Thanks to the efforts of mass media, it has surfaced that the Matsue City board of education in Shimane Prefecture has severely limited students' access to the 10-volume manga series "Hadashi no Gen" ("Barefoot Gen"), a best-selling antiwar and antinuclear weapons classic. The board told the city's elementary and junior high schools in December to remove the manga from library shelves and to require students to get permission from teachers to read it.
More than 1,200 citizens have protested the board's decision by telephone and e-mail. The decision, which was actually made unilaterally by the board's secretariat, is deplorable. The board should immediately rescind it. It should not forget that the decision has deprived students of an important chance of learning about the cruelty of war and the horrific nature of a nuclear attack.
In a similar development, it has come to light that the central library of Tottori City in adjacent Tottori Prefecture placed the Hadashi no Gen series in the library's office two years ago. The series was removed from a shelf of children' books following a complaint from a parent. It was returned to the shelf on Friday.