Keiji Nakazawa

Keiji Nakazawa was a Japanese manga artist and writer, best known for his searing semi-autobiographical series *Barefoot Gen*. Born on March 14, 1939, in Hiroshima, he was a *hibakusha*—an atomic bomb survivor—who lost most of his family in the August 1945 bombing. That experience forged his artistic and political vision, leading him to create pioneering manga that confronted war trauma, nuclear devastation, and postwar society with stark realism and deep humanism. Nakazawa entered the manga industry in the 1960s, but his signature work, *Barefoot Gen*, serialized from 1973, became one of the first Japanese comics to gain international recognition, a foundational A-bomb manga that combined personal testimony with bold criticism of militarism. His catalog includes titles like *I Saw It*, *Hiroshima*, and *Barfuss durch Hiroshima*, and he is credited as artist, inker, and writer on a dozen issues from 1978 to 2005. Nakazawa died on December 19, 2012, leaving a legacy as a moral voice who proved manga could be a medium for historical and political reflection. His work earned major awards and remains a touchstone for comics as testimony.