January 2012 Discussion: Black Rain by Masuji Ibuse (spoilers)
 

Let's discuss the January Book Club selection, Black Rain by Masuji Ibuse. What did you think?

Already? I meant to post this in the final voting thread, but lost track of the days passing. :o So this is a companion ebook that some may find of interest. I know it is late to mention it. It is very short. This is a coldblooded assessment of the effects of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki conducted by the US Military immediately after the end of WWII. As the Inkmesh search reveals it is available for free form PG, and for a nominal amount from most of the usual major ebook sources.

The Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by United States. Army. Corps of Engineers. Manhattan District Inkmesh.

All of things I wanted to share and /or discuss were done while I was reading the book, outside of MR. Its really difficult for me, now, 2+ weeks later, to bring all of it back together....

Black Rain was an emotionally difficult read. It is very hard to "see" people suffer and it doesn't help to know that "your" country was the cause for said suffering.
Even now, understanding some of the the basic whats & whys does little to help shield the enormity of the loss and devastation. I left the book feeling angry at the United States for building the bomb and angry at Japan for backing us into such a corner that we felt we had to us it.

@Hamlet53: thanks for the tip.

Ouch! I haven't quite finished it yet. That little thing called "life" got in the way... I'll do chapter 16 and maybe some more tonight.
Anyway, I do like this book. It's nowhere bear as dark as I feared it would be.
It's very interesting to read about this event from this perspective. Knowing what we know today in contrast to what they knew then. They had no idea what had hit them and what they were dealing with.
I also like the insights in their way of life, and not just the story about what happened after the bomb.
Better put the computer away and read another chapter now!

So much to say about this book! I actually read it weeks ago, finished it New Year's Eve.

I virtual dogeared it while reading it in the PlayBook and then re read it on the Kobo Vox which has better highlighting. Neither allows me to copy the text unless I share the quotes to Facebook from the Vox so I guess I will have to do that...

Hmm, doesn't quote long passages anyways, so much for that...

A very evenly written, unbiased account of the war. On the one hand a passage at the end of chapter thirteen quotes a school song sung by the volunteer corps:
A rifle in your hand, a hammer in mine--
But the road into battle is one, and no more.
To die for your country's a mission divine
For the boys and girls of the volunteer corps!

Sounds very patriotic but in the ninth chapter Ueda says, "That's what happens when you chase after ideals like the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere... War widows on the increase, young men on the decrease, while some people get unfair shares of certain commodities."

Chapter ten, "Had this woman who lay dead here--I kept asking myself -- made no move to stop her son from volunteering to be trained as a human torpedo? War, I concluded, paralyzes a people's power of judgement."

In eleventh chapter the narrator says, "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!" and '"If only we'd been born in a country, not a damn fool state," said his companion wistfully.'

"Hiroshima was no more....Yet who could have forseen that its end would be of such horror as this?"

Ibuse certainly shares the horrors of Hiroshima with us yet he also makes it clear that Japan was ready to fight tooth and nail to defend its soil. And they wanted to drop the same bombs on American forces.

"The Japanese army in Manchukuo had therefore decided to drop on them a bomb similar to the one the B-29 had dropped on Hiroshima. The army..." Just propaganda or telling wishful thinking but it seems they would have used it if they could have.

The people with radiation sickness feel bad if they just go for walks as prescribed by their doctors, hence the fishing and fishponds which let them be out doing quiet, light activities without being called laggards. In the war those who didn't at least help to prepare the food feel bad, they need to help out, their sense of obligation runs deep. Their need to pay respect to their dead as well shows this.

There are two storylines, Yasuko is trying to get married but there is worry from all that she is also sick with radiation poisoning. In the end she does get sick and her marriage is called off.

Yes Caleb as I think I stated at some point the book is more about the ability of people to cope and live on even under the most horrible of circumstances than it is about describing the death and destruction of the atomic bomb.

Hpulley, excellent points so far. I read this early last August, and not anticipating that it would be make it here into a book of the month I did not bother highlighting any text or making notes. I am doing a rapid read through now to remedy that, but as I said I was caught early on this discussion starting. So here is what I have so far.


I liked it that Ibuse did not shy away from the fanatical determination of many Japanese to continue fighting to defend their “homeland' to every possible bitter end. As in this quote where the village headman of Shigematsu's home town is sending of a group to provide relief to those from their village in Hiroshima:

However, as some of the comments you made reveal it seems doubtful that this determination extended down to most of the actual members of the “Patriotic Service Corps” as revealed when they here the broadcast of the surrender:

Ibsue also points out the sort of regime that governed Japan at the time and how fearful people were to express anything that seemed to be opposition or to question the war. For example this from Yasuko's diary during the war:

Or this from when Shigeko is recounting food rationing during the war:


So anyway that is all I have to offer yet.

This might be of related interest to some, but in late December I managed to borrow, through a special request through my library, the film adaption of Black Rain. To a large extent this general plot of this is faithful to the novel, but much less time is spent describing the various characters experiences in the immediate aftermath of the atomic bomb and much more on there life years later. I believe that some of Ibuse's other novels are draw upon as well as there is a character, a former soldier, that has what today we would call PTSD from combat. I also recall that when I first saw this film not long after it was released parallels were drawn, as many thought the film director intended, between the attitudes towards Yasuko and the way much of society looked upon those with AIDS or those positive for HIV.

I wish I could get access to the original magazine articles for Kuroiame as there are places where I could tell that the translations didn't quite work, cultural references were missed.

This was a powerful book which I just finished this morning. I feel the images will stay with me a long time. This must never happen again, especially as today's bombs are so much more powerful than those that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The destructive power of today's nuclear warheads is unimaginable. This book should be required reading for all who would seek their use in war.

Most definitely!!!

Yes, I bought this and have started watching it. It is quite chilling. At some points you almost feel as if you're watching one of those end-of-the-world science fiction movies, but this is not sci-fi; for the horrors on the screen were first recorded in the diaries of the survivors that became the basis for the novel.

I have not seen this movie, but that remark is true for the book as well! I have not read many apocalyptic stories, but the diary in the book felt like what little I have rad, only this was for real!

Although this is a work of fiction, it's unnerving to know that it was based on the writings of people who were there.

What of that fellow who suffered PTSD? The one who kept running under trucks and planting sticks? I've known folks who suffered from that, but never to that degree.

I'm posting this before reading the rest of the reviews, so as to not unduly influence my thinking... I finished it a couple of weeks ago, so my memories of it are not quite as strong as they could be.

As I previously said, this should be mandatory reading for anyone going to war, and particularly for those with their fingers on the button. It is a cautionary tale that reads more like non-fiction than a novel, and whilst it is very bleak in parts, it also manages to relieve that depressing litany of horror with absorbing peeks into the lives of the survivors. One would think that to have lived through something as devastating and life changing as that would make it difficult to function normally any more. Truly life must go on.

The early stages of Black Rain felt very much like a modern post-apocalyptic novel, and I suppose to those in and around Hiroshima at the time, that's exactly what it was.

A fascinating (for me) insight into Japanese life at the time, and into their psyche. The concepts of honour and duty go far beyond those of most modern-day Western societies. For example, I was surprised by the way the workers felt that they still needed to report for work, and do their utmost to keep the companies running, after such an apocalyptic event. But then maybe hindsight makes that seem stranger than it was to them at the time.

I did find some of the unremitting descriptions of the dead and disfigured almost too much to take at times, possibly because it felt like it was a recounting of actual experience rather than a fictional account. And it did make me angry at times - how could any human being visit this destruction upon another? Once again, hindsight is a fine thing, and I'm sure at the time it seemed like a necessity, though I'm not sure bombing Nagasaki as well can be quite as easily explained away.

As an aside, I had to buy this as a paperback, as I couldn't get the eBook, and I must say it was a pleasant experience. The "nearly new" book I received was pristine (I doubt it has ever been read), was actually printed in Japan, and came with a dust jacket - unusual for a pb here in the UK at least.

So, not a book I'm going to be in a hurry to revisit, but certainly a reading challenge I am glad I took part in. Thanks to whoever first nominated it (can't remember right now), and I look forward eagerly to the next.

Yes, that veteran of WWII was not at all mentioned in Black Rain (the novel). I am not sure if the character came from one of Ibuse's other novels (Lieutenant Lookeast maybe?) or not. That was just a guess. In the film I really liked the scene where he tells Yasuko of the traumatic experience that led to his behavior and how they connect on the level of two people forever damaged by the war.


One thing I found chilling, and fortunately it never came to pass, is in the film where Shigematsu is listening to a broadcast about the in progress war in Korea and hears that the US led allied powers are discussing whether the use of the atomic bomb may prove necessary. I know from actual history that this is not fiction.

Yes, I really liked how Shigematsu and his family are portrayed as just decent people that are just trying to live their lives and do the right thing. That he blames neither side, just the folly of war and the inhumane measures that it entails.

I always look for, in a novel, an ending that really sums things up and captures the novel. I think the ending here did that:

I thought for sure that he was. I guess I was confused by that passage on page 240:

Iwatake, of course, was the one who had been so seriously burned by the bomb and made that "miraculous" recovery. I knew I remembered something in the book about someone throwing dummy grenades under vehicles.

Ah, I had forgotten that. I believe that you are probably correct. The character of Iwatake in the book was expanded and modified to produce that character in the film.

Yes, the film definitely took poetic license with that behavior.

So the main characters in Black Rain (the book) were actual people, correct? Did Yasuko survive the radiation sickness/poisoning?

From the final paragraph it doesn't sound like it.

I got the same impression.

I'm not sure if they were or not, but the journals in the novel were at least based on the journals of actual survivors.

I guess I was expecting Yasuko to pull through. There was another character that appeared to have much more contact with radiation and miraculously pulled through, so I thought that Yasuko had a chance.

The thing (for me) about reading a book like this is that it tells me how startling little I know (or have forgotten) about the subject.

Much of the narrative of them walking about reminded me of The Road by Cormac McCarthy.

Yasuko was covered in Black Rain which was nuclear fallout. In the book it was narrated that they thought it was harmless at the time but alas it is quite poisonous. Probably the reason for the title.

Haven't heard of The Road.

For me, the best thing about this book is that I’m done with it. And I can check off a square in my 2012 personal reading challenge….

With due respect to the subject matter, I did not care for it at all as a novel. The writing is, for the most part, terribly stilted. The dialogue, in particular, is just unbearable. Whether that is the original or the translation, I don’t know; so the result on the page is all I have to go by. There is maybe 20-50 pages of material that is stretched into 300, numbingly repetitive -- just like Shigematsu’s endless trudges from one town to the other and back and forth and on and on.

While I agree the writing was (for lack of better word) "stilted", and I too wondered if this was from the translation or if it might be the way it was written.
I suspect the latter , and I find that an interesting part of the book: Reading something that was written in such a different way than what we westerners find "normal".
Writing styles and traditions differ around the world, and it's interesting to read works displaying those differences. Sort of widening my horizons, I guess.

Again I would like to read the original Japanese text. Just doesn't seem easy to get via internet, may have to go to used bookstores next time I'm in Tokyo.

It would be very interesting if you could get to read the original and come back and tell if you think the translation makes it justice.
I do wish there had been a short section in the translator's ofreword about pronunciation of names and that special letter o with a line above (that the original Sony T1 font didn't even show - the Amasis showed it though, if I recall things right).

Japanese does not change vowel sounds, just the length so that o with a line is a long O I believe. In Osaka the O is long while it is short in otaku. In English long oo becomes a different sound like boot compared to bottom. Italian vowels are actually fairly close to Japanese. Japanese is almost completely phonetic with very few exceptions.

I wish I had the original of 1Q84 too. Also difficult to find online.

BTW, being annoyed with translations is what made me want to learn Japanese in the first place.

Totally agree with that...and that's partly why I made the MR Book Club selections part of my personal 2012 reading challenge. Like the style or not of this specific book, I did spend a great deal of time thinking about it, so it is now part of my experience and growth.

I wonder how much of it can be attributed to loss in translation, and how much to a different literary style from a different culture? First I must say that I admire Hpulley for learning to read in the original Japanese. Some of my favorite authors, including Ibuse, Tanizaki, and Mishima, are Japanese. I at least have found much similarity in their style of writing and language (translated into English of course, but with differing translators). I really enjoyed not just these stories, but how they were written. I did manage to convince the afternoon and evening book clubs at my local library to read Seven Japanese Tales by Tanizaki a few months ago and most were not only put off by the subject matter, but also disliked the style of writing and how the stories unfolded. “Old fashioned” was one comment I recall about the writing style. I attributed it to the audience being, besides me, all middle age to older women. For instance they all loved Caleb's Crossing by Geraldine Brooks (the selection read and discussed this month) . I on the other hand found that book unintentionally hilarious.

I am very glad I read this book. No, it wasn't the easiest reading I've ever done, and far from the most enjoyable, but like Asawi and victauria, I feel it changed me. To be sure, I was depressed for a couple of days after reading this very intense work, something I don't recall ever happening with anything else I've ever read. But I feel I've experienced personal growth and increased empathy as a result, and I wouldn't trade that for all the feel-good books in the world.

I read the book in John Bester's translation, and I do not know how the two compares, but what I thought Ibuse was doing is render the style of a non literary person writing his own personal diary, and I think he managed pretty well in this respect, as at various times I had to remind myself that this was a novel, not a real diary. I read elsewhere that Shigematsu's diary really existed, and would love to read it to compare it with the novel.

Shigematsu himself was an interesting character to me: very analytic, yet very natural, so that some description really sound as coming from the journal writer. I also did find some repetitiveness at points, but to me this strenghten the claustrophobia of the living nightmare - even in relatively "quiet" scenes. For instance, when Shigematsu first looks at himself in the mirror:
The whole description is really gut-wrenching, then you get to the last paragraph, where the cure is.. leek leaves! and it is not all, as further on:
It is a nightmare that just won't go away - and the closing lines of the book to me capture this sense of utter desperation quite powerfully.

Significance of Black Rain Quote
 

Hi,
I'm writing a commentary at school on the passage of the novel from Black Rain, Including the quote:

“If only we’d been born in a country, not a damn-fool state.”

What is the difference between a country and a state and what is the significance of this quote?

Somehow I doubt that this quote is meant to portray the soldiers kindly given the cruel, heartless, mechanical way they are portrayed throughout the extract and throughout the novel.

If you understand the significance of this quote, please enlighten me.

Thanks.

I'm guessing - just guessing, mind you - from the context that "state" means more of government control. One way communication, sort of.
I'm not a native English speaker, and in my language we don't really differentiate between the two this way. IF we were to do so, I would say "country" would be more of the geographical description and "state" would be more about how it is run/administrated.

Ding ding ding. Great books tell us something of the human condition.This one certainly did that for me.

Most of me just cringes that we are sixty years past these events now and just recently Russia declared they've developed a 100-tonne nuclear weapon named satan. Satan indeed.