Restriction on Barefoot Gen

Receiving pressure from conservative or revisionist residents, the Board of Education in Matsue City, Shimane, had requested primary schools to restrict reading of manga books titled Barefoot Gen in their school library. After news report questioned the decision this month, the Board began to consider abolishing the restriction. Library is generally a place where people can freely access knowledge. People in Japan realized that freedom of knowledge could be limited by a specific guidance against anti-war argument in this country.

Barefoot Gen is a story of young boy named Gen who survived atomic bombing in Hiroshima in August, 1945, based on experience of the Author, Kenji Nakazawa, who deceased last year. Through Gen’s eyes, disastrous damages on humanity brought by an atomic bomb, inhumanity of war itself, and meanings of living are straightly described. Not only in Japan, Barefoot Gen has been introduced to other countries as translated version. At least three movies have been made based on the story.

Some residents in Matsue City last December submitted city assembly a petition to remove all the books of Barefoot Gen from all elementary schools in the city. They argued that some expression of the books were inappropriate to school kids. The argument was recognized as pointing to violence of Japanese soldiers and some horrible drawings about people suffered from the bomb. Although the petition was dismissed, the Board of Education requested schools to place the books in the office, backing off the eyes of kids.

After news reports revealed the exercise of schools in Matsue, the argument over the restriction of the book spread all over Japan. People came to know that Tottori Central City Library also restricted reading the books by removing them from regular shelves. What made things complicated was that the Minister of Education, Hakubun Shimomura, one of the most conservative figures in Abe Cabinet, supported the decision of Matsue.

This is not about political struggle between the right and left, but about human rights of students to access knowledge as much as they want. Considering Barefoot Gen has been accepted over these decades as a story about the importance of peace, life and liberty, it is irrelevant for the administrators to criticize the story as violent in revisionist way, insisting on a small part of the book. Kids can decide which is right or wrong as a book on the shelf of school.