The tone, visuals, and characterization found in Katsuma Susumu’s Devil Fish and Tatsuta Kazuto’s Ichi-F contribute to their depiction of nuclear laborers as “nuclear gypsies.” In each manga the workers depicted are ostracized from society for being “contaminated,” even called “dirty” and are generally treated like gypsies and forced to live on the outskirts of society. When the main character of Ichi-F attempts to rent a vehicle, he hears “I’m afraid we’re not renting vehicles to anyone traveling to Ichi-F… Some people say that there’s a greater-than-zero chance of contamination, so…” (p.201). Though “nuclear gypsy” may seem callous, this term aptly describes the way these workers are received by other people in Japan in two eras of Japan’s “atoms-for-peace” history, regardless of their separation by more than three decades. Furthermore, the similarities of the work of the employees of a functioning nuclear power plant and the workers who are cleaning and repairing a destroyed power plant are eerily similar, effectively showing the inherent precarity of nuclear power.

In Devil Fish, the economy is booming from the initial success of the nuclear power plants in Japan. However, even this apparent economic success cannot completely obscure the precarity of life around nuclear power when an employee gets hurt while working at plant and it creates a panic instead of being handled appropriately. The characters were faced with two major problems: the injured employee was not allowed to leave without being decontaminated and the representatives of the plant were concerned about word of an accident getting out. The nuclear plant boss emphatically says “No, no, no ambulance. No way. No one can know there was an accident inside the plant… The power company won’t give us any more work” (p. 47). This shows the how the government and businesses (the power companies) were desperate to show nuclear power was completely safe and reliable, even if that safe image was false, exemplifying both the economic and political struggle of having a positive view on nuclear power (as well as the danger and precarity of the job itself.) Devil Fish also uses the image of an octopus as a symbol of the strangeness of nuclear power. The octopus is one of the most alien and mutant-like creatures within the ocean and it being attracted to the nuclear power plant is symbolism for the strange and new world of Japan with nuclear power.

In contrast to Devil Fish, ICHI-F depicts an economy that is reeling after the devastation of the Tohoku earthquake and the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster. The visuals of the accurate and detailed drawings of the buildings and reactors within the nuclear power plant give the reader the sense they are actually working on the various buildings within the contaminated zone. Many of the workers are the ones who had their home and jobs destroyed by the tsunami and earthquake. The sense of precariousness is everywhere in this book, even as the main character tried to find a job in the nuclear power plant area almost immediately after the devastation but it takes him nearly a year to find a job in the zone. Tatsuta characterizes a widespread eagerness to work in the zone for both altruistic and practical needs, as the main character states “I was swayed by high pay, curiosity and just a bit of altruism for those affected.” (p.25). The precariousness of the work is also evident in Tatsuta’s tone, as the common salutation when leaving for work in the contaminated area is “Stay safe.” Seemingly a harmless platitude, it also shows the acknowledged inherent danger of working in the contaminated zone. Furthermore, it echoes how simple gestures that attempt to create safety only create the illusion of it, as the main character goes on to say “This phrase might sound ominous to people who don’t hear it this often, but I find it reassuring” (p.22). Another part of the precarity of this life inside the contaminated zone is the fact that the work will not always be guaranteed, because you cannot work at the site once you have reached your yearly radiation limit. So, even after the danger of the physical harm the radiation can put on your body, you have another added sense of precariousness with the job only being temporary. The main character enforces this idea when he says “I can only work at the amount of radiation I received today for 20 days a year, so it’s not exactly that lucrative in the long run” (p.279). The manga also documents the progress of the sites he visits and works on, including when certain areas were opened to the public and when certain areas of the nuclear power plant were repaired. This documentation shows how important the cleaning and repairing of the plants were so important not only for the economy of Japan, but also for a sense of security in society and politics as well.

Despite different settings and time periods, nuclear laborers, or “nuclear gypsies,” have been similarly portrayed in the manga by Katsuma Susumu and Tatsuta Kazuto. In his manga Devil Fish, Katsuma details the daily life of nuclear plant workers in the burgeoning world of nuclear power in Japan during the 1980’s. Getting paid rather large sums of money, appropriately called “hazard pay,” for short but dangerous work was apparently very appealing for a lot of people in Japan. This phenomena recurs in Tatsuta’s post-3.11-disaster Ichi-F, in which the more hazardous areas to clean and repair were more dangerous and therefore more lucrative. Tatsuta heavily used visuals and characterization to portray his characters as nuclear gypsies and also establish a prevalent sense of precariousness; for example his characters’ eagerness to work even in an environment known to be dangerous to show how desperate some people in Japan were to make a good wage. Visuals in both manga such as the sharing of clothing, caravanning, and general communal living without modern amenities within the nuclear power plant contribute to the image of “gypsy” life. Portrayed in Devil Fish, much of the work of the nuclear plant worker is the changing of clothes and the decontamination process, which directly mirrors the life of the people cleaning up the nuclear disaster at the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Ichi-F. The frequent visuals in both texts of shared clothing, washing and resting areas for the workers and their limited access to running water and electricity all augment this concept of “nuclear gypsies.”