Forum - View topicNEWS: Kickstarter to Give Barefoot Gen Manga to Schools, Libraries Reaches Goal
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Yuki_Kun45
Exempt from Grammar Rules
 Posts: 725 Location: U.S.A. |
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I forgot to contribute to this, it's a very noble cause. But I'm very glad to see it's reached its goal.
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residentgrigo
 Posts: 2623 Location: Germany |
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Very nice and wrote the following MU/Amazon review to raise awareness for the flawed classic last year.
An important historical masterpiece that overstretched (8,5/10) The first Madhouse movie is pretty famous worldwide but it represents only the opening act so this source maturial is thus a must. The manga itself preach heavily i will admit and it isn´t entirely unproblematic but the author survived Hiroshima after all and fascistic japan itself takes a big beating it the story too so i can overlook that aspect mostly. I was frankly surprised how bad a picture Nakazawa Keiji painted of his homeland at times so prepare yourself for a somewhat darker tale then the first film at times. The story does light up considerably after time is a lowed to progress a bit and the narrative become about rebuilding and having a positive attitude despite constant setbacks. I believed that i was reading about children and not author inserts but don´t get me wrong though. The story stays a tragedy to the end as death is a constant companion. A clearer end point would have been nice but life itself has no ending so i will deal with that i guess. Classic art isn´t for everyone in general but i never had a problem with it and the art on display here is well done without a doubt despite the somewhat simplistic look. The gore and suffering comes of very well but the perspectives and landscapes are also professionally chosen. This masterpiece is somewhat flawed as i pointed out but i think that pretty much anyone needs to read it even if the dark content will be to much for some. Historical accounts form survivors need to be treasured and examined to not fall back into mistakes of past generations and Keiji Nakazawa made himself immortal with his magnum opus. I saw it (a 9/10 pilot btw.) and you should too! Read the related and award-winning Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms (8,5/10) as a companion piece. His Struck by Black Rain is a fictitious and heavy handed 6/10 mess but it has some nice angry power so read it too. ★★★ (out of 4) - highly educational The review already says all but the problems are the mentioned preaching, some historical opinions that some could find controversial and a focus on the fictional narrative later on that murk up the water and distracts from the setting as bit. Consider this a 3,5/4 star rating though if you want as better portraits of war and post-war barely exist in the comic form and this is first hand knowledge. Some versions off the series also have interesting interviews attached. My opinion on the comparable Grave of the Fireflies is similar with a 9/10 as it does not overstay and it has amazing direction but the message is a also a bit off and Bennett The Sage´s review explains it well. It also gets the same educational rating from me. |
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MarshalBanana
 Posts: 5525 |
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Is this not a bad idea? You are giving this book to young people who may not know the events that led up until the dropping of the bomb. What will they thing, that this was an unprovoked attack.
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Megiddo
 Posts: 8360 Location: IL |
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Marshal, considering that the bomb was dropped on a city (twice), not centralized on a military target, it's fair to say that it was quite unprovoked. The United States mercilessly slaughtered civilians, no matter how justified you may think it was in the long run. I think it's fair game for a kid to see a first-hand account of the result.
This was an interesting Kickstarter. It runs the premise on shipping books out to people, who are then supposed to give to their library. It seems like a really odd way of going about things. |
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leafy sea dragon
 Posts: 7163 Location: Another Kingdom |
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It is still an incredibly depressing story to tell to kids, though I guess this in turn depends on which schools and libraries it's supposed to go to. That being said, a lot of Newbery Award books tend to be pretty depressing too, so maybe kids can deal with it. Me, when I was little, I could not stand depressing stories. Or scary ones. Or action ones for that matter, which pretty much narrows things down to strictly comedy and slice-of-life.
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Polycell
 Posts: 4623 |
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I seem to remember hearing that Newbury Award winners aren't all that popular amongst children(one book I read as a kid had the main character pointing out that, if you see the medal and a dog on the cover, don't get attached - appropriately, it was called No More Dead Dogs).
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leafy sea dragon
Posts: 7163 Location: Another Kingdom |
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We were taught in AP US History that the Emperor of Japan declared that they'd fight the United States down to the last person in the country, and the United States military, taking it seriously, bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki to show that they had the firepower to do exactly that.
I'm not surprised that Newbery Award books aren't popular among children. They seem to mostly be stories of nostalgia and loss, like Bridge to Terabithia. I didn't know many other kids growing up who were really into stories like those. They mostly liked silly stuff, like me. |
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Maidenoftheredhand
 Posts: 2634 |
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I gave a little for this, glad to see it was funded.
And perhaps I was a weird kid but I read and loved many of the newberry award winners as a child and I definitely knew about the Hiroshima/Nagasaki bombings at least by 9 (maybe earlier) but I remember reading Sadako and the 1000 paper cranes in 4th grade or maybe it was 3rd grade. I definitely knew about the Holocaust and WWII and the Internment Camps, etc around that time and earlier. I think people are underestimating what kids can understand and take in. |
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TheFullmetalOne
Posts: 170 |
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GATSU
Posts: 15614 |
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leafy:
Should be rephrased to, 'He'd send as many people to die in his place as he could, until he was forced to flee the country'. 
That's because they profited the most from the raping and the pillaging. You know, like the ones who constantly pull our politicians' strings. |
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Anime Hero25
Posts: 26 |
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But the worst part was they didn't apologize for the attack on Pearl Harbor. Japan dragged America into WW2 I don't see any other way we could have ended this. |
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residentgrigo
Posts: 2623 Location: Germany |
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I can guarantee you that children won´t read it as my library has it too and the only readers are 40+ or me (age 26). (The same goes for Grave of the Fireflies btw.)
The reasons are obvious but it also looks "old" and was published before let´s say a decade ago so it is for grandparents and scholars of comics only. Now go and watch HBO´s White Light/Black Rain: The Destruction of Hiroshima. Last edited by residentgrigo on Sat Sep 19, 2015 8:05 am; edited 1 time in total |
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omiya
 Posts: 1856 Location: Adelaide, South Australia |
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Although it doesn't show much of the devastation, the movie "The Emperor in August" gives some of the context of the situation around the time of the Japanese surrender.
Preview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxEWiHiiCkk Official site: http://nihon-ichi.jp/ Brief English description: http://shochikufilms.com/product/the-emperor-in-august I saw it on 28th August at Movix Saitama-Shintoshin. It would be good for it to get an English subtitled release outside of Japan. |
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Polycell
Posts: 4623 |
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Whoops - I seem to have worded my post badly. I was talking about the whole unconditional surrender policy; as far as I ever learned in school, it just was, without any rhyme or reason. Who knows how many lives that cost. A bit more insight into bushido's always interesting, though.
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Tempest
 I Run this place.ANN Publisher  Posts: 10468 Location: Do not message me for support. |
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Historians generally agree now that Japan would have surrendered. However at the time the Americans were demanding an unconditional surrender, and the Japanese wanted to negotiate. In particular, they wanted to keep the emperor on the throne (they were worried the Americans would remove him) and they wanted to keep some of their territories.
The opinion that they never would have surrendered is outdated. The Japanese were ready for an American land invasion (which was still months away), and they would have fought the Americans on Japanese territory while they waited for the opportunity to surrender on terms that they preferred. They believed that the Americans / Allies would have given better terms once the casualties started rolling in. The expectation of mass casualties on both sides is in fact correct. The criticism against the horror of the bomb is somewhat misplaced. On many occasions, more people were killed and more buildings destroyed in a single night by firebombs than were killed in either Nagasaki or Hiroshima. On both those nights, those were the only cities bombed.... it's scary to think that they were actually "good nights" compared with other nights where multiple cities could be leveled by firebombs in a single night. Additionally, the Americans had very few bombs (maybe they had one or two more, it's not clear) using them as tactical weapons would have been ineffective. It's not like the entire Japanese army was gathered together in one place... Finally, historians have been questioning for years whether the bomb actually caused the Japanese surrender, or if it was something else entirely. The Japanese Supreme Council didn't meet until August 9, 3 days after the first bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. On August 8 the Foreign Minister requested that the council meet to discuss the bombing, but they refused. What changed? On August 9th (JST) the Soviet Union broke their peace treaty with Japan and invaded Manchuria and they were ready to invade Japan proper in under 2 weeks. To make matters worse, they would be invading from the North and West, while the Japanese army was entrenched on the East and the South (ready for the American invasion). So the theory that a lot of historians now hold is that Japan decided it was better to surrender to the Americans than the Soviets. You can read more about this here: http://foreignpolicy.com/2013/05/30/the-bomb-didn't-beat-japan-stalin-did/ http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/soviets-declare-war-on-japan-invade-manchuria https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet–Japanese_War_(1945) So yeah... what most people believe about the bomb is all wrong. It wasn't what ended the war, and it wasn't drastically more horrific than what was already happening. |
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