Black Rain (1966) by the Japanese novelist Masuji Ibuse (1898-1993) is an extraordinarily powerful novel dealing with the Hiroshima bombing. Cast in the form of several diaries, particularly that of Shigematsu Shizuma, a midlevel executive in a factory that manufactures army uniforms, the novel offers a straightforward, unvarnished account of the city on that fateful day. Avoiding any direct attempt to comprehend the full extent of the disaster, Ibuse focuses on individual experiences, counterpointing these often hideous descriptions with imagery from the natural and animal world. The novel opens four years after the bombing. Shigematsu has begun reading the diary he kept at the time in the hope that it will reveal some important information concerning his niece, Yasuko, who was exposed to radioactive waves and, as a result, is shunned as an eligible marriage partner.

As the diary records it, Yasuko is not in the city on August 6, but she returns the following day and is exposed to the "black rain," the contaminated rain that fell on Hiroshima on August 7. Shigematsu struggles with a sense of guilt for not protecting his niece, although he realizes no one could have foreseen that the aftereffects of the bomb would prove as deadly as the immediate destruction. The novel's title reinforces this theme of the perversion of nature--that rain, the source of rebirth and regeneration, should become the agent of death, as if to say that the human mastery of the physical world had unleashed an evil that is out of control.

Shigematsu's description of "A Mass for the Dead Insects," a traditional Buddhist ritual commemorating the insects whom human beings have unknowingly killed as they go about their business, provides a searing parallel to the human "insects" so casually annihilated. The last diary entry is dated August 15. In the novel's quiet ending, Shigematsu walks away from a crowd that is listening to the emperor's radio address and finds a nearby stream, where baby eels are battling their way upstream--a promise of rebirth in the midst of defeat and despair. Now four years after the bombing, it is clear that Yasuko will almost certainly die of radiation poisoning, but Shigematsu refuses to succumb to despair. He has experienced a purifying fire and acquired a tragic wisdom. In 1989 the novel was adapted to the screen by the Japanese director Shohei Imamura.

Among other notable works evoked by the Hiroshima bombing are John Hersey's (1914-84) nonfictional report Hiroshima (1946) and Alain Resnais's memorable film  Hiroshima, mon amour (1959), the screenplay for which was written by Marguerite Duras (1914- ).

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