MASUJI IBUSES novel Black Rain, first published in 1965, eleven years after the event, is not the first creative work ever used to decimate a city and its inhabitants by the U.S. It recounts the reality of what happened in Hiroshima on the dark day of 6th August 1945 after days, weeks, months and years after that. John Bester, the novel’s first translator of the Japanese original, wrote back in 1967-68 and concluded that it should not be treated merely as one more book about the atomic bomb. The Urdu translation is also based, quoting with approval a remark from John Bester. I also tried to remark in my “note” on Masuji Ibuse, “in the journalistic realism that gives Black Rain (being written about the bomb. The real-life facts) that status must not to replete with a differentiatable highhanded…”. “It can claim on higher artistic grounds to distinct greatness. It is not one of those books detailing the cruelty and inhumanity of the bombing raid of August 1945 but to say that it has had its rounds among book on the subject of the aim of bombing seems to be somewhat questioning. It leads us all to the rather recent remark of an American academic that the Americans feel nothing to apologise about the wilful decimating of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Black Rain is a book about the atomic bombings of Hiroshima, but it is a novel of high artistic quality. It has tried to get very very far away from it the incontestable fact of its subject matter which is both objective and subjective experience, as documented, of the city which suffered the first ever effects of the atomic bomb and suffered immediate destruction. The story is precisely the first of its kind written in the city, the first such story ever to be told because it relates to the first experience of a holocaust of this kind to afflict a population which did not ask for it and did not start the atomic bomb. Perhaps the event itself was, and remains, mendously horrifying that those who should have been most associated with the responsibility for it preferred, consciously, would shrink from accepting it as reality. We should not forget that it was not only the survivors, inhabitants of Hiroshima who did not die at all who were obsessed by a deep sense of guilt for having been saved from that atomic bomb react to the memory of that overpowering human tragedy. In this table for us. Either they are keen like the U.S. President who did not react when asked for whether he apologise for a genocide of that magnitude or they are like the sons of the pilots who participated in the bombing, in an interview in August 2015 said that it is a lie that Black Rain is not a book about the atom bomb. Its translator into Urdu, Ajmal Kamal, has based it on the Bester translation. Published by Mashal, Nisrishtat, Mian Chambers, Lahore, Kamal’s commentary, pointing out the documentary quality of the novel seems a little inconsistent view of the English translator Bester and even rejects the reader to also conforming with the view that the novel is not to be seen as a novel about the atom bomb. Both these views of the translators (both English and Urdu) on the subject of what the novel is about has to do with the novelist. It seems to be a non-fiction in approach in its subject matter. But the technical dilemma is there, and it is a case which students of fiction that it should have become the reason for such a bomb or detected before the actual bomb and its effects as not being disclosed to the full. Masuji Ibuse begins his narrative from the point of view of a character Shige Matsu Shiroma of devilleer Yasutaka is facing about five years after the bomb has been on Hiroshima. The problem is about Yasuko’s marriage. In 1945 Yasuko was living with Shige Matsu and his wife Shijeko in Hiroshima. Shige Matsu was then working in ‘cotton’ in wearing army uniforms, while Yasuko was engaged as secretary to the factory manager of Japan Textile Company at Funairi-cho factory in Hiroshima. This was a place situated at a distance of ten miles from the place where the bomb was dropped. It was not at all possible that she would have been affected by the radiation disease which many of her associates had who been nearer the place contracted. Even so a ‘vicious’ and unfounded rumour that Yasuko used to work in the kitchen of the Second Middle School Service Corps in Hiroshima, and had been affected by the radiation disease. This ‘false’ rumour had created difficulties in the way of her marriage. She was a good looking presentable girl, and several people came to ask for her hand, but the mention of her alleged ‘affliction by radiation disease’ drove them all back. She was a perfectly healthy woman and had no signs of being ill at all, even a doctor, after thor- examine her, and she had been undergoing the periodical tests at the local hospital, declared she had been preserved from the effects of the bomb. But all this helplessly stood in the way of her marriage, even after five years of the bomb, when a very suitable match was under consideration. Shige Matsu took the precaution of sending a certificate by a well-known doctor but the match-makers wrote back to ask for all the details of her life from the time of the dropping of the bomb to the time of her arrival in the village. Shige Matsu made a copy of Yasuko’s diary for the period to send the match-makers and for good measure added a copy of his own diary to add to the evidence. But it can be seen how deep, under the place of bombing had, like some ‘plague’ been rooted even the effects of the radiation. And they were all spreading in normal social lives. It was this motivation which led to the ‘reproduction’ of the pages of the diary of the bomb subsequently in the title. From the use of the diary of Yasuko, which subject was for a short time, the story It goes into the larger and more detailed re-reading of the of the ‘bomb’ and this is what consists of the major part of the published text. In ‘It’ we have more than three-fourths of the three hundred pages of the novel consist of the ‘realistic’ and detailed description of the events in Hiroshima between the morning of the 6th August and 15th August 1945 and describe the full ‘destruction of the city and the decimation and suffering of its people’. Thus the story of Yasuko is merely the frame of the entire narrative, which comprises the diary of Shige Matsu. There is another motivation for Shige Matsu to copy out his diary of those terrible days of Hiroshima’s suffering. He wants to preserve their property, of this destruction for posterity, and place it ‘in the reference section of the library of a primary school of the village’. Ultimately this becomes the source and the reason for his reproducing of his tually his inducement to preserve his own diary grew out of the feeling that “most people are already tending to forget what happened to them,” of the inhabitants of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Yaizu, and Matsu, and his friends Shokichi and Shizuma. Both opted for the profession of fish farming in the village “Black Rain”-chosen by the doctors because those who were ‘abnormally affected’ by the radiation could not do any hard work. Their choice soon caused people to make caustic remarks on their ‘reward’ for having such an easy life.” Shigematsu was angry with an old woman who made such a remark when she saw them catching fish as she passed by. “I see,” I thought,”they have forgotten that atom bombs had fallen on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Let them have forgotten it. Nobody remembers the dead. But they still fire through which we had to pass that day. They fire rocketseverything. Except processions and demonstrations against the atom bomb. It makes me sick- their slogan-mongering.” He could no longer be brought on the desire in Shigematsu to preserve his diary. What he tried to self observes in his narrative how he saw the effect of the bomb was superficial and how only gradually did reality of the holocaust and its tremendous horrors dawn on him: But even I, in the fire of the black rain I sat in a train in the frightened dark,can do littlething more than the tremendous shock from outside,the shock of a huge ball of light. Fish die. Pious surfaces of water break to pieces. Walls fall down. But man is adamant stone. How is one to understand all this? And so, down from the train and got out of the station, he found a huge crowd walking in a certain direction. The long procession of people moving as if fascinated by something normal was in progress and as if it was a long column of pilgrims who had to move from of Komana in the old days. From 2 distance the huge, still pillar of the park seemed to be like a piece of bread which had been invaded by ants from all sides. And then he noticed the mushroom cloud, and hence-forth throughout the narrative this apparition of the mushroom cloud which has become a symbol not only of the novel, but of the entire age dominated by it, is to be seen as a major image of the novel. The mushroom shaped cloud resembled a jellyfish in its flabbiness as it tried to hang on above in the sky, a jellyfish long leg was trembling, and its head bulging and contracting easterly direction was changing its colors. It seemed to be breathing. it would suddenly jump down at us. Then there would be certain death. I decided in my mind. Who else in the world is saved, who evil spirits kill all human the lives of my family be saved? Am I to die and leave my wife and them? Or am I just running around in this black rain-soot? As he moves along, in fear and trembling, he sees and hears more explosions. He found people moving along, carrying their luggage and crying. And occasionally he saw girls,women, or old men or a woman who was shouting at the face. Most of them had turned their faces away from the mushroom cloud, their backs to it, and were lying flat on the river bank. There was just one woman who did not have the strength to stand and was shouting in a thin voice. She might be trying to find or quarrel with anyone. ‘Do go away! Go away!’ But the voice was too weak. From her manner and excitement she was not trying to vent her spite. In the middle of all this destruction some of the members of the item officials and householders and other community officials, were thinking of their responsibilities just as they had done before the fire on Hiroshima it was being said that a second force would be landing on the Japanese mainland. Staff officers had been assigned for this purpose and they had put on their sashes and drawn their sarries. This kind of arrangement for continued resistance was being made at the office of the factory where Shinyo Matsu had worked until the 7th August most people were being moved to factories in safer areas outside the city. An interesting incident took place at this business is a paper flying about in the street. Some workers who had found it began to read it aloud. ‘But it was merely a waste paper. A letter? A song? With lines of music. It must have come flying from somewhere.’ It was posted on the staff room of a primary school. It must have been blown up into the sky due to the explosion of yesterday. Adjusting sound about in the air for a day and night, the song descended to the earth again. Together with the music, the lyrical chords these words were printed: Cherry flowers! Cherry flowers! Flowers in the skies of spring. The manager took it out of the hands of the workers and looked at it. ‘What a terrible thing,’ he said, ‘Only to be trod upon!’ Biting his lip, he put it in his pocket. This song book and the last group of refugees said good-bye to Hiroshima. In the middle of all this carnage someone started to shout for help and out of pity for him, started prayers of the dead on the occasion. ‘O God, look at this! What can we do there are so many dead bodies that it is impossible to distinguish one from over, as he moved about in the ruins, he saw one skeleton in the innumerable funeral pyres he was reminded about the power of death. Scorched earth Today or tomorrow No one is left altogether the rosy cheeks of the morning will lose colour in a wave of change With the force of death. In the face of death, fear of change. He put out the shining eyes. This was indeed an appropriate set of verses for the time in which it was composed for. His only sorrow was that the death of millions had to be written with such insignificant thoughts. This novel ends on a note of pessimism. Shinyo Matsu had finished the evening’s last meal. He got up to examine the condition of the fish in the pond he looked up and saw the which was again being decorated with something new every day just ‘If now a rainbow appeared from behind these hills, it would be a veritable miracle.’ He tried to convince himself: ‘If the rainbow appears, let it not be a faint one, but the one with many colours. Then it may blot out this scar.’ He looked at the hills and continued to mumble these words. Even though he knew quite well that this scar could n… although in the meantime he was copying his diary. The only meaning of his life lay in copying and moving towards her death.