Keiji Nakazawa, a Hiroshima atomic bomb survivor whose iconic comic strip about the incident was read by millions of school children in post-war Japan, has died.
Nakazawa, who had been ill with lung cancer, passed away last week at a hospital in Hiroshima at the age of 73, surrounded by family, according to his longtime friend Koichiro Maeda, head of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum.
The author's Barefoot Gen manga series, which carried strong anti-war themes and often gruesome drawings, was serialised in magazines from 1973 to 1985. It was also turned into books that sold more than 10 million copies, according to Japanese media.
The series focused on a character named Gen Nakaoka and depicted how he survived the blast and lived through tumultuous post-war years.
It has been translated into 18 languages, including English, French, Korean, Thai, Russian and a few Scandinavian languages.
"I met him in October and talked about the 40th anniversary of Barefoot Gen next year. He looked spirited, if not perfect, although he had been in and out of hospital," Maeda said.