General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

Barefoot Gen (はだしのゲン) (1983 film)

Barefoot Gen (はだしのゲン, Hadashi no Gen) is a 1983 Japanese animated war drama film directed by Mori Masaki, adapted from Keiji Nakazawa's autobiographical manga series of the same name about a boy surviving the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Nakazawa wrote the screenplay, served as executive producer, and financed the production himself through a company, Gen Productions, that he established specifically for the film; the animation was produced by Madhouse.¹^•²^•³

Key fact	Detail
Japanese release	21 July 1983, distributed through the Kyoei Eiga national network; theatrical anime film⁴
Director / writer	Mori Masaki (director); Nakazawa Keiji (original story and screenplay)¹
Production	Gen Productions with Madhouse; music by Kentaro Haneda; character design and animation direction by Kazuo Tomizawa¹
Runtime	Reported as 85 minutes by allcinema, 84 minutes by eiga.com, and 110 minutes by the Japan Foundation⁴^•³^•²
Source	Autobiographical manga by Nakazawa Keiji, a Hiroshima hibakusha who was six years old when the bomb fell; serialized in Weekly Shonen Jump from 1973⁵^•²
Sequel	Barefoot Gen 2, directed by Toshio Hirata, opened in June 1986⁶^•⁷

Spoilers

Story

The film is set in Hiroshima in the summer of 1945. Gen Nakaoka, a second grader, lives poor but close with his parents, his older sister Eiko, and his younger brother Shinji. His father Daikichi is critical of the war and tells his children to grow strong like wheat, which springs back even when trodden.²

On 6 August 1945 the US bomber Enola Gay, diverted from its cloud-covered primary target of Kokura, drops the bomb on Hiroshima at 8:15 in the morning. Gen survives because he is standing by a wall and bends down when it falls; nearby, people are burned, blinded, and torn apart. Running home, he finds his father, sister, and brother trapped under the collapsed house, and he and his mother fail to save them before the house burns. His mother gives birth prematurely to a daughter, Tomoko.²^•¹⁰

After Japan surrenders on 15 August, food shortages leave Gen's mother and the baby malnourished. Gen takes in Ryuta, an orphan who resembles his dead brother, and the two boys earn 100 yen caring for Seiji, a young artist burned over 90 percent of his body, who dies of his injuries. The money they earn to buy powdered milk for Gen's baby sister arrives too late; she has died of lack of food. The film ends with Gen and Ryuta seeing wheat sprouting in the barren fields, where many believed nothing could grow for 70 years, and Gen, who had feared worsening after-effects of radiation, regaining his belief in a future.²

Origin and production

Nakazawa Keiji was six years old and a first-grade student when the United States dropped the atomic bomb on his hometown of Hiroshima; the blast killed his father, his sister, and his brother, and a baby sister born days later died of malnutrition.⁵^•² He began serializing the story in the boys' weekly magazine Shonen Jump in 1973, and the collected book edition of 1975 became a bestseller.²

The story had already reached the screen as three live-action films directed by Tengo Yamada and produced by Gendai Production in the late 1970s: Hadashi no Gen (1976), Hadashi no Gen: Namida no Bakuhatsu (1977), and Hadashi no Gen Part 3: Hiroshima no Tatakai (1980), with Rentaro Mikuni playing Gen's father.⁸ Nakazawa felt that live action had reached the limits of what it could show of the atomic bombing, and he put his own money into an animated adaptation that he could control himself.³^•⁹ Gen Productions was established by Nakazawa especially for the film.²

The director, Mori Masaki, had previously worked as a cartoonist at Mushi Productions under Osamu Tezuka and had directed films such as A Separated Cloud (Hagure Gumo, 1982).² The staff included Kazuo Tomizawa for character design and drawing direction, Kazuo Oga as art director, Kinichi Ishikawa on photography, Susumu Aketagawa as sound director, and Kentaro Haneda composing the music; Masao Maruyama handled setting.¹ Issei Miyazaki voiced Gen, Masaki Koda voiced both Shinji and Ryuta, Seiko Nakano voiced Eiko, Takao Inoue the father, and Yoshie Shimamura the mother.¹

The bombing sequence

The film is often described as the first feature-length anime on the atomic bombing. A Japanese academic study calculates that about 6 percent of the running time is devoted to the dropping of Little Boy, the first atomic bomb used in combat, and the tragedy beneath its cloud, in a continuous stretch of cruel imagery.¹¹ The Washington Post's 1992 review noted the film's construction: it draws the viewer in with a slow-paced family portrait, then shocks about half an hour in when the bomb drops, showing melting flesh, the black rain, and Gen's family burning under the wreckage of their house.⁵ A Barnard College thesis describes how, from the moment Little Boy falls, Masaki abandons animated realism for a nightmarish sequence in which time first stops, compressing what the bomb destroyed in seconds into about five minutes of screen time.¹²

Reception and legacy

On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds a 71 percent Tomatometer from 7 critics and an 86 percent Popcornmeter from more than 1,000 audience ratings.¹³ Critics have compared it with Isao Takahata's Grave of the Fireflies (1988), which it preceded by five years; the Midnight Eye review finds Mori's animation the poorer of the two in craft but notes that its narrative is a straightforward chronicle of one boy's life rather than constructed fiction.⁸ Philip Brophy's review describes the film as remaining true to the journalistic tone of Nakazawa's story and best appreciated as a personal testament to survival rather than a heroic fantasy.¹⁴

When the film was first released publicly, a campaign of "1,000 grass roots screenings" was held with the cooperation of citizen groups and local communities.¹ The manga it adapts entered school libraries in Japan in the 1980s and became one of the most widely read narratives in Japan on the bombing of Hiroshima, and the 1983 and 1986 anime adaptations are part of that canon.⁷ Scholar Jaqueline Berndt notes that after the 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident, responses in Japan suggested the work had not raised critical awareness about nuclear power plants, and that its canonization as A-bomb literature shifted critical attention toward content rather than its earlier subversive potential.¹⁵

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026