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Appendix
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APPENDIX Black Rain Kuroi Ame (Black Rain)1 marks a new dimension in "A-bomb literature /' A portrayal of the intrusion of the atomic bomb into the ordinary rhythms of a small farming village, its special blend of "the usual" and "the unprecedented" enables it to transmute that experience into significant artistic form. The violence and conflict surrounding the bomb are illuminated by means of a leisurely chronicle of seemingly inconsequential everyday events, in the manner (as one critic put it) of "an oldfashioned family novel." The story was in fact originally entitled Marriage of a Niece (Mei no Keikon), and its first three sentences more or less sum up its plot: For several yearspast, Shigematsu Shizuma of the village of Kobatake had been aware of his niece, Yasuko, as a burden on his mind. Especially troubling was his sense that the burden was going to remain with him, unspeakably oppressive, for still more years to come. It was like having a double, or even triple, responsibility for a debt. Shigematsu's immediate "burden" (or pressing responsibility) is arranging a marriage for his niece, but it is part of the larger—indeed limitless—burden imposed upon both by the atomic bomb. This "limitless burden" is elaborated through an interweaving of present-day occur- A P P E N D I X rences in a village not far from Hiroshima with survivors' diaries describing the time of the bomb—mostly Shigematsu's, but also those of Yasuko, of Shigematsu's wife, Shigeko, and of a doctor who had miraculously recovered from early bomb effects. As a family head and a hibakusha Shigematsu is faced with several levels of responsibility, or what might be called the formulation of responsibility: to Yasuko; to himself and his community; to the dead and their other survivors; and to history. These layers of formulative struggle, which we shall consider in turn, comprise what can be viewed as the novel's central psychological theme. Shigematsu's responsibility to Yasuko is virtually that of a father to his daughter. During the war, when she was still in her teens, he had brought her from the village to Hiroshima (where he was then living), found her work in his factory, and taken her into his home. Shortly after the bomb he wrote in his diary: "So long as I keep Yasuko as my own daughter, if anything were to happen to this child, I would not be able to show my face to Shigeko's parents [Yasuko's grandparents]/' But his efforts to arrange her marriage—the overriding responsibility of a family head to the "daughter" in a Japanese household—are constantly frustrated by Yasuko's ambiguous status in relationship to the bomb, and especially by the false rumor that she had been exposed very near the hypocenter while on labor service. Such is the intensity of Shigematsu's feeling in the matter that for a while he "entertained an idea of hunting down the arch-villain" who had started the rumor. And when an excellent prospective match ("If the truth be told, almost too good for her") presents itself, he decides to "make doubly sure" by obtaining a certificate of health for Yasuko and sending it to the gobetween . This, however, only arouses the latter's suspicion and leads to a request for more precise information concerning Yasuko's atomic bomb exposure. Yasuko therefore turns over her A-bomb diary to Shigematsu so he can prepare a copy for the go-between. But although the diary makes clear that Yasuko was fully ten kilometers from the hypocenter , it also reveals her encounter (while returning to Hiroshima after the bomb fell) with the "black rain": We set out at nine o'clock [on the morning of August sixth]. As we reached the main road there were black clouds rising over the city of Hiroshima. We heard the sound of thunder, and then rain began to fall with drops about the size of soybeans. Although it was the middle of summer I felt so cold that my whole body shivered. 544 [44.203.235.24] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 16:52 GMT) Appendix Her face and clothes remain splattered with mud, and the soiled parts of her blouse are worn through. Worst of all, these marks cannot be washed away: I went back to the fountain again and again, but the blotches of black rain would not disappear. Asa dyeing agent it was quite impressive. The black rain—that...