- I drew manga on many subjects: baseball, samurai dramas, racers and so on. So I think I always would have found a career as an artist, in the entertainment world.
- In "Okonomi Ha-chan", I depicted a person who makes an effort to live through life from a different angle to Gen. I wanted it to be a powerful piece that would conquer the influence of the Bomb in Hiroshima.
- Sometimes, drawing manga, you can become frustrated with the limitations. For example, you might want to show a dramatic action, or a flow of movement, that you simply can't express in a series of frames on a page. Another thing you can have in film is real speech, the sound of the character's voice. And you can add music and sound effects. You can't do those things with manga!
- There's so much more that could be told of Gen's story, but now I feel that Gen can best live on in the imagination of the reader.
- If it hadn't been for my mother, who knows what would have happened to me. I would've been a war orphan - I'd either be dead or in jail, most likely.
- When Gen first appeared, I warned my wife to be prepared to get hate mail or threatening phone calls. Not a thing. Gen only got praise. Even the right-wingers cried when they read it!
- No other medium compares to manga in its sheer mass appeal. So all artists - cartoonists especially - should be active at times like this. If an artist is angry at what is going on in the world, he should be writing about it.
- So many kids in Hiroshima were war orphans, and if you were an orphan, your only means of survival was to join the Yakuza. That was just the way it was. Hiroshima was burned flat; it was a clean slate - it offered unlimited opportunities for the Yakuza. They moved in right away and engaged in furious turf wars. And the war orphans made perfect recruits - they had no relatives who would care if they died, and they wanted someone to look after them. If my mother hadn't been there to take care of me, I would have joined the Yakuza too. There's no question about it.
- Our generation must continue to tell of the horrors of atomic bombs and war.
- Ryuta (Barefoot Gen's friend) was based on a friend of mine. He was always in and out of jail. But he's alive and well - and still a Yakuza.
- When it comes down to it, I want to die in my hometown. I have a lot of friends here.
- On post-Hiroshima Japan: The society at that time was closed and bigoted, hardened by a sense of "turf" in each part of town. That's where I learned about human nature. Today, these are peaceful times, so we talk about glossy things like love and warm hearts. But I experienced more than my fair share of how the strong will bully the weak, mercilessly and relentlessly, when people betray their true nature.
- The idea occurred to me: I don't have to stick to big publishers. As long as my work can interest people, and make them feel something, that's enough.
- I hope Gen will run freely in the world, wherever he can. If he can go here and there, conveying the Gen spirit, that will have been the best part of being his creator.
- I lived in the Yanaka area in Koto Ward, Tokyo, a traditional district where people were good-natured and warmhearted. It was near Tokyo University of the Arts, so there were a lot of artists in that part of town. People were open to the arts. I owe a lot to the area and its people.
- The road to understanding is not necessarily long. When you tell the truth, people always understand you. If you cannot make them understand, you are not telling the truth.
- On Barefoot Gen: The real theme of the story is symbolized by wheat, which springs back no matter how many times it's trampled.
- I met Mr. Osamu Tezuka only once. He learned that I had recommended him for the "Asahi Prize," an award given by a Japanese newspaper, and he came to see me a year before he passed away. When he thanked me for recommending him for the prize, I felt overwhelmed and timid, as I had adored him with such passion.
- All I know is, if you live through something like the A-bomb, you know that war is too horrible not to be avoided at all costs, regardless of the justifications offered for it.
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