Interestingly, two movies going by the title Black Rain came out in 1989 and both were set in Japan. They were released one week after the other. The second Black Rain is an action-filled movie about the Yakuza which will be directed by Ridley Scott and casts Michael Douglas. The writers of the film aren’t Japanese which is evident in their portrayal of Japan in other movies. The origin of the title ‘Black Rain’ derives from the Pyrocumulus cloud that resulted from bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki that bomb showers. Both events serve as the foundation of the movie’s premise. The American phrase Black Rain is taken as a component of the story but not elaborated on and the suffering of the people is also not given due importance. Exploitation of the third world is something which is quite common among mainstream American movies. That isn’t the case with the Black Rain movie.
The explosive rains of Hiroshima as projected in the Japanese movie “Black Rain” continue to follow Yasuko’s tale. Yasuko is a teenage orphan kid who is currently residing in Hiroshima with her uncle and aunt. She assisting her friends in changing their house during the atomic bomb explosion. A lot of people were dying along with the burning of skin, as they moved around the city. People were badly injured and left screeching on the edge of survival. Yasuko while trying to reach back to the city gets drenched in the raining ashes. The three of them Yasuko and her uncle and aunt tried taking with them to her uncle’s office in the city but there were more fires. All of this happened to Yasuko around 5 years back.
Yasuko continues to stay with her aunt and uncle, and her uncle’s mother in Fukuyama. She is now a young woman and in the age which normally begins for marriage. In her relatives, a search begins for a husband but this turns out to be something that makes the men and their families to opt-out. When she indicates that she was in Hiroshima during the nuclear indiscriminate bombardment, they fear that she may be ill, and this would mean that she likely would not be able to conceive. The family starts to watch other refugees from Hiroshima gradually begin to erode away and die a slow and painful death. In deep concern Yasuko accepts the fact and state of things and makes peace with being an unmarried woman, accepted by society or not. Life becomes mystifying at this point.
Making sense of the surviving Americans of the atomic bombings in Japan Chaim Horwitz would say that while we are able to acknowledge the people who died immediately, we have to simply accept the idea that a fallout death toll continues to spiral out of control. The western media during those times merely revolved around the so called ‘ending of the war’ in the defeat of Jaoan. In one of my other reviews in this series, I have said that communication had already been established by the Japanese government with the USSR Army over peace talks. The silent treatment was that they could not be called victorious over ‘those filthy commies’. The same type of propaganda was on the European Front as well which repaid the debt on the efforts and victories of the Soviets over the Germans. So, it makes perfect sense that you take it for granted that the war was one of the most important events in American history and the Soviets disappeared from the picture.
Let us keep in mind that the nuclear bombings and the deaths that followed were completely unwarranted actions aimed at combining and bringing down Japan. Furthermore, the American occupation and dictatorship imposed on the Japanese people was extensive in changing the perception itself within Japan. It was Shōhei Imamura alongside the other Japanese directors that would unravel the narrative in its entirety. He has managed to capture a number of frames in his movies that resemble several shots from a particular era to be quite specific. I was astonished by the abundance of home-life vignettes that took me back to the domestic world of Yasujirō Ozu’s films. Nonetheless, there are scenes that, as yet, have not graced my viewing of an Ozu film. Imamura trains the lens on three family members as they traverse a beaten Hiroshima while painting them on the cusp of the camera while gently sliding horror footage into the edges of the frame. The outcome is intense because we are shown only a few of them.
The balance between the history that the filmmaker is reluctant to accept and an intimate family tale, is done rather well. As Yaskuo keeps on being rejected in marriage after marriage because of doubts regarding her health, her aunt & uncle’s distress is also becoming more apparent. Even more so when her uncle saw some of his closest pals become unwell and die on him. If their niece is not to be married, she does not have children, where is the future then? A family is one of the most important elements in Japanese society, and the cutting off one’s family line is one of the worst fates one can suffer. Currently, the US administration is supplying billions upon billions of arms to racist states like the Israeli occupation, these in return cut many Palestinian’s families.
This review omits one character as I found it to be a potent experience to see the story unfold as well as come across this character. Learning about this character and how her life is related to Yaskuo provides a contrast to a rather dark narrative with some positivity. They are also the ones who teach us that love like that cannot be limited by great suffering.
The atomic bomb inflicted two great wounds on a society that was already in great pain- but it did not annihilate the Japanese people. Yes, there is suffering, and suffering abound for them, but it is family that has enabled them to emerge from the darkness.
A family portrayed in Black Rain is the complete opposite of how family is portrayed in Studio Ghibli’s Grave of the Fireflies. An aunt is presented in the aforementioned film, treating her nephew and niece as mere means to obtain more rations. But once she has fed them enough so that they are no longer hungry, the children must chase her away in one of the saddest endings of all time. Though, having mentioned that there is indeed devastating death, Black Rain even then attempts to find some form of solace and light even with such a bleak ending. Such tragedies accompanied with stories of hope are not common in western cinema where we are used to experiencing the opposite as the norm. For example, most of our movies are set in worlds which seek to temper the harshness of reality; unfortunately that has its downsides too. People who are duped into believing such things tend to adopt a nationalistic view of the world which is very myopic as they are conditioned to believe that the world outside their borders does not matter.
The believers of Neoliberalism would have us believe that history has ended, we remember it from books. This notion is false. History is happening at every moment around us. The day an atomic bomb was dropped in Hiroshima was not the only day that the act had an impact. It had consequences the subsequent day, the day after, the next week, 6 months, 5 years, a decade and even now and forever. That’s history. It’s the outcomes of decisions we make and how they spread through the sea of people. The poor decisions that lead Japan’s rulers to drop two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki are still bearing the undesired consequences.
The Japnese regime has rescinded an invitation to the Israeli regime for attending the atomic bombing ceremony in 2024 because this party is, as of now, committing genocide. As United states reacted aggressively to this circumstance and refused to attend the ceremony also, the meaning of this incident sounds and speaks for itself because of it’s deep significance. The sheer don’t care attitude of this action is free interpretation. The War is far from gone; it has hardly begun. The outcomes of decisions made are clearly there for all to see. A member of the United nations cannot just and write off them having cold blooded murder with no consequence to them.
For more movies like Black Rain (1989) visit solarmovie
