Black Rain

This masterpiece, published in 1965, is a documentary novel of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Written to mark the 20th anniversary of the events of August 1945, the account is built around the central character, Shigematsu Shizuma, a real man who wrote a journal of the bombing and its aftermath. In the novel, set in 1949, he is transcribing the journal to send to the family of a young man interested in marrying his niece Yasuko (who has been living with her uncle). He wants to use it as evidence that Yasuko wasn't in Hiroshima on the day of the bombing and would, therefore, be free of radiation sickness and a suitably healthy wife. In the course of transcribing it, however, Yasuko’s health deteriorates. Paul Brians, in his authoritative work Nuclear Holocausts: atomic war in fiction, considers it to be “by far the most devastating account of the effects of nuclear war ever written” and it's also reasonable to regard it as one of the most important indictments of warfare in the 20th century.

The author, Masuji Ibuse (born 15 February 1898), grew up in a village in Hiroshima Prefecture. He studied literature at Waseda University in Tokyo. His first publication (a work of short fiction written in 1919) appeared in 1923. His first novel was published in 1931. During the Second World War, he was conscripted to serve for a year as a war correspondent in Southeast Asia. Many of his post-war writings are full of bitter condemnation of the war and its enduring aftermath. He received the Noma Literary Prize in 1966 for this novel and was in the same year awarded the Order of Culture, the highest honour for writers in Japan. He was also well-regarded for his writings on rural life and for works of historical fiction.

The anti-war sentiment of the central character is perhaps best exemplified by an entry in his journal on 10 August 1945:
“A phrase from a poem came back to me, a poem I had read in some magazine when I was a boy:
‘Oh worm, friend worm!’ it began. There was more in the same vein: ‘Rend the heavens, burn the earth and let men die! A brave and moving sight!’
Fool! Did the poet fancy himself as an insect, with his prating of his ‘friend’ the worm? How idiotic can you get? He should have been here at 8.15 on 6 August, when it had all come true: when the heavens had been rent asunder, the earth had burned and men had died. ‘Revolting man,’ I found myself announcing quite suddenly to no one in particular. ‘Brave and moving, indeed!’ For a moment, I felt like flinging my bundle in the river. I hated war. Who cared, after all, which side won? The only important thing was to end it all as soon as possible: rather an unjust peace, than a ‘just’ war.”