Barefoot Gen
Grave of the Fireflies
Abstract
This paper discusses the ways in which, two of the most famous anime movies (Grave of
the Fireflies and Barefoot Gen), portray the misery of war in Japan towards the end of
World War II. Through ignoring part of their own history they depict a “victims history”.
Furthermore through the emphasis on innocent young children and their families the
viewer deeply sympathizes with Japan and the Japanese people. Both movies are clearly
based on very dystopic events but show their outlook and utopic elements in far different
ways. There are six scenes in total that are discussed, three from each movie with each
scene from a movie relating to a relating topic of “family drama”, “victims history” or
“realistic vs. surreal (use of anime)”.
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Geena Krueger
Ted Gournelos
Dystopia in Global Cinema
April 22nd, 2011
Japanese Cinema: Grave of Fireflies & Barefoot Gen
Mori Masaki’s Barefoot Gen (Hadashi no gen, 1983) and Takahata Isao’s Grave
of the Fireflies (Hotaru no haka, 1988) are, according to author Susan Napier, “the two
most famous anime dramas concerning World War II” (Napier 217). It took Japan years
to confront the happenings of World War II. As seen in both of these movies, when
World War II is discussed, the period before Pearl Harbor and the aggression against
China, which began in 1931 is ignored. Instead, official vehicles, such as “textbooks and
government ceremonies as well as popular and elite culture”, emphasize the period from
Pearl Harbor to Hiroshima, which “set a balanced moral calculus” essentially allowing
the atomic bombing to cancel out responsibility for Pearl Harbor and simply glossing
over the colonization of Korea and the previous ten years of aggression against China
(Napier 218). Both of these films, especially Barefoot Gen, portray horrifying violence
and destruction, but they also contain scenes of powerful emotional human-scale
interaction that are filled with a childlike, innocent tone. Grave of Fireflies as well as
Barefoot Gen are anti-war movies, and make us sympathize with the Japanese people
by focusing on innocent children devastated by war’s destruction, the use of
generally real conventions and the portrayal of a corrupt and evil conspiracy
between the government and military (victim’s history). While both films share the
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anti-war message, Grave of Fireflies depicts the slowly dying world, passivity and
powerlessness largely reflected in Seita (protagonist), whereas Barefoot Gen shows
glimpses of hope throughout the movie and a movement of upward momentum, which is
largely depicted in Gen (protagonist).
PLOT INTRODUCTION/AESTHETICS
Animation historian Ernest Rister says “it is the most profoundly human animated
film I’ve ever seen.” (Ebert Roger) Grave of the Fireflies takes place towards the end of
World War II in the Japanese city, Kobe. It is essentially a story of the relationship
between two young orphaned siblings, Setsuko (young girl) and Seita (pre-teen boy), who
need to face the struggles of war, such as malnutrition and death (of their parents). The
movie begins in Sannomiya Station and portrays Seita, in rags and dying of starvation. A
janitor comes and digs through his possessions, and finds a candy tin containing ashes
and bones (of Setsuko). He throws it out, and from it springs the spirit of Setsuko, Seita,
and a cloud of fireflies. The spirit of Seita continues to narrate their story, which is, in
effect, an extended flashback to Japan near the end of World War II, during the Kobe
firebombings. After their mother had died, due to severe burns from the air raid of the
Americans, Setsuko and Seita go live with a distant Aunt. The aunt becomes relentless
towards the young children because of the lack of food and so the children decide to live
independently in an abandoned bomb shelter. Seita steals food to survive, but they
eventually both end up dying of malnutrition, Setsuko in the cave and Seita in the Station.
Barefoot Gen begins with images and news reports about the bombings,
destruction of the Americans on Japan and the historical focus of the first atomic bomb
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being created (that will eventually – as the viewers know – be dropped on the city of
Hiroshima). The focus then turns to a family of five, Gen, his younger brother Shinji, his
elder sister Eiko, their father, and pregnant mother Kimie, who live in Hiroshima. The
beginning of the plot focuses on the families struggle to afford food, their pregnant
mother struggling of malnutrition, and the fears that Hiroshima is being saved for
something special since a bomb has not yet been dropped. The tension builds until the
atomic bomb is finally dropped on to Hiroshima. The use of Anime here helps convey the
unconveyable. Gen and his mother survive, as they need to leave the rest of the family,
who are buried under their house beam. The rest of the plot focuses on the terrible aftereffects of the atomic bomb and the struggles of Gen and his mother, and his newborn
sister, Tomoko (meaning friend). A boy, Ryuta, who is the spitting image of Gen’s
younger brother, joins the family and helps to provide food for their mother and baby
sister. The day the two boys finally are able to bring home lots of milk for the baby, they
come back only discovering that Tomoko has already died of malnutrition. The movie is
emotionally draining, but in the final scene when Gen takes Ryuta and his mother to the
river, where they light the candle and release the boat, and together they watch the flame
in the sunset, a symbol of hope is expressed.
A FAMILY DRAMA
These anti-war movies are essentially family dramas (Napier 218), which allow
the viewer to become attached with main characters to only watch them suffer and
eventually die (especially in Grave of Fireflies). Setsuko and Seita’s death of their mother
in a World War II air raid, while their father is in the army, precipitates the crisis of the
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movie by forcing the children to live with distant relatives (Drazen 131). Through the
absence of both of their parents, Seita is forced take care of Setsuko and is shown as
nurturing and sensitive. This can especially be seen in the scene where Seita decides to
perform gymnastics on a playground in an attempt to distract the sad Setsuko (Grave of
Fireflies, 16.00-19.00), yet he fails to do so and is shown as ultimately unable to play a
dynamic role in taking care of either his mother or sister (Napier 226). All of the colors in
this scene are desaturated, brown and grey. As a viewer we can’t help but feel sorry for
the children (Japanese people), especially the extremely cute and innocent Setsuko, as we
know their mother has just died. Napier notes that given the importance of female
characters in their relation to traditional Japanese culture, it is possible to read these
helpless (Setsuko)/dying (their mother)/mad female victims as expressions of a
fundamental unease on the part of the films as to any real possibility of cultural survival
(Napier 228). In this scene we have Seita, who is trying to cheer his little sister up, and is
shown high above in the sky performing gymnastics and his sister in strong contrast
crouched, little, and helpless crying in the foreground. It is not only very disturbing
visually to the viewer but also shows here, as it does throughout the scene, how the
camera is always looking down on or is at the same level as Setsuko, whereas on Seita we
are always looking up. This shows and being in accordance with Napier, how the
Japanese identity is almost completely “feminized”, not only in terms of the dominating
younger sister, but also in the character of Seita himself (runs away from his
unsympathetic aunt rather than confronting her/ apologizes to the angry farmer rather
than stand up to him when he is caught stealing), who is “demasculinized” from the
film’s very beginning (Napier 229). The masculine is the dominant force in both Seita’s
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family and Gen’s family, yet this role of masculinity is carried out far differently in both
films.
In Barefoot Gen the dominant force in the family structure is shown through two
young boys taking care of their respective female relatives and further in the father, who
is present in the first half of the movie (whereas in Grave of the Fireflies the father is
absent and in the Navy). Gen’s father compared to Seito’s is clearly aligned against the
authorities. He is a day laborer who wears a simple undershirt and loudly criticizes the
“madmen” who run the government. Gen’s father is as “down to earth and present” as
Seita’s father is “ethereal and absent” (Napier 227). In one of the opening scenes
(Barefoot Gen, 1.27 – 2.55) the camera is down looking up on the family of five (1.50)
revealing the importance of family, with the men in the foreground. The father is then
quoted saying (teaching the boys “one of” his lessons): “It’s (wheat) life begins in the
coldest season of the year. The rain pounds it, the wind blows it…it’s crushed beneath
people’s feet but still the wheat spreads its roots and grows. It survives.” This scene is
very important because the viewer is exposed to both the fatherly figure, the lightheartedness side of the movie (as Gen imitates and makes fun of his father) and the
symbolic meaning of the wheat. As we see in the film’s final scene (26.26 - 28.08) the
image of the wheat returns as Gen and Ryutaro walk through a barren wasteland,
speculating whether grass will ever grow there again. Barefoot Gen ends with soaring
music and this final movement of upward momentum (Napier 226). Gen throughout the
movie carries this energy and hope in him. It is clearly his father’s influence, from his
exhortations to “look after your mother” to his homilies about the wheat, that inspires and
sustains Gen throughout the film. Although both movies show the death of the father,
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Barefoot Gen ends with an “invocation to a still symbolically present individualistic
father”, whereas Grave of the Fireflies portrays Seita and Setsuko, its main characters, as
literal and spiritual orphans, abandoned by their father and rejected by a “society in
which the father is literally and symbolically dead” (Napier 227). Grave of the Fireflies is
an endless nightmarish vision of passivity and despair, whereas Barefoot Gen carries a
strong spirit of resistance and renewal.
“VICTIM’S HISTORY”
From the opening scene (00.00 – 3.25), throughout the movie, until the very end,
Grave of the Fireflies depicts, by using an elegiac mode and realistic graphics, a slowly
dying world. In the opening scene the viewers feel directly addressed as Seita, the main
character stairs at us straight into the camera. We know it is his ghost that is starring at us
as his voice narrates, “September 21, 1945…That was the night I died.” The scene is very
dark, and shows an emaciated and disheveled young boy slumped against a pillar in a
vast train station. We hear the voices of other passerby say careless things, such as “damn
tramps”, “disgusting”, “it’s disgraceful, having these bums here.” As he slumps further
down and eventually dies a maintenance man takes his pulse and pronounces, “he’s a
goner.” He finds a small candy tin and tosses it into the bushes as a few small white
objects roll out – what the viewer later discovers to be the bones of his little sister,
Setsuko. This scene shows how Grave of the Fireflies has a pervasive tone of
powerlessness from the very beginning of the film, which sets the despairing tone of the
entire film. The film does contain moments of beauty and happiness, such as the children
laughing in the bomb shelter as the fireflies illuminate their faces, or when they go play
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out by the ocean on the beach. Yet these moments of happiness seem to always be
disrupted by the recurring image of planes flying above their heads. According to Napier
these airplane images evoke a world that can never be safe – a world where ultimate
horror rains down from the innocent sky (Napier 220). The movie begins by capturing the
hearts of the viewer, through showing the suffering of innocent young children. There is
never discussion of why the war is happening and therefore no explanation for the
children’s suffering, and no sense of hope or of a new turning point at the war’s end. The
emphasis of passivity and victimhood is further shown in the symbolism of the fireflies
that are shown throughout the movie. Goldberg states that the use of fireflies is one of the
only events that signify joy in the film, but that they however also gesture to the fires that
burned Japan and for the lives lost in the war (Goldberg 41). There is a dreamlike quality
to fireflies that suggests a history that can never be escaped but that must be continually
experienced as painful, and persistently oppressive (which can clearly be seen in the
opening scene). According to Drazen Bareefoot Gen is set out to tell a very specific story
about living through hthe atomic bombing of Hiroshima and its aftermath; Grave of the
Fireflies in contrast, for the most part leaves politics alone as irrelevant to the lives of two
orphaned children (Drazen 194).
In either case, it is difficult to see how issues such as Japanese war guilt or
atrocities in Asia or the Pacific could be introduced as anything other than an artificial
and ideologically driven digression from the stories these films are trying to tell (Drazen
194). Barefoot Gen shows elements that support a “victims” interpretation yet it is not so
focused on a one-note interpretation as Grave of the Fireflies is (Napier 223). The movie
begins with a brief mention of the attack on Pearl Harbor while ignoring the previous ten
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years of warfare in China. It is the summer of 1945 and the viewers know that the atomic
bomb on Hiroshima is going to drop soon. This violent and powerful opening underlines
the sense of Japan and the Japanese as targets. In contrast to Grave of the Fireflies,
Barefoot Gen is filled with uplifting moments, indomitable spirit of resistance and
renewal and hope for a better future. A memorable scene (18.18 – 22.20) is when Gen
and Shinji take the journey to go catch a carp for their pregnant mother, who is suffering
from malnutrition. It is poring, cloudy and dark out when they make their way to the
pond. They struggle to capture the carp as the carp also struggles and franticly jumps
from the water into the air. This scene specifically provides a visual trope of upward
momentum that parallels the boys’ psychological unwillingness to be beaten down
(Napier 224). When they do finally catch the carp, the priest of the temple catches the
two boys for stealing his fish. Out of anger he hits Gen hard in the face and yet Gen’s
response is, “you can hit me again, sir. Really you can hit me as much as you like.” Gen
and Shinji are energized by adversity and show an indomitable spirit of resistance and
renewal. This coincides with their father’s resistance to the war, in a more political scene,
where he explains to his sons that “madmen” run the government.
REALISTIC VS. SURREAL
This tone of dynamic resistance early in Barefoot Gen is consequently contrasted
with the sense of the atomic bombing itself. While the entire first half of the film is shot
in a realistic style the bombing of Hiroshima is an extraordinary sequence of surreal
horror. Anime is what helps the movie look both very realistic and simultaneously very
surreal at times, especially in Barefoot Gen. The first twenty-eight minutes of the film
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contains realistically portrayed war, village, and nature scenes. After the first half of the
movie it starts to switch beginning with the scene (28.10 – 34.26) of the three airplanes
flying overhead – two of them are B-29s, the third is called Enola Gay and this is when
the viewer realizes that the atomic bomb will be dropped soon on to Hiroshima. As the
tension builds the scene cuts to a beautiful flower bed, Shinji playing with his wooden
boat that Gen just carved for him, Eiko and her mother, Kimie doing laundry outside, the
father working on traditional Japanese shoes called Getas. We see the city of Hiroshima,
the trams going by, people riding bicycles, and the continued activities of Gen’s family.
Within this scene the viewer continues to always see references to time, the clock always
being shown in the background, the calendar with a large number 6 written on it and
finally we know the bomb will be dropped. One last time the camera moves to the
American pilot, and this is where the Anime switches from realistic to surreal. The pilots
are impersonalized and distant, the bomb drops and a cute innocent little girl holding a
red balloon immediately burns up, her eye balls fall out, her skin falls off…It is precisely
the graphics of manga or anime that can help to “convey the unconveyable” of the
bomb’s horror (Napier 222). This scene is hideous, painful to loot at, and it sticks in the
viewers mind. This surreal use of anime on the one hand allows for easier identification
and on the other, the fact that they are not “real” human beings depicted keeps the viewer
from being too affected by the traumatic events depicted. These stunning visuals contrast
with Grave of the Fireflies’ use of the elegiac mode and realistic graphics to show a
slowly dying world.
Grave of the Fireflies, in contrast to Barefoot Gen, represents the temporal
continuum of which is an endless present interrupted by scenes of bombardment that
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numb the characters into miserable passivity. In the scene (1.06.00 – 1.08.19), where the
last two bombings of the movie occur Seita runs out instead of staying in the shelter. He
steals food and traditional garments while the others are fleeing from their homes to find
shelter. Within the dystopia Seita is able to find a utopia out of desperation to provide
food to his slowly dying little sister. This specific scene as well as throughout the movie
shows the realistic graphics of a slowly dying world through realistic images of planes,
the bombs dropping and the fires flaming everywhere. Goldberg further notes, while the
film presents a realistic picture of suffering, it is also critical of a blind patriotism that
masks selfish impulses during the war and, afterward, of Japan’s inability to confront this
past (Goldberg 40).
CONCLUSION
Barefoot Gen and Grave of the Fireflies both emphasize the miserable time in
Japan during World War II and make the viewer strongly sympathize with the Japanese
people, by focusing on family issues, innocent children’s lives, ignoring major historical
events and by using anime to portray both realistic and surreal graphics. Grave of the
Fireflies is told as an elegy for a lost past that can never be reconstituted. It is a
continuous downward movement that ends with the only hope being of finding peace
after death. Drazen further states, that the only thing that stop this masterful movie from
being unbearably depressing is the possibility that they will be reborn in to a better world
(Drazen 214). Barefoot Gen on the other hand is based on a one time historical event that
interweaves moments of hope and triumph within its dark tapestry of devastation and
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despair. The movie also ends on a much happier note with a family of three surviving that
still have hope and dreams of a better future.
“On my honor I have not given, nor received, nor witnessed any unauthorized assistance
on this piece of work.”
Word Count: 3130
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Works Cited
Drazen, Patrick. Anime Explosion! The what? Why? & Wow! Of Japanese
Animation. Berkeley, CA: Stone Bridge Press, 2003. Print
Ebert Roger (March 19, 2000). "Grave of the Fireflies (1988)". rogerebert.com.
Retrieved 2011-03-26.
Goldberg, Wendy. “Transcending the Victim’s History: Takahata Isao’s Grave of
the Fireflies.” Mechademia War/ Time. Ed. Lunning, Frenchy. Minneapolis: University
of Minnesota Press, 2009. 39-52. Print.
Napier, Susan. “No more words: Barefoot Gen, Grave of the fireflies, and
“victim’s history.” Anime from Akira to Howl’s Moving Castle. New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2005. 217-229. Print.