75 Years After Hiroshima & Nagasaki Were "Struck By Black Rain": A Kuroi Ame ni Utarete Retrospective

After Nazi Germany unconditionally surrendered World War II in May of 1945, plans started being drafted for an invasion of Japan, the sole remaining force for the Axis Powers. In the end, those plans were never followed through on, with President Harry S. Truman instead deciding to take the "nuclear option"... Literally. On August 6, 1945, the uranium gun-type atomic bomb "Little Boy" was dropped by the Enola Gay on top of the city of Hiroshima, killing an estimated 90,000 to 140,000 people. Three days later, the plutonium implosion bomb "Fat Man" was dropped by the Bockscar on Nagasaki, estimated to have killed another 60,000 to 80,000; four days later, Japan unconditionally surrendered, with World War II officially ending on September 2. To this day, these remain the only nuclear attacks in history, as they showcased a power that, quite honestly, should never be used again. Though there was so much death that came from those two days, there were also survivors, ones who could tell the world of the horror they saw on those two days.

One of those survivors was the late Keiji Nakazawa.

Nakazawa, in 2011, in front of
the "Atomic Bomb Dome" in Hiroshima.

Born on March 14, 1939, Keiji Nakazawa was only six years old when the "Little Boy" hit Hiroshima, & he only managed to survive the blast because of a wall he was by that managed to stay standing; while his mother also survived, his father, brother, & (later) sister all died from the bomb. Come 1972, Nakazawa was a mangaka & was encouraged by his editor at Monthly Shonen Jump to publish a one-shot about what he saw on that day 27 years prior, which resulted in the short story Ore wa Mita/I Saw It. The story caught the attention of readers, almost all of which had been born long after the end of the war, so Nakazawa was asked to expand the concept, which resulted in 1973's Barefoot Gen in Weekly Shonen Jump, a fictionalized telling of how Nakazawa survived the bombing & grew up into wanting to become an artist, with the intent being to show not just the horror of the bombing, but also the hope that rose back up from those who survived. While it only lasted a year in Jump, mainly due to the magazine's size being cut in half, Nakazawa would continue the manga in other magazines, eventually ending in 1987 after 10 volumes, receiving various novels, live-action adaptations, & even two anime movie adaptations. Though Nakazawa eventually planned to create a sequel in the late 00s, he had to retire due to deteriorating health before passing away on December 19, 2012 from lung cancer, no doubt caused by irradiation from the bomb all those decades ago. Unfortunately, since his death, parts of the Japanese government have made some efforts to downplay Barefoot Gen, as Nakazawa was critical of not just the United States, but also Japan for letting things get to that point; to be fair, though, there are also efforts to make sure Nakazawa's tale is not forgotten.

This, however, is NOT that story. Instead, as the third of a three-part look at how World War II was reflected in anime (in this case, the aftermath), to remember the 75th Anniversary of the Hiroshima & Nagasaki bombings (& all of the lives lost from those days), & to honor the memory of Keiji Nakazawa himself, let's take a look at Kuroi Ame ni Utarete, a story from a different side of the man behind Barefoot Gen, both in its original manga from 1968 & in the feature-length anime adaptation it received in 1984.

Nakazawa first entered the manga industry in 1961 after moving to Tokyo, trying his hardest to avoid reminding himself of that August day in 1945 by telling more lighthearted & uplifting stories, partially due to discrimination hibakusha like him would receive in Tokyo... And then his mother passed away in 1966, obviously due to complications that came from irradiation. However, the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission wanted to dissect her body before cremation for research, and when her body was returned almost no bone fragments survived cremation; the bomb literally took her entire physical existence away. After all of this, there was no way Nakazawa could possibly hold back how he felt about that day, about the people who dropped the bomb, about the country that made such a situation possible, or about the torture survivors like him had felt & will feel for years to come; it was time for him to finally let it all out. So he made a manuscript, and for a year was continually denied by every single publisher he approached, until Houbunsha agreed to publish it as a "special feature" in the May 29, 1968 issue of Manga Punch. Nakazawa was even warned by the editor-in-chief at Houbunsha that the CIA may possibly come after him for making this story, but he didn't care, telling the editor, "I am more than happy to be caught". I think that alone should give you an idea as to the tone of this story, as a whole.

So let's start things off with the eponymous 30-page one-shot itself, Kuroi Ame ni Utarete/Struck By Black Rain, named after the literal darkened rainfall that befell both Hiroshima & Nagasaki after their respective bombs went off. It follows Jin, a hibakusha who, after surviving the Hiroshima bombing 23 years prior, has become a hitman in Japan who only takes contracts that let him kill foreigners, specifically Americans, as it's his way of getting revenge on the country that dropped the atomic bomb; "an eye for an eye". Not long after one of his kills, though, Jin comes across a blind girl named Peace running into a busy street, so he saves her & brings her back to her father in the slums. Peace's father specifically sends his daughter away so that she be killed, as he is also a hibakusha, and the Japanese government's treatment of survivors, especially is terms of fiscal & medical assistance, is embarrassingly paltry; bereavement from someone who died in combat pays more. Since Peace's father is suffering from radiation sickness he has no idea how much longer he'll be alive, and he fears for Peace's life afterwards, as her mother died shortly after Peace's birth due to radiation sickness (which is also the reason for Peace's eyes), and while her blindness can be cured, they don't have the money. Jin gives the two the money he stole from his earlier victim, but after another hit ends with Jin mortally wounded in retaliation, he manages to make his way back to Peace & tells her father to give her his eyes, before dying; the story ends with Peace's eye transplants being a success.

Without a doubt, this short story is one filled with anger, and it's certainly justified. While Nakazawa overstated a bit by having Jin say that the Americans outdid the Nazis when it came to genocide (we shouldn't be pitting the deaths from the Holocaust against those from the bombings... but the Nazis did kill literal millions), there's no doubt that the American people, even to this very day, will never completely comprehend the pain & suffering of those who experienced the atomic bomb firsthand. I'm also sure there are people who have & will visit the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park and not give it the proper respect, treating it like nothing more than part of a sightseeing tour or spitting gum onto the ground, instead of putting it in a trash bin; remember, no sitting American president visited Hiroshima after the bomb until Barack Obama in 2016. He also shames the ABCC for its horrible handling of hibakusha, treating them as nothing more than guinea pigs so that America will know what to do, in the worst case scenario of its own people being bombed. Of course, Nakazawa also throws his anger towards Japan, citing the government's poor treatment of hibakusha, such as stereotyping them as neurotic & lethargic people who only use the bomb to gain sympathy, & not taking into consideration the children of said hibakusha, & the various medical conditions they might get, just because they're parents were irradiated. Jin even remarks about citizens of Hiroshima wanting the Atomic Bomb Dome demolished, because of how it ruins the beauty of the rebuilt city. Still, Nakazawa never really portrays Jin as some sort of hero, instead showcasing him as someone who knows that he's walking a destructive path, one that will end in him being killed... Which it does, with Jin himself hating that it came to this kind of end. His altruistic actions towards Peace & her father don't exactly wash him of his murderous sins, but it does show that even he knew, in the end, that there should be hope for those who survived the bomb, as well as the next generation that come from hibakusha. Overall, it's a well told short story buoyed mainly by its thematic message of the atomic bomb, & specifically the plight of the hibakusha, and Nakazawa was smart enough to not glorify the anger & feeling of revenge he had, instead ending things with a sense of hope, that those who come in the future will make sure that another Hiroshima or Nagasaki will ever happen again.

Also, on a side note, I would say that Jin looks shockingly similar to the iconic hitman himself, Duke Togo... But Takao Saito's Golgo 13 wouldn't actually debut until a few months AFTER Kuroi Ame ni Utarete; I'll just chalk it up to pure coincidence.

After the publication of this one-shot, Nakazawa was not investigated by the CIA, at least to my knowledge & research, but Houbunsha still got a lot of attention... In a good way. Nakazawa's story found itself praise by other mangaka & publishers, and it showed that Japanese readers were interested in seeing stories about those who were affected by the atomic bombs; stuff like the original Godzilla had already addressed the bomb itself, but hibakusha were off-limits until then. The editor-in-chief at Houbunsha requested that Nakazawa make more stories like this, which resulted in another six one-shots that would collectively be called the Kuroi Series, since they all use the word "Kuroi/Black" in their titles. While these aren't directly relevant to this article, they were all collected with that original one-shot in a 1982 book also titled Kuroi Ame ni Utarete, so let's just go over them.

Kuroi Ito/Black Thread is about a woman who's found out to be the daughter of a hibakusha, which she never knew herself, resulting in her marriage being called off by her fiancée. She visits her father & finds out the truth about what happened to him, and how he hides his identity as a hibakusha so as to avoid being ostracized. He tells his daughter to do the same, but she's unable to... So she kills herself by jumping in front a truck, right in front of the store her fiancée's family owns; yeah, this is a damn dark story. Kuroi Chinmoku no Hate ni/In the Depths of Black Silence sees a young man reunite with his old teacher, the two of which were the sole survivors of their class when Hiroshima was hit 23 years prior; the horrors of the aftermath made the young man unable to speak due to a mental block. After the teacher recounts those events, he finds out his former student had become a fugitive for killing the head of a munitions manufacturer the student had worked for, as the head had wished for things like the Vietnam War to never end, or for another bomb to drop, so that he could make more money; this story works well for the first half, but the second half involving the killing just drags. Kuroi Hae no Sakebi ni/Scream of the Black Fly features two people in a hospital: An old man who survived Hiroshima (and suffers from muscaphobia, due to how many flies covered all of the dead) & a little girl with leukemia born from two hibakusha. While the two become close, the old man has to leave after he recovers from his illness, but when he returns to visit the girl he's told that she passed just days after his discharge, the atomic bomb killing someone who wasn't even born all those years ago; this one's an okay enough story, but otherwise adds little new thematically.

Kuroi Kawa no Nagare ni/Flowing in the Black River stars two adults in Yokosuka, a prostitue hibakusha who's also a single mother & the pimp she works for that has fallen in love with her & keeps trying to convince her he's honest about his love. Eventually, the two get arrested for prositution, and during questioning the woman reveals her story of the bomb, and how she only has about a month left to live, so she's been having sex with Americans for work, so as to infect as many as she can with syphilis. The two get released, and the pimp (who was a war orphan) promises to raise the woman's son after her death, leaving the pimping business behind so that the boy won't go through the rough childhood he had; this is also a very solid story, tough the first page is a summary of what happens, which is odd. Kuroi Hato no Mure ni/In a Flock of Black Doves is about a brother/sister duo who are hibakusha, with the brother whoring out his sister for money, though it's indicated that no one actually sleeps with her once they see her face, which got scarred by the bomb; they get paid first, though, so it's lucrative. After the brother is killed by the local yakuza for operating in their territory, the sister brings back his skull to be with their parents, who died on that fateful day... Only for the brother's skull to be shrunken, due to radiation poisoning. While the hibakusha-related stuff is good, the brother is an abusive jerk, so it's hard to really feel for him when he dies. Finally, Kuroi Tsuchi no Sakebi ni/Scream of the Black Soil, the longest story at 61 pages (all the others were 20-30 pages), follows a young man who hates doing any proper work, but after stealing from a female peddler he gets injured. The peddler takes him in for the night to heal him, and the man finds out that she's a hibakusha who was forced to leave her son (who the young man resembles) behind after the bomb & has been trying to earn money to head back to Hiroshima & dig up her son's bones. This inspires the man to work hard to pay her back, & helps her recover her son's skull. Unlike the others, this is a very hopeful story, using that fateful day to teach a lesson, rather than simply decry those who committed the atrocities. The collected volume also includes an eighth story, the 46-page Warera Eien ni/We, Forever, which stars a failed medical student who steals the hat of a taxi driver, after hearing about a charm the driver keeps in the underside of the hat, thinking the driver was something valuable in the charm. In reality, the charm held old fingernails in it, specifically those of the driver's wife & son who died from the atomic bomb... and the student callously threw them & the hat into a drainage ditch, not knowing of their relevance. Upon meeting up again, the driver berates the student, who eventually feels ashamed of what he did & manages to find the hat (& fingernails) and returns it to the driver, while also becoming re-inspired to finish medical school; it's a Kuroi Series story in all but name.

While the general thematic message in these stories are the same as the original one-shot, they do go into other aspects not addressed in Kuroi Ame. Ostracization of hibakusha by their fellow Japanese by way of hypocritical behavior, the controversial death of Aikichi Kuboyama (who had been accidentally irradiated by the Castle Bravo test), & extra details regarding the immediate aftermath of the bombing are all given more attention in these stories, though that last one is also covered in Nakazawa's more iconic later work. On the whole, while not every one-shot is perfect, they all tell decent-to-great stories showing the various trials & tribulations hibakusha went through following the bomb, and how poorly they were treated by just about anyone around them. That being said, while these stories likely worked well when they were originally being published, which seemed to last until the start of the 1970s, compiling them into a single book does reveal something: They're intensely repetitive. While the anger Nakazawa was feeling was more than justified, nearly every single one-shot includes their respective leads all shouting "Damn those who did this to us!", "How dare Japan treat us like filth!", "I wish I could get my revenge of those horrible Americans!" or the like at some point, and after the third or fourth time it starts losing the edge it originally had; the last two, however, do replace the hatred with sorrow & hope for the future. Again, this isn't the fault of Nakazawa himself as a storyteller, but rather more a fault of them now being published together all at once, rather than spread out over a few years.

After finishing up the Kuroi Series, Nakazawa more or less returned to what he was doing before as a mangaka, until he was encouraged to make what would become I Saw It in 1972. From that point on, the "Little Boy", its aftermath, & the hopeful rise of those affected became Nakazawa's life, and while he let his anger out with the Kuroi Series, both I Saw It & Barefoot Gen showed that there was a life after the bomb worth living & sharing with others; anger is a natural feeling, but it can't be your entire existence. Then, in July 1983, Madhouse worked with Gen Production to make a theatrical anime adaptation of Barefoot Gen, one which Keiji Nakazawa himself wrote the script for. From what I can tell, it was the first time the dropping of the atomic bomb was reproduced in film & would even be a major influence in the 1989 film Black Rain by Shohei Imamura (no relation to the Ridley Scott film of the same name & year), which also dealt with the bomb & its aftermath. Naturally, the success of this film resulted in other people wanting to take advantage of this situation, so animation studio Tsuchida Production (best known for the original Captain Tsubasa anime) decided to work with Gen Production to adapt Kuroi Ame ni Utarete into a feature-length anime of its own; this, however, looks to have been an OVA, since it was animated in 4:3. With direction by Takeshi Shirato (Odin: Starlight Mutiny, Lupin the 3rd: Farewell to Nostradamus), music by the legendary Kitaro (the last anime he'd ever score until Ninja Scroll: The Series in 2003), & Keiji Nakazawa helping out with the script itself, the OVA was released in Japan on August 12, 1984, just shy of a week after the 39th Anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing... Where it has since became an utterly forgotten film, with Tsuchida Pro going bankrupt in 1986. While it eventually received a DVD release in 2005, it now goes for high prices on the secondhand market; compared to Barefoot Gen & its 1986 sequel, this anime might as well never existed.

In terms of the plot, it's an original story following a group of hibakusha friends in Hiroshima who all have a relation to a bar named Akauma: Takeshi, the bar owner who refuses to serve Americans out of hatred for the bombing; Shozo, a henchman for the local yakuza; Yuri, a prostitute who only works with Americans (so as to give them syphilis) & has a blind son named Shinichi; Tomoko, a good friend of Takeshi's whose face & shoulder were scarred by the bombing; Junji, Tomoko's surrogate little brother (& second-generation hibakusha) who's always on the hunt for money; & Eiko, who ran away from Tokyo to Hiroshima in an effort to see whether she should give birth to the fetus inside her, as her fiancée's father is forbidding them from having a child, due to her being a second-gen hibakusha herself. As you can tell, while this isn't a direct adaptation of any of the Kuroi Series one-shots, it does include various elements & plot points from them, like Yuri wanting to give Americans syphilis, Tomoko's scars, & Eiko being prejudiced due to her being the child of hibakusha. In that regard, it's a clever way to "adapt" what came before, as none of Nakazawa's previous stories really had enough meat to them to be adaptable into a feature-length story. However, it's probably the weakest entry of the entire Kuroi Series, for a variety of reasons.

Part of that is due to the visuals, which just look really, really cheap; Tsuchida Pro was no Madhouse, obviously, but still. This is compounded by the fact that the DVD release looks to have been sourced from a poor VHS master, resulting in something like the flashbacks to the Hiroshima bombing & immediate aftermath not carrying the visceral shock & horror that they really should have, since everything is so soft & blurry. On the bright side, Kitaro's music is fittingly subdued & emotional, while the voice cast all do well. The biggest problem, though, is really the plot itself, which starts off decently enough & shows how most of the cast have their own storylines (though Junji is gone for most of the middle, while Shozo has no real story of his own), but eventually you can tell that it just kind of stretches things out at times so that it can be a ~95-minute production. However, it's the last third where things just fall apart... And become especially fatalistic & mean-spirited. While the Kuroi Series one-shots were filled with anger & had characters die, the stories themselves never ended with someone dying tragically as a cliché (Kuroi Ito's death at least had some logic to it), nor did any of the stories feel like it was treating its characters horribly; they've obviously suffered a lot already. This movie, though, kills off three of the characters in the last 20 minutes all for the sake of feeling "tragic", one of which feeling super contrived, while another one feels especially mean-spirited about the killing. That last one's likely meant to imitate Jin's death in Kuroi Ame, but literally comes from out of nowhere & doesn't match the karmic feel of Jin's end in any way. While not absolutely terrible, the Kuroi Ame ni Utarete anime is definitely a disappointing follow up to the one-shots that came before it, and feels every bit like a hollow attempt to make some money off of Barefoot Gen's anime adaptation, which it likely was; there's good reason why it's become so forgotten.

If you are curious, though, all of the one-shots & the movie have received English fan translations, so you can hunt those down for yourself.

Japan's relationship with the atomic bomb & its aftermath has always been one filled with trepidation, both completely understandable but also unreasonable. For example, & truly fitting for this retrospective, it was only just last week that Hiroshima officially recognized those who were only exposed to the "black rain" as atomic bomb survivors, as they had previously been outside of the recognized zone of irradiation. For example, Takeshi from the movie wouldn't have been actually recognized as a hibakusha in real life, as he was shown to be far away from the bombing when it happened, and instead was only "Struck By Black Rain". Think about that for a moment... Keiji Nakazawa literally named his first manga regarding that day in Hiroshima after the irradiated rain the came down following the explosion of the "Little Boy", yet that very city never actually acknowledged the full impact of the "black rain" until 75 years after it happened, 52 years after Kuroi Ame ni Utarete's original publication, and 8 years following Nakazawa's death. It's very easy to see why Nakazawa filled each of the Kuroi Series' one-shots with so much anger & revenge, because not only was America understandably looked at as the perpetrator, but Japan itself was (& has since continued to be) hesitant to acknowledge the full effect of what the atomic bomb did to its people.

I am not here to argue over whether or not the atomic bomb should have been dropped. In fact, such thoughts date as far back as immediately after it happened (in fact, President Truman himself responded to that very article!), and what's done is done; we can't go back in time like the cast of Zipang & alter history. I simply felt that, while others will look back on this 75th "Anniversary" with either remorse for what happened, sadness over the sheer loss of life, or even remind others of Barefoot Gen's existence, it was worth paying tribute to a different side of the hibakusha, one of the justified anger, hatred, & vengeance they felt towards the parties responsible for their suffering, both abroad & domestic.

So to all those who died on that day 75 years ago, to those who have died since then (including Keiji Nakazawa), and to those affected (& finally received their due recognition) who will eventually pass in the future... I am truly sorry for everything you have gone through, and may you all Rest in Peace.

 安らかに眠れ。

Kuroi Ame ni Utarete (Manga) © Keiji Nakazawa

Kuroi Ame ni Utarete (Anime) © Gen Production