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Over sixty years later, political debate about the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings shows
no sign of resolution. American movies and television miniseries on the bombings have
understandably been made from the victor's point of view. MGM's unrepentant Above and
Beyond (1952) presents a highly biased U.S. Army version of events. Later Hollywood
productions frequently downplay the wartime context and emphasize the bombing as an
unjustifiable atrocity.
American occupation censorship prohibited Japanese filmmakers from addressing topical
issues for almost seven years after the surrender, but independence brought no wave of
historical introspection. Akira Kurosawa's forthright look at atom-age anxiety I Live in Fear (Record of a Living
Being) did not start a trend. A few Japanese fantasies (1954's Gojira)
approached the issue, but only at a stylized remove. Science fiction scare pictures from
the height of the Cold War (The Last War, The Final War) pictured Japan as a
helpless pawn trapped between dominant aggressor nations.
The United States censorship and military secrecy have left harrowing personal accounts
as the only record of the post-bombing horrors. In 1989 Japanese director Shohei Imamura (Pigs and
Battleships, The Insect Woman, Vengeance is Mine (Kuroi
ame) ) made Black Rain from Masuji Ibuse's account of the
lingering effects of the bombing. Perceiving the need to remind his country of the truth
of the atomic horror, the normally confrontational director exercises notable restraint.
Imamura called his approach "a quiet voice" but his movie is emotionally wrenching just
the same.
Young Yasuko (Yoshiko Tanaka) has relocated to Hiroshima to be safe from firebombings
and avoid conscripted labor in a war factory. Although she's not in the city when the
atom bomb hits, she returns immediately by boat and is caught in a shower of 'black
rain' -- precipitation filled with radioactive soot from the mushroom cloud. Yasuko
joins her uncle Shigematsu and aunt Shigeko (Kazuo Kitamura & Etsuko Ichihara) to cross
the devastated city, avoiding fires and downed power lines. They come across blast
victims both dead and alive that they can hardly bear to look at. Shigematsu's company
supervisor sends him to a Buddhist monastery for a crash course in administering last
rites to the dead.
Five years later, Yasuko is living with her Uncle and Aunt in a rural community. They're
acutely aware that the Americans may use atomic weapons in the Korean conflict. Some of
their neighbors are blast victims with chronic radiation-sourced illnesses. All live
with the possibility that they may fall sick and die without warning. The apparently
healthy Yasuko attempts to find a husband through a matchmaker, only to be turned down
when her prospective in-laws learn of her undesirable status as a Hiroshima survivor.
Nobody really knows what the long-term effects of radiation poisoning will be, but
nobody is optimistic. Then the community is hit by a wave of sickness and death. Yasuko
isn't convinced that her legal bill of health document will spare her, as she entered
the city on the first afternoon of the bombing. And of course, there was that black rain
...
Black Rain sees the bombing as a twofold curse upon Yasuko. Although everyone's
case is different, the damage done by radiation acts like a delayed fuse, hitting years
after the exposure. The townspeople monitor their red blood cell count and set their
hopes on various kinds of home remedies like drinking fish blood. Others fall back on
Buddhist faith healers. Yasuko has become a social pariah in a community that considers
her damaged goods. Just by mentioning Hiroshima, her matchmaker sees a good marriage
arrangement ruined. When an eager and desirable suitor shows up, she can't help but tell
him of her status. He doesn't care, but his family immediately withdraws from the
wedding plan, without explanation.
The actual bombing is depicted in several episodes spread out through the narrative.
Yasuko watches the mushroom cloud from several miles away, but Uncle Shigetmatsu and
Aunt Sigeko are right in town when the blast hits. Shigematsu's train car is overturned
and his face is cut, but otherwise both he and his wife are unscathed. When Yasuko joins
them they decide to go to Uncle's company by crossing through the center of town. Many
survivors are wounded and burned, and many are in shock; others cry out from beneath
burning buildings. A boy is convinced that a horribly burned "thing" is his brother only
after he recognizes his brother's belt. At the city center, dead bodies have been turned
into human-shaped pieces of charcoal -- adults, children and babies.
Yoshiko Tanaka is highly sympathetic as the teenaged Yasuko, a cute girl with normal
ambitions who sees her life reduced to an ever-narrowing set of unhappy choices. She
eventually gravitates toward Yuichi (Keisuke Ishida), a mentally ill sculptor who
suffers from a serious wartime stress disorder. The two outcasts find a brief calm in
each other's company.
Black Rain is clearly designed as a memorial to the victims of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki, for a world too quick to forget. A final pacifist sentiment declares that, in
terms of human suffering, an unjust peace is always preferable to a just war. For all
its depiction of the horrors of the bombing, the film is remarkably free of political
bias. One bitter criticism reportedly leveled at Above and Beyond is its
contention that the U.S. Army Air Corps dropped leaflets over Hiroshima warning the
city's residents to evacuate, an event that the critic claimed never happened. But
Black Rain, a Japanese film taken from eyewitness reports, shows the leaflets are
being dropped. Despite the fact that the American military suppressed and distorted
facts of the bombing, Imamura's film demonstrates that misinformation still persists on
both sides of the argument.
AnimEigo's DVD of Black Rain is quality disc that far surpasses the original 1998
Image release. The sharp enhanced B&W image captures the film's original range of grays.
The string-heavy score by Toru Takemitsu does not reach for sentimental effects.
AnimEigo's carefully researched subtitles include "footnote" subs explaining unfamiliar
phrases.
An impressive selection of extras begin with a surprise, a seventeen-minute discarded
color ending that brings the story to a close in 1965. It's a toss-up as to
whether the alternate ending should have been retained. Although we're happy to see the
film reach closure -- even one as strange as this -- the color footage is a stylistic
departure from what has gone before. Yoshiko Tanaka's makeup and acting are very
convincing in this almost religious coda.
Ms. Tanaka also appears in a newer interview, admitting that she has never seen the
other ending until now. Director Takashi Miike speaks briefly about the hard work of
assisting Shohei Imamura. AnimEigo's generous text files clarify concepts brought up in
the film's dialogue and sketch the basics of the still-current controversy over
President Truman's decision to drop the bomb. A multimedia gallery presents several
American short wartime information films designed to foster hatred of the Japanese
people and encourage their extermination. This fine DVD edition of Black Rain is
an excellent place for the uninformed to begin an examination of the Hiroshima
bombing.
Reference: Article Black Rain: Reflections on Hiroshima and Nuclear War in
Japanese Film, Robert Felippa, 2003, Crosscurrents
For more information about Black Rain, visit AnimEigo. To order Black Rain, go to
TCM Shopping.
by Glenn Erickson
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