Keiji Nakazawa (1939–2012) was a Japanese manga artist from Hiroshima. He survived the atomic bombing of the city at the age of six but lost his father, older sister, and younger brother. After moving to Tokyo in 1961, he began his career as a manga artist and later drew extensively on his experience of the bombing to create works about nuclear destruction and war. His best-known work, "Hadashi no Gen," follows Gen Nakaoka, a boy who loses members of his family in the bombing and struggles with hunger, discrimination, and the upheaval of postwar Hiroshima. Published internationally as "Barefoot Gen," the series has been translated in more than 20 countries and regions, and Nakazawa was inducted into the Will Eisner Comic Awards Hall of Fame in 2024.
