I haven’t read much Japanese fiction outside of graphic novels. In fact, the only other Japanese book I think I ever read was Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore, which I really didn’t enjoy. I have however watched a lot of Japanese movies, from the Samurai cinema of the 50’s and 60’s to the splatter horror of the 80’s, and the Yakuza action films of modern times, and I think I get it, in a Gaijin kind of way. At least, I know that I enjoy it.
Black Rain has the feel of a lot of those older samurai films in that there are long periods of subtle existential exposition punctuated by rushes of sudden frightening (sur)realism. The beauty of Japanese storytelling (at least in the case of samurai film, and Black Rain) seems to be in never over-dramatizing the climactic moments, but rather letting the reality of them speak for itself, really just letting them happen. In this case, I do not think that this is merely a function of the “diary” context of much of the narrative in Black Rain, because I believe it is evident in almost every Japanese film I have seen.
In Black Rain, author Ibuse uses the daily activities of Shizuma and his small family unit to illustrate the innocence and simplicity of the average person, in any situation, but certainly in the wake of the American Atom in Hiroshima, August, 1945. In particular, I appreciated the use of the wife’s diary of their daily food to lay bare the sufferings of the average Japanese citizen at the hands of their own government. To me this illustrated almost perfectly the idea of a war being waged by a privileged power elite on the backs of the mass of citizens. After the bomb has fallen, Shizuma’s recounting of the various stories he hears of peoples difficulties getting help from the bureaucratic military system to which they had been hitherto unquestioningly subservient, and in particular, his own attempts to secure a ration of coal, are particularly indicative of the self serving greed of a hierarchical system of class domination. At the same time, he also witnesses scenes of cooperative organization, common people helping each other, and working together to ease their suffering, improve their condition.
To me, Black Rain is much more of an indictment of the Imperial Japanese government than of the Americans. It’s a story of people being used and brutalized by a global system of capitalist hegemony, suffering for the glory of an elite class, and finding out the hard way that they have only themselves to count on. (This was driven home even more powerfully by the documentary on the same subject, White Light, Black Rain, in which the survivors had to fight the government to get benefits)
In particular, the final two pages of chapter eleven really captured the essence of Ibuse’s narrative. Shizuma walks through Hiroshima among the razed buildings and maggot covered swollen corpses and recalls a poem;
“Oh worm, friend worm,
Rend the heavens, burn the earth, and let men die.
A brave and moving sight.”
His response to the poem is one of revulsion, echoed unknowingly by the soldiers he meets shortly thereafter burning bloated, rotting bodies.
“These stiffs are getting out of hand.”
“If only we’d been born in a country, not a damn-fool state.”
I don’t think you have to be Japanese to get that.
