Black Rain is a 1989 Japanese film by director Shohei Imamura and based on the novel of the same name by Ibuse Masuji. The events are centered on the aftermath of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. The film moves between Shizuma Shigematsu's journal entries about Hiroshima in 1945, following the dropping of the atomic bomb, and the present, 1950, when Shigematsu and his wife Shigeko are the guardians for their niece Yasuko and charged with finding her a husband . As the story progresses, Shigematsu sees more and more fellow hibakusha, his friends and family, succumbing to radiation sickness... and Yasuko's prospects for marriage become more and more unlikely, as she forms a bond with a poor man named Yuichi, who carves jizo and suffers a form of post-traumatic stress disorder where he attacks passing motor vehicles as "tanks." The film has strong themes of suffering, transience and the uncertainty of the time of one's death.
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| Release date: | 1989 |
| Directed by: | Shohei Imamura |
| Runtime: | 123 Minutes |
| Producer: | Hisa Iino |
| Editor: | Hajime Okayasu |
| Music by: | Tōru Takemitsu |
| Cinematography: | Takashi Kawamata |
| Screenplay by: | Masuji Ibuse, Toshiro Ishido |
| Adapted from: | Black Rain |