Customer Reviews

Black Rain: A Novel (Japans Modern Writers)

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I was shocked to see that only five people have reviewed this book before me. It is such an important book in showing the tragedy caused by the Atomic bomb. The book begins by describing the peaceful life of Shigematsu a man who worked for a clothing company during WW II. At first the reader learns that Shigematsu is trying to beat radiation sickness by taking it easy and raising fish. Howerer, his idealic life is disturbed because no man is willing to marry Yasuko, his adopted daughter, because they are worried that she suffers from radiation poisoning. To help prove that she is okay. He writes out his full account of the time of the bombing. This book is mesmerizing. It shpws it graphic detail the ddestruction of the bomb. It is not blaming anyone, it is just showing the facts

Masuji Ibuse's "Black Rain" is rightly considered a classic in Japanese literature, and perhaps "the" classic of literature about the atomic bombs dropped on Japan.

Shigematsu and his wife, Shigeko, arranged for a relative, Yasuko, to move to Hiroshima in order to avoid the draft for the war effort. Shigematsu worked for the government and could arrange things. After the bombing, persistent rumours about Yasuko suffering from radiation sickness made it impossible to find her a suitor for marriage. This problem prompted Shigematsu to write his own account of August the 6th, 1945, to show that Yasuko was exceptionally healthy. His logic was that he had been exposed to much more and his own life was relatively normal. He is a man of pride and dignity, as well as one with a keen sense of his own obligations to others around him.

Shigematsu's account is a catalogue of a plethora of horrors that people suffered during and immediately after the bombing. The injuries, the sights and Shigematsu's descriptions of them left this reader feeling less than pleasant. Shigematsu does not hold back on the details, nor does he attempt to overwell the reader with cheap shock tactics.

Shigematsu neither asks for nor expects the reader's sympathy. It is almost as if the bomb has to fit within his life and everyday routine. In the midst of the horror, for example, Shigematsu has business to attend to, and sees that he has done it to the extent possible. He comes across as a forthright and straight up person with a deep sense of trying to maintain some air of normality in the midst of terrible circumstances.

Ibuse based his novel on accounts written by survivors who were there and saw what happened. Ibuse neither justifies the bombing nor blames anyone for it, but focuses on the tragedy itself from a very human viewpoint. His relentless journey through the aftermath of the bomb is indeed a statement for life and dignity. Shigematsu and those around him somehow maintain a deep sense of value and dignity for human life and experience, which especially shine through in the days after the bombing itself.

This is not a pleasant book to read, but it is a great book and should be counted with the greats of literature from around the world. This book is a touching and penetrating journey into a Japanese family's experiences of the Hiroshima bombing. I absolutely recommend it to all.

I was a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Japan for two years, and was able to visit Hiroshima several times. I visited the Peace Park memorial there, and toured the museum. It was, to say the least, a very sobering experience.

Reading this book was also sobering, but I gained an interesting perspective from doing so. The great thing about this book is that it shows the bombing from the perspective of regular Japanese people and how it affected them. They didn't really know what had happened when the bomb went off. People didn't know about atomic bombs back then the way we know now.

The book also affords a very neutral perspective on the bombing. It isn't necessarily either anti-american or pro-japanese. It just tells the story as it happened. I highly recommend it for anyone who wants to know more about what happened to people in Hiroshima and how it affected their lives.

This is one of the most heart-wrenching accounts of the bombing of Hiroshima I have ever read. Ibuse's matter-of- fact telling of the effect of the bombing on a single family leaves the indictment entirely up to the reader; the human level of the story is more effective than a thousand history books.

Black rain describes the horrors of the bombing of Hiroshima and its after effects through the life of a family's experience. Based on real accounts, the historical novel provides important educational insights to its readers. The terrors described stay true to what actually happened and gives the reader essential insights needed to understand what happened in Hiroshima and to ask if it was really necessary. It does this however, with glimpses in to a more relaxed Japanese life after the war, which provides welcome breaks from the story. This book is a great step in coming to an understanding of the bombing of Hiroshima.

I waited six months to get my hands on a copy of this book, eager to read it because it is supposed to be one of the best in the genre. The anticipation made me a little hesitant when beginning it, putting it off for another few weeks because I had high hopes- hopes that were fulfilled.
Ibuse bases his story on interviews and diaries of survivors, using real many authentic incidents. But this is also the partially fictional tale of Yasuko and her family as they struggle with life and acceptance following the bombing of Hiroshima. Though not in the direct line of the bomb and suffering no noticeable injury or illness but having been caught in the `black rain' that fell after, Yasuko has to worry about the future of not only herself but any children that she may have. This is one of the reasons that though of marrying age she has as of yet succeeded in securing a husband and the cause for both her and her Uncle Shizuma to begin copying their diaries from the day of the bombing and the days following. The novel goes backwards and forwards in time, giving the reader a sense of what it is like for the people who lived through the atrocity, as well as horror that was the bombing itself and the aftermath.
It's all matter of fact, never shying away from the gory detail to appease the reader, never adding drama where it isn't needed but still manages to convey the suffering.
As an Australian reading this some fifty years plus after Hiroshima you could assume that it would be difficult to understand many of the emotions and customs that come up in the book (as I did with On The Beach, feeling as though the characters were cold and lacking certain emotions or attachments, but realizing that this was because of the generational gap), but Ibuse still managed to convey an image that crosses generations and cultures.
You become involved with Shizuma's and any other's plight, the predicament that Yasuko finds herself and the desperate fight for survival during wartime. You want it to turn out to the best for them, knowing full well the horror that is nuclear warfare. It's impossible not to see how indiscriminate it is and wonder why anyone would ever use such horrific force then, and especially now when we know how awful the truth is.
It is such a superb book that should be on anyone's must read list (and sent to every leader who has nuclear capabilities).

This book is excellent because it zooms in on and transforms what is unquestionably a horrific tragedy of war into clear, everyday, straightforward, even mundane (but never boring) depictions of what average, ordinary human beings lived through in the days, weeks, and years following the dropping of the bombs. Most of the book is narration in the form of a journal written by an older japanese man (Shigematsu) who (along with his wife and neice) lived through the dropping of the bomb in Hiroshima. Along the way other persons' diaries or recollections are interspersed to form a chronological picture of the days before and after the bomb. The accounts are in themselves written in ordinary speech, and have the feel of conversation, as though you'd been invited for dinner over to these people's houses, and they talked to you of some of their experiences...telling what they saw, what they heard, what they felt. The genius of the book is weaving the accounts into a cohesive whole, and making no judgment or commentary on the events other than the opinions expressed in the accounts. These are everyday accounts in everyday speech, and perhaps for that very reason, make the tragedy the more real -- Shigematsu and the others notice some details more than others, just the way that you the reader in your own life notice some things and not others. These details ring incredibly true...you (as the reader) are transported to the scene. You become both inured to seeing disfigurement and death because it is everywhere, but moved at seeing it because it is your own friend or loved one who has been instantly burned, or who, years after the blast, only then starts to lose their hair, and their teeth, and to develop terrible sores. Excellent, excellent book.

This book is one in about five books I've ever read that I would give a five star rating. The beauty of his writing style reminds me of 'The Grapes of Wrath'. His almost constant descriptions of the horrors of the initial blast and the minutes afterwards pound into the readers mind, time and time again, how incredible the human suffering really was. To me, it wasn't about whether it was the right decision or not but rather about the undeniable fact that things really got that bad. Without being sentimental at all every page had me on the verge of weeping for humanity.

Having read The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes some years ago, I found my self wishing I had known about "Black Rain" at that time. "Black Rain" would have been the ideal book to read immediately after finishing Rhodes' book.

Although this is historical fiction and not a strictly historical account, the impact of this book clearly comes from Mr. Ibuse's primary research and interviewing of bomb survivors. The image that I will never forget was that of the toddler attempting to suckle from her dead mother; but other scenes in the book hold power as well.

Not only does "Black Rain" examine the impact of "Little Boy" on people of Hiroshima, but it also provides glimpses of the day-to-day hardships (such as starvation rations) and mistreatment that Japanese militarism brought its own civilians leading up to the bombing to the uncertainty that the survivors would have to carry with them for the rest of their lives regarding the long term health effects of their exposure.

At times, it reads as a very matter-of-fact account; but, at others, it provides a window on the thoughts, and emotions of the ordinary people of Hiroshima. Included are the feelings of resentments towards the Japanese Imperial Military (especially those that dared not be spoken during the war) to the understandable pondering of those effected by the bomb who wonder why it had to happen.

I can't say that there are not other books that would add to one's understanding of the history of this event, but The Making of the Atomic Bomb paired with "Black Rain" provide as clear an understanding as any two books could, at least for someone born over 20 years after the End of World War II.

Every once in a while I find a book that surprises me.
I had bought Ibuse's Black Rain upon recommendation from the remarkable Kenzaburo Oe. I expected something like a documentary novel about Hiroshima, maybe like John Hersey's book about that subject.

What I found is a unique work of art on top of the documentary. We have here a complete tale of life in war before the bomb and in peace after the bomb. Not to forget the transition phase of uncertainty and disorientation.
The narration is set a few years after August 6, 1945. A family of survivors lives a simple life of daily routines and remembrances. The man in the house had written a diary on the day of the bomb and the following days. He copies the original text and adds further memories. He asks his wife to add a text on food during the war. The act of writing is as much a subject as the act of living in the presence and remembering the life of the past. The writing is done for the sake of a local library which had asked for it.

The real focus of human interest is not the mass killing. We can't be moved, really, by hundreds of thousands. We need individuals. We have the small family of 3. We have Yasuko, the main man's niece, who lives with uncle and aunt, and has lived there during the bombing. She is young and attractive and suspect. Does she have radiation disease? Can she bear a son? Can one marry her? The uncle's heart is near breaking point. Nobody knows the truth. Rumors have the girl at totally wrong places, but knowledge of the right places would not guarantee health.

The novel delves into amazing detail. It is a cook book for famine times. It gives recipes for aquaculture under monopoly administration. It tells us how a man with radiation sickness can spend his time productively without overexertion.
The diary describes the phenomena of the bomb's effects (the clouds, the light, the fires, the injuries, the corpses, the decomposition etc) with attention to much detail, but with total ignorance about the kind of weapon that has been used. Hindsight does not blur this. This uncertainty is a main driver of the tale.
We learn about conflicts between bureaucracy, military and civilians. We watch the total collapse of organization after the bomb, but we see no descent into barbarity by the survivors. Decency and civility are maintained. Well, apart from some minor transgressions like theft of provisions. And yet: it takes a century, thinks the narrator, to repair the moral damage done to the population in an area badly ravaged by war.
(This simple truth seems easily forgotten by contemporary invaders of foreign countries.)

What to do with corpses of people who die of their injuries and diseases after the bomb? Death certificates? Burials? Our narrator gets conscripted as temporary scripture reader at funerals. He learns to appreciate the Buddhist texts that have been given to him by a monk for the purpose. He memorizes the Sermon on Mortality.

A superb early scene: on the morning of the bomb, help units are dispatched into town; the headman sees them off with patriotic bombast about spirit of war and keeping their bamboo spears as symbols; on the way, they make a lunch break at a farm house; during the break they hear a speech on the radio, We do not learn what the speech is, but the men drop their spears when they continue their march.

How can a book with this subject avoid melodrama, monotony, sentimentality, and all the other pitfalls of the subject? That's what the translator asks in his introduction.
Good question. Ibuse did it. The tone and sense of humor is the greatest surprise in this book. A miracle of counter-intuitive writing.