43 pages • 1 hour read
Black Rain
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Chapters 9-12Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 9 Summary
At the end of June, during a time of seasonal festivals, Yasuko receives a letter from a prospective romantic interest named Gentaro Aono from the nearby Yamano village. Before Yasuko reads the letter, Shigematsu decides the existence of the letter is a good omen “that the young man himself in interested” (83), so he returns to his diary transcription. He works quickly to finish the work and misses that day's festivities.
On August 7, the day after the bombing, the factory's badly hurt employees rest in the company dormitories, and those with only minor injuries are sent back into Hiroshima to help anyone they can. Shigematsu wakes up in agony but does what he can to organize help for the refugees at the factory. There are so many dead bodies that there are no priests, administrators, or doctors to tell anyone what to do. The crematorium is “jammed” (85), so the dead are burned anywhere “away from human habitation” (86). Shigematsu is given the task of reading a small funeral rite for each body, so he reluctantly visits an old priest to find out how to perform the ceremony. Back at the factory, he performs the ceremony with “a sense of vacancy and unreality” (88). Some of the victims' families try to make him offerings as they would to a traditional priest.
On August 8, Shigematsu continues his role as makeshift priest. The ashes from the burned bodies float on the breeze. Eventually, Shigematsu has memorized the funeral ceremony.
Chapter 10 Summary
Shigematsu continues his diary entry from August 8. Shigematsu works through his exhaustion, continuing to perform funeral ceremonies. He carefully records the details of anyone who was not an employee at the factory but whom they are burying anyway, including an old woman named Taka Mitsuda. After, he tends to the wound on his cheek, which has now become infected. Noticing the pain he experiences when he walks, Shigeko fetches a walking stick for Shigematsu. After, she tells him about her experiences on the day of the bombing, but certain parts of her story “refused to make sense” (95) to Shigematsu.
On August 9, Shigematsu sends Shigeko and Yasuko back to their neighborhood to fetch anything important. Later, another man tells him a group of soldiers took some of the food stored at the factory. Shigematsu fears they have been “hoodwinked by scoundrels” (97), as the soldiers had no official documents.
Chapter 11 Summary
Shigematsu continues his diary entry from August 9. Shigematsu prepares the official documents to present to the military, which explain that a group of soldiers has taken the food stores without official orders. However, the barracks seems to have been destroyed in the bomb, and Shigematsu cannot find anyone to accept his written apology. He returns to the rooms at the factory where he is staying with his family. He sleeps, cleans his wound, then eats dinner with Shigeko and Yasuko. The two women tell Shigematsu horrific stories that they have heard from other people. They talk about the deaths of schoolgirls, the radiation poisoning suffered by those who went to search for loved ones in the city, and the strange effects of the atomic bomb.
On August 10, Shigeko and Yasuko return to Hiroshima while Shigematsu tries to acquire coal for the factory. As such, he must also return to the city. He passes piles of rotting corpses and is overcome by the “vile stench” (104). The experience appalls him, and he decries the nature of war. He sees soldiers cremating dozens of corpses and mutters the funeral ceremony to himself.
Chapter 12 Summary
Shigematsu continues his diary entry from August 10. Overcome by pain, he sits down. Everything is covered in a “dry, powdery ash” (106). Shigematsu encounters a friend, and they search for the coal company together. However, the entire coal company appears to have been “wiped out” (107). All attempts to petition what is left of city hall prove “completely fruitless” (109). Shigematsu leaves and decides he and his firm would do better to devise “some independent course of action” (110) to acquire the necessary coal and resume production. He heads back to the factory along the same route he took on August 6, passing first by his house and seeing the meagre possessions that Shigeko and Yasuko have recovered from the ruins. The two women have returned to the factory, so after meeting with the remaining neighbor Shigematsu helps a laborer drag the cart with his possessions back along the road. At the factory, Shigematsu is surprised to find Shigeko's brothers asleep in the living quarters.
Chapters 9-12 Analysis
The framing narrative of Yasuko's search for a husband takes an optimistic turn in the middle of the novel. Gradually, Yasuko is approached by representatives for a family who hint that a man may be interested in marrying her. For a young woman who feels unfairly castigated by malicious rumors regarding her health, the prospect of romantic love is welcome in seemingly any form. Yasuko and Shigematsu are both positive about the development, as it provides validation to both of them. Yasuko feels validated as a healthy young woman who is attractive as a romantic partner while Shigematsu feels validated in his offer to bring his niece to live with him and to protect her reputation. However, the brief flurry of romantic interest in this section of the novel represents a high point for Yasuko. Her happiness and her validation are fleeting moments of positivity in a novel marked by trauma. As such, this moment of optimism mostly functions as a point of comparison for latter revelations about Yasuko's health. The letters from the potential husband are as close as Yasuko may ever come to a meaningful romantic relationship. Her happiness in these moments makes the end of her story even more tragic. By portraying the high points in Yasuko's life, the novel is able to make her lowest moments all the more tragically poignant.
Shigematsu's attempts to secure coal for the factory hint at the feeling of helplessness he experienced after the bombing. Shigematsu and his boss do not know how to react to the bomb. They help the people they can, but they decide together that the best response is to open the factory and continue to produce material for the war effort. They return to the familiar routine at a traumatic moment because the routine is comforting and familiar, whereas the bomb is horrifying and unknowable. They hope the familiarity will comfort them and distract them from the unknowing suffering that is to be found in the city of Hiroshima. Fetching coal, then, is a problem Shigematsu knows and understands. Coal is an issue that fits within the boundaries of his knowledge; even if he cannot acquire the coal, he understands the set parameters and issues at play.
Shigematsu continues to transcribe his diaries from the days just after Hiroshima was hit by an atomic bomb. During this period, he repeatedly returns to the city to run unsuccessful errands. Each time Shigematsu travels into Hiroshima to argue with an administrator or to find coal for the factory, he is exposing himself to more radiation. The repeat trips to Hiroshima are an example of dramatic irony for both Shigematsu and the audience. Writing years after the event (when he has a better understanding of the technology used in the atomic bomb), Shigematsu now knows how the time he spent in Hiroshima may have contributed to his radiation sickness. Each diary entry he transcribes reminds him of the mistakes of the past while showing the audience how few people in Hiroshima knew about the nature of the atomic bomb. The tragic dramatic irony—a literary device in which the audience knows information that the characters do not—shows how even the survivors of the bomb were punished by the horrific novelty of the world's first atomic bomb. They had no way to know about radiation poisoning and received no information from their government about how to protect themselves. Later, they paid the price.
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