surface. The gap between them is where the subject is most interesting.
The Telling asks one thing of everything on it: watch the technique rather than the plot it is carrying. The 3 talks past the point. Where an entry here runs long, it is usually because the technique was more fun to describe than it was important. The other explainers that reduce to 3 are collected on The Telling.
Common questions
- What is the most famous manga about Hiroshima?
- Keiji Nakazawa's Barefoot Gen, based on his own experience as a child survivor of the atomic bombing.
- Did Shigeru Mizuki draw about the war?
- Yes. Mizuki, who lost his left arm in the war, drew Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths and a long history of the Shōwa era from his own experience.
- What is In This Corner of the World?
- A manga by Fumiyo Kōno about a young woman who marries into a family in the naval port of Kure during the war. It was adapted as an acclaimed animated film in 2016.
- Did Osamu Tezuka write about the war?
- Yes. Among other works, his Adolf follows three men named Adolf, including Hitler, from the 1930s to after the war.