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NEWS: Barefoot Gen Manga Removed From Matsue City School Libraries


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Antares



Joined: 31 Mar 2005
Posts: 21
PostPosted: Sat Aug 17, 2013 2:35 pm Reply with quote
I don't Understand... This was reported in december, why again?
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Ggultra2764
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Joined: 21 Jan 2004
Posts: 3862
Location: New York state.
PostPosted: Sat Aug 17, 2013 2:43 pm Reply with quote
Antares wrote:
I don't Understand... This was reported in december, why again?


Looks like there was an error in the posting of the news.

The blog posting reported that back in December, it was decided children couldn't freely check copies of Barefoot Gen out of libraries, yet teachers were still allowed to use them in schools for educational purposes. This update is meant to explain that this policy has changed to remove all copies of the book from school following the mentioned petition.
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Antares



Joined: 31 Mar 2005
Posts: 21
PostPosted: Sat Aug 17, 2013 2:47 pm Reply with quote
Ggultra2764 wrote:
Antares wrote:
I don't Understand... This was reported in december, why again?


Looks like there was an error in the posting of the news.

The blog posting reported that back in December, it was decided children couldn't freely check copies of Barefoot Gen out of libraries, yet teachers were still allowed to use them in schools for educational purposes. This update is meant to explain that this policy has changed to remove all copies of the book from school following the mentioned petition.


Thanks for the clarification, my english is not very well
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halochief_90



Joined: 06 Feb 2006
Posts: 466
Location: Canada
PostPosted: Sat Aug 17, 2013 3:31 pm Reply with quote
Hmm. And I would have thought it would be because of that extremely misleading cover.
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mgosdin



Joined: 17 Jul 2011
Posts: 1302
Location: Kissimmee, Florida, USA
PostPosted: Sat Aug 17, 2013 3:36 pm Reply with quote
Quote:
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

George Santayana


There are things in everyone's past that they do not want to acknowledge.

The best that we can hope to do is try and learn from those past events.

Turning away from them is to abandon hope.

Mark Gosdin
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southplumb



Joined: 20 Nov 2008
Posts: 35
Location: Durham, North Carolina
PostPosted: Sat Aug 17, 2013 5:35 pm Reply with quote
On a side note, I went back to the other articles linked in the current article, and there aren't any comments on the article about a group against the use of Barefoot Gen in Hiroshima schools, but I thought there were comments at one time. There must have been some comments, and I was interested in seeing what people thought. Is it possible to restore the comment section?
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manhiem



Joined: 23 Oct 2011
Posts: 31
PostPosted: Sat Aug 17, 2013 7:21 pm Reply with quote
mgosdin wrote:
Turning away from them is to abandon hope.

Mark Gosdin


I think you misunderstand. These historical revisionists aren't trying to turn away from those past events, they are trying to bury them because of what those events say about the character of the Japanese nation at that time in history. It's rather the same as what the Neo-nazis of our day are trying to do when they say that the Holocaust never happened. They are trying to erase the record of what happened in the past in the hope that people will once again turn a blind eye if they decide to try again.
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enurtsol



Joined: 01 May 2007
Posts: 14746
PostPosted: Sat Aug 17, 2013 10:32 pm Reply with quote
This is more serious than simply censoring boobs and pantyshots.
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configspace



Joined: 16 Aug 2008
Posts: 3717
PostPosted: Sun Aug 18, 2013 12:25 am Reply with quote
enurtsol wrote:
This is more serious than simply censoring boobs and pantyshots.

Same principle, different matter.

(edit: actually as bad as this incident is, it still is not as severe as legal or criminal sanctions against sexual matter)

Quote:
The education board decided to remove the manga due to the graphic nature of the violence, not for the claimed historical inaccuracies.

If that's the case the Matsue board wouldn't have removed it from junior-high school libraries as well, especially when it was recommend and intended for children. Hopefully as with anything controversial this will get stir some interest in the students

Quote:
(While students are not allowed to check out the manga, teachers can still access copies of the manga as education materials.)

Maybe some teachers would be brave enough to lend them out on their own.


Last edited by configspace on Sun Aug 18, 2013 5:39 am; edited 1 time in total
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Juno016



Joined: 09 Jan 2012
Posts: 2377
PostPosted: Sun Aug 18, 2013 12:29 am Reply with quote
manhiem wrote:
mgosdin wrote:
Turning away from them is to abandon hope.

Mark Gosdin


I think you misunderstand. These historical revisionists aren't trying to turn away from those past events, they are trying to bury them because of what those events say about the character of the Japanese nation at that time in history. It's rather the same as what the Neo-nazis of our day are trying to do when they say that the Holocaust never happened. They are trying to erase the record of what happened in the past in the hope that people will once again turn a blind eye if they decide to try again.


Maybe I'm wrong, but I thought that's what Mark was saying... >.>;;;
"Turning away," as in denying that it happened. Thus, burying the possibility that it ever happened.
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CrowLia



Joined: 24 Feb 2012
Posts: 5500
Location: Mexico
PostPosted: Sun Aug 18, 2013 1:07 am Reply with quote
As a History student, this saddens and worries me. As was said above, censoring panties and boobs is stupid and everything, but retiring a book because it shows a part of history that the government doesn't like can be very dangerous. Totalitarian regimes base themselves on rewriting history to their convenience.

Something I've always really liked about anime and manga is that it allowed itself to rewrite history to the craziest and most unthinkable ways -Sengoku Basara and almost every Sengoku heroes on boobs or Hetalia for instance- a sort of "yea, history is there and it happened, but we can still have fun with it" mentality that I found really interesting.

There's of course the part in which you know there are many versions of History. I don't really know much about WWII and the Manchurian conflict, but just as there is an official "Japanese side" of the story, there will definitely be a "Chinese side", and a "foot soldier side" and they're not going to match. I'm not familiar with this manga, but I think if it represented one of many possible visions of the events it should be respected and kids and young students should have free access to it. They're gonna find out when they grow up for chrissake, do they really think they're protecting the children's nationalism with this? It's so stupid I'm already ranting
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Cutiebunny



Joined: 18 Apr 2010
Posts: 1746
PostPosted: Sun Aug 18, 2013 2:41 am Reply with quote
I wonder if the person who lodged the complaint was someone who was alive during that period. Regardless of what side your country was on, WWII and the bombings are still a very emotional subject for anyone old enough to recall living through it...despite the fact that almost 70 years have passed since the end of WWII.

Case in point - When I was in Hiroshima several years ago, I went to the museum there with several other Americans. Most of them were elderly and had not only lived through the war, but had lost siblings in it. In front of the museum, there's a sign which mentions that lots of Japanese people lost their lives during the war, and to pray for them. One woman in the group, after reading the sign aloud, turns to the rest of us and says "I'm not going to pray for them. They were on the wrong side."
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GATSU



Joined: 03 Jan 2002
Posts: 15279
PostPosted: Sun Aug 18, 2013 3:00 am Reply with quote
In a way, they're denying Nakazawa's very existence.
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manhiem



Joined: 23 Oct 2011
Posts: 31
PostPosted: Sun Aug 18, 2013 9:30 am Reply with quote
Juno016 wrote:
manhiem wrote:
mgosdin wrote:
Turning away from them is to abandon hope.

Mark Gosdin


I think you misunderstand. These historical revisionists aren't trying to turn away from those past events, they are trying to bury them because of what those events say about the character of the Japanese nation at that time in history. It's rather the same as what the Neo-nazis of our day are trying to do when they say that the Holocaust never happened. They are trying to erase the record of what happened in the past in the hope that people will once again turn a blind eye if they decide to try again.


Maybe I'm wrong, but I thought that's what Mark was saying... >.>;;;
"Turning away," as in denying that it happened. Thus, burying the possibility that it ever happened.


You could be right, but I got a different meaning from it. It seemed to me that he was saying that if the Japanese don't face their past, they will miss an opportunity to grow and mature as individuals and as a nation. Perhaps his view and mine are opposite sides of the same coin.
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Juno016



Joined: 09 Jan 2012
Posts: 2377
PostPosted: Sun Aug 18, 2013 11:37 am Reply with quote
manhiem wrote:
You could be right, but I got a different meaning from it. It seemed to me that he was saying that if the Japanese don't face their past, they will miss an opportunity to grow and mature as individuals and as a nation. Perhaps his view and mine are opposite sides of the same coin.


Yeah. He was saying exactly that, but he also first quoted:

Quote:
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

George Santayana


--which means [almost] exactly what you said. =P
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