Famous Anti-War Manga Removed From City’s School Libraries
by Beth on Friday, August 16, 2013
by Beth on Friday, August 16, 2013
A scene from the manga “Barefoot Gen”, showing a mother and baby trying to escape the suffering of the atomic bomb.
The manga is to be taken off library shelves and put away so that it can only be viewed on request, while borrowing the manga will not be permitted.
The education committee claim that some of the scenes in the manga are not suitable for younger children, given some of the harrowing ordeals faced by the characters in the aftermath of the bombing of Hiroshima; but netizens argue that the realities of war and the facts of Japan’s past are precisely what children should be taught.
From 47 News:
Manga “Barefoot Gen” To Be Placed On “Closed Shelves”: Matsue City Education Committee Has “Doubts About Content”
On August 16, it was discovered that the Matsue Municipal Education Committee had requested that all elementary schools in the city take measures to place the manga “Barefoot Gen”, which depicts the misery of the atomic bombs, on “closed shelves” where children cannot browse it freely.
According to the Committee, because the manga features scenes of beheadings and the rape of women, they made an oral appeal to the schools last year. Consequently, each school took measures so that a teacher’s permission was necessary to browse the manga, and so that borrowing was forbidden.
Furukawa Yasunori, deputy-head of the education committee explained that “I think that the manga in itself is a highly-valued piece of work. However, we still have some doubts as to whether some of the content is suitable for a child in a developmental stage”.
