Lead actress Yoshiko Tanaka, who plays Yasuko in the film, was widely recognized for her valuable performance in Black Rain. She won Best Actress at the Hochi Film Awards (1989), as well as Best Lead Actress at the 13th Japan Academy Awards.
Plot
Half-orphan Yasuko, who lives with her uncle Shigematsu and his wife Shigeko in Hiroshima, is in the middle of moving family belongings to the house of an acquaintance in the vicinity, when the atomic bomb is dropped. She returns to the city by boat and gets into a black rain, a fallout resulting from the bombing. After Yasuko is re-united with her uncle and aunt, the trio heads for the factory where her uncle works to escape the spreading fires. Their route is marked by ruins, scattered corpses, and severely burnt survivors.
5 years later, Yasuko lives with her uncle, aunt and her uncle's mother in Fukuyama. As she has long reached the age when a woman should get married by tradition, Shigematsu and Shigeko try to find a husband for her. Yet all prospects' families withdraw their proposal when they hear of Yasuko's presence in Hiroshima on the day of the bombing, fearing that she might become ill or be unable to give birth to healthy children. Yasuko eventually accepts her situation and decides to stay with her uncle's family, even when her father, who remarried, offers her to live in his house.
Shigematsu witnesses his friends, all hibakusha suffering from radiation sickness, die one after another, while also his, his wife's and niece's health is slowly deteriorating. Yasuko starts feeling close to Yuichi, a young man from the neighbourhood who is suffering from a war trauma. When Yuichi's mother asks for Shigematsu's approval of her son marrying Yasuko, he is indignant at first because of Yuichi's mental illness, but later agrees. Shortly after, Yasuko, already suffering from a tumor, starts losing her hair and is sent to the hospital. Shigematsu watches the departing ambulance, hoping for a rainbow to appear which would indicate that she will recover.
Throughout the film, the story of the consequences of the bombing of Hiroshima are portrayed in graphic detail, with journals and firsthand accounts of the victims of the Hiroshima atomic bombing in order to shed light on how terrible nuclear weapons can be for innocent civilians. One of these victims recollected that he “was three years old at the time of the bombing. {He couldn’t} remember much, but {he did} recall that {his} surroundings turned blindingly white…Then, pitch darkness. {He} was buried alive under the house. {His} face was misshapen. {He} was certain that {he} was dead.” This is reflected in a scene where bodies were engulfed by a blinding light followed by the insurmountable suffering of the masses. There is another story of a woman's father who was in the blast and suffered from many of the same long-term effects of the bomb. In both the account and in the movie, hair falls out of the victims’ heads and they slowly die of radiation poisoning.
Some of the accounts described the horrors of the surroundings and the conditions of the bodies after the bombing. Yoshiro Yamawaki and his brothers were going to check on their father who was working in a factory. The air quality is described in both the witness’ story and the movie as being horrible, smelling of rotten flesh. They passed many misshapen bodies and some who had their ,“skin peeling off just like that of an over - ripe peach, exposing the white fat underneath.’” When the uncle of the main character exits the train station, there are black skinned bodies everywhere and countless others who are so disfigured that their own family could not even recognize them, which ultimately reveals in dramatic detail the lifelong negative effects of nuclear weapons on a population.
Cast
Yoshiko Tanaka as Yasuko. A 20-year-old woman who was raised by her Aunt and Uncle since she was very young. Although Yasuko was not in the direct path of the atomic bombing, she was rained on by the nuclear fallout while crossing over the Inland Sea (瀬戸内海) in a small boat.
Black Rain distinguishes itself by employing a documentary-like realism to depict the physical and emotional toll of the atomic bomb. Imamura, known for his focus on marginalized individuals and unflinching portrayals of Japanese society, approached the project with a commitment to authenticity, capturing the lingering trauma of the hibakusha while rejecting overt melodrama. He sought to emphasize the mundane yet deeply human aspects of survivors' lives, a choice that aligns with his broader cinematic philosophy of exploring the lives of the socially marginalized.[4]
The film was shot in black-and-white, a deliberate stylistic choice that not only reflects the historical setting but also emphasizes the stark, haunting nature of the narrative. This decision underscores the bleakness of the survivors’ reality, contrasting with the vivid depictions of atomic bomb destruction often seen in other works. Imamura’s use of monochrome echoes his aim to evoke the historical and emotional weight of the events.[5]
Anecdote
During the shooting period of the movie, when the actor Shoichi Ozawa was taking a scene for the movie, he accidentally fell into the rice paddy and broke his arm, causing the filming to temporarily stop, so he appeared wearing plaster, which is not a set in the original book.[6]
Another story when Imamura was in the interview. In the ending of the film, the little girl suffers from the radiation and starts to hallucinate, her uncle is bringing her to a pond, which is an extremely beautiful and peaceful scene to see, according to his words. The composer of the film, Toru Takemitsu asked Imamura to extent that specific scene, because it is very emotional and touching; however, Imamura decided not to take the advice, he holds the principle that the movie should not be too emotional and should be true to the fact, expanding the ending will makes the whole movie becomes a lie.[7]
Reception
Black Rain met with mostly positive reviews. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave it 3½ of 4 stars, praising its "beautifully textured" black-and-white photography and pointing out that its purpose was not an anti-nuclear message movie but "a film about how the survivors of that terrible day internalized their experiences".[8]Geoff Andrew, writing for Time Out, stated that "despite the largely sensitive depiction of waste, suffering and despair, the often ponderous pacing and the script's solemnity tend to work against emotional involvement".[9] Film scholar Alexander Jacoby discovered an "almost Ozu-like quietism", citing Black Rain as an example of the "mellowed" Imamura in his later years.[10] Film historian Donald Richie pointed out the film's "warmth, sincerity and compassion".[11]
Black Rain was seen as inconsistent from audiences. Many describe this film as unpredictable and disease-type, this creating a sort of cult following. Each country has a different attitude for this film, as described by most, the English subtitles do not capture the true message behind the film as well as the French subtitles. Numerous film clubs use Black Rain to display, "Neoliberalism has done an exceptional job of convincing us that history is something in the past that we read about in books. This is a lie. History is unfolding around us constantly."
The common compromise of film watchers is that this film displays the rough and hidden secrets of the Hiroshima atomic bombings. Many of those in the West have been sheltered to the reality of those in Japan during this time, this film describes and enacts a portrayal of what life could have been like, creating an opportune viewing of different aspects of life.
Awards
Japanese Academy Awards 1990: Best Actress, Best Cinematography, Best Director, Best Editing, Best Film, Best Lighting, Best Music Score, Best Screenplay, Best Supporting Actress (Etsuko Ichihara)
^Pym, John, ed. (1998). Time Out Film Guide. Seventh Edition 1999. London: Penguin Books.
^Jacoby, Alexander (2008). Critical Handbook of Japanese Film Directors: From the Silent Era to the Present Day. Berkeley: Stone Bridge Press. p. 67. ISBN978-1-933330-53-2.
^Richie, Donald (2005). A Hundred Years of Japanese Film (Revised ed.). Tokyo, New York, London: Kodansha International. p. 266. ISBN978-4-7700-2995-9.
Ima-Izumi, Yoko (2007). "Nuclear Bomb Films in Japan and America: Two Black Rain Films". In Narita, Tatsushi (ed.). Essays on British and American Literature and Culture: From Perspectives of Transpacific American Studies. Nagoya: Kougaku Shuppan.
