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Masuji Ibuse (1898-1993) |
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Japanese novelist, who gained
world fame
with Kuroi ame (1966, Black
Rain), which drew its material from the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.
The title refers to the radioactive rain and fallout that fell on
people. Ibuse Masuji's career as a writer spanned almost 60 years. "The sky was dusky with the smoke from the fires. There was no water in the taps, so I made Yasuko wash her hands at the pool in the garden, but the marks would not come off. She said they were made by the black rain, and they were firmly stuck on the skin. Thet were not tar, not black paint, but something of unknown origin." (Black Rain by Masuji Ibuse, translated by John Bester, Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1979, p. 92; original title: Kuroi ame, 1966) Ibuse Masuji was born into an old family of independent
farmers, the second son of Ikuta and his wife Miya. His younger brother died when he was only five. Ibuse spent his early years in the country, in the village of Kamo in eastern Hiroshima
Prefecture. His father died in 1903; he was distant and
cold, Ibuse has recalled, but his memories as a child are on the whole not unpleasant. (A Critical Study of the Literary Style of Ibuse Masuji: As Sensitive as Waters by Anthony V. Liman, Lewiston: E. Mellen Press, 1992, p. 37) Ikuta had also published a Chinese poem under a
pen name and loved literature. However, he insisted that none of the
children should pursue a career in literature. The real storyteller of
the family was Ibuse's grandfather Tamizaemon, who was a conservative
custodian of traditions and collected antiques, a hobby which Ibuse
later shared. Ibuse's vision was poor and at school he was teased for
his thick eyeglasses. While still at school, Ibuse wrote a letter to the
famous author Mori Ogai
(1862-1922), who noted that the brush strokes
were very "like [those of] an old man." As an adolescent he was
more interested in art than writing. After attending Fukuyama Middle
School near Hiroshima, Ibuse moved in 1917 to Tokyo, where he began
studies at Waseda University. During this period he adopted new ideas
from surrealism to Marxism, that swept through Japan. Although he
specialized in French literature, Ibuse became interested in Russian
writers, chiefly in Tolstoy, a favorite of Ibuse's generation, and
Chekhov. Ibuse's close friend at that time was Aoki Nanpachi, who died
suddenly in 1922. Feelings of guilt haunted Ibuse for decades. His
friend, the novelist and journalist Tanaka Kōtarō found him a wife,
Akimoto Setsuyo, in 1927. Ibuse's early stories, written under the influence of the Western writers he had studied at Waseda University, appeared in the beginning of the 1920s. Yu hei (1923), Ibuse's first book, did not gain much success; it was not until the publication of Tajinko mura (1939-1940) when he was able to make a living as a professional writer. When Japan's perhaps most influential modern critic Kobayashi Hideo praised Ibuse's talent, saying that his works are "complex and conscioisly constructed in every detail," his stories started to gain recognition. The short story 'Koi' (Carp) marked Ibuse's turning to the
more traditional techniques of his homeland. He used the subjective
Japanese "I-novel" mode, in which narrator and author are one. The
rustic countryside of southern Japan inspired his story 'Tangeshitei'
(1931). It depictied two colorful characters, a master and servant, in
a remote mountain valley. Ibuse's wry humor and psychologically
sharp but sympathetic characterization of villagers, peasants, doctors,
fishermen, and other "unchanging people" became the distinguished
traits of his style. Among Ibuse's prewar works were the historic
novella Sazanami gunki
(1930-38) about the final defeat of the Heike
clan in the 12th century. The long story Tajinko mura
(Tajinko Village), written in the form of a diary, portrayed life
in a
country village. 'The River,' a novella completed in 1932, is
considered
Ibuse's first longer work of fiction. In spite of living in Tokyo more
than three-quarters of his life, many of Ibuse's stories had rural
settings. When Japan entered the WW II, Ibuse served in propaganda
units. Along with the Japanese army, he travelled as a war
correspondent through Thailand and Malaya to Singapore. Hana no machi (1942, City of Flowers) was about Japanese propagandists in occupied Singapore, where Ibuse spent one year in the offices of the city's English-language daily the Strait Times, renamed the Shonan Times under the Japanese administration. He also lectured on history at a Japanese language and culture school. While City of Flowers portrayed the relationships between occupiers and Singaporeans in a jovial manner, Ibuse later said that he stopped writing in his diary because "a diary kept with military censorship in mind seemed idiotic. I clearly realized more and more that though Singapore had falled, the war would not be over." (Pools of Water, Pillars of Fire: The Literature of Ibuse Masuji by John Whittier Treat, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1988, pp. 126-127) Ibuse witnessed the end of the war and annihilation of Hiroshima in Kamo. Ibuse did not write much during this period, but his unwilling induction into military service probably inspired his biting satire of army drills in the story 'Yohai taicho' (1950, Lieutenant Lookeast). Ibuse's distate of the military also showed in his other works, such as Black Rain. After the war Ibuse started literary collaboration with Osamu Dazai, whose suicide in 1948 deepened Ibuse's views how fragile the life is. Although they eventually drifted apart, Ibuse was his patron in Tokyo literary circles, tried to persuade him to stay away from the drugs, and interacted with his family. In 1944, they were evacuated to the same village. According to Ibuse, his friend already seemed prepared to die. Ibuse's works from the 1940s include Jon Manjirō hyōryūki (1940, John Manjiro, the Castaway), which traces the checkered life of the "drifting people." This historical novel was awarded the Naoki Prize for Literature in 1938. Hyomin Usaburo (1954-55) also dealt with experiences of men who left Japan and drifted along strange paths during the last years of the Tokugawa period. In the allegorical short story 'Noriai Jidosha' (The Charcoal Bus) Ibuse tells about a journey in a bus, five years after the war. "I glanced at the conductor. How well I remember that little mustache. He was standing now at the back of the bus looking out the window. We crossed a bridge over a dried-up river; beyond the rice fields I could see the slopes of a barren-looking mountain. As we passed a Shinto shrine by the side of the road, the conductor removed his cap and wiped the perspiration from his forehead. As he did so, he bowed his head slightly, and I wondered whether this was intended as a mark of respect for the shrine. Such reverence had been unfashionable for some time after the war but was now gradually coming back into favor. The conductor's gesture seemed deliberately ambiguous." ('The Charcoal Bus,' translated by Ivan Morris, in Modern Japanese Stories: An Anthology, edited by Ivan Morris, Rutland, Vermont: Charles E. Tuttle Company, 1961, p. 213) The bus has been painted but it still has to run on charcoal. Quarrelling passangers push it four miles to start the engine. Finally, at a crossroads, the narrator decides to take another bus, so does some other people. The rest say that they continue pushing. It was generally thought that when Black Rain was published serially in the
magazine Shincho,
Ibuse, the elder statesman in the Japanese literature, had decided
to retire with this tour de force. On the publication, Ibuse received
the
Order of Cultural Merit, Japan's highest honor to a writer, and the
Noma Prize. Not interested in being labelled a
champion of political causes, he responded to questions about the book
that he had nothing to say. Many survivors said that that the book's
account of the bombing fell far short of the full horror of what
actually took place. (Death in Life: Survivors of Hiroshima by Robert Jay Lifton, New York: Vintage Books, 1969, p. 553) Black Rain can be called a "documentary novel." It is based on
historical records of the devastation. However, Ibuse do not refer to social or political
considerations that led to the atomic holocaust; he is not partisan. Sometimes his
characters criticize the wartime government. Otherwise Ibuse keeps the
story on an everyday level, with the exeption that in the depiction of
nuclear death and devastation, there are contrasts between horror and
humor, destruction and beauty,
the state and the individual, the city and the countryside, the ancient customs and modern way of life.
Before his
death of pneumonia in Tokyo on July 10, 1993, Ibuse Masuji produced still
several works, including the autobiographical Hanseiki (1970). Debate
over Black Rain has continued after its apearance. The Nobel
laureate Oe Kenzaburo has seen
Ibuse's fiction as an attempt to humanize the inhuman. Black
Rain is the most famous tribute to the hibakusha – atomic bomb survivors.
Shosei Imamura's 1988 film based on the novel was shot in black
and white. It opens on the day before the blast. Dr. Michihiko
Hachiya's Hiroshima Diary
became available to English-language readers in 1955. For further reading: Death in Life: Survivors of Hiroshima by Robert Jay Lifton (1967); Approaches to the Modern Japanese Novel, edited by Kinya Tsuruta and Thomas E. Swann (1976); Pools of Water, Pillars of Fire: The Literature of Ibuse Masuji by John Whittier Treat (1988); A Critical Study of the Literary Style of Ibuse Masuji by Anthony Liman (1992); Writing Ground Zero: Japanese Literature and the Atomic Bomb by John Whittier Treat (1995); Studies in the Comic Spirit in Modern Japanese Fiction by Joel R. Cohn (1998); 'Obsessed with Inscription: Ibuse Masuji's 'Kuroi ame,' or (Re)Writing Memories,' in Recontextualizing Texts: Narrative Performance in Modern Japanese Fiction by Atsuko Sakaki (1999); 'Black Rain: Reflections on Hiroshima and Nuclear War in Japanese Film' by Robert Feleppa, Crosscurrents, Vol. 54, No. 1 (2004); 'Ibuse Masuji (1898-1993) Japanese novelist, short story writer' by William George Slocombe, in The Facts on File Companion to the World Novel: 1900 to the Present, edited by Michael D. Sollars (2008); Ibuse Masuji: A Century Remembered by Antonin Vaclav Liman (2008); Ibuse Masuji to iu shisei by Tōgō Katsumi (2012); Ibuse Masuji to sensō: "Hana no machi" kara "Kuroi ame" made by Kuroko Kazuo (2014); Renri no kiseki: Ibuse Masuji to Setsuyo Fujin by Tachikami Keiichi (2017); Sanshōuo no nintai: Ibuse Masuji no bungaku by Katsumata Hiroshi (2018); Affect, Emotion and Sensibility in Modern Japanese Literature: From Natsume Sôseki to Ishimure Michiko by Reiko Abe Auestad (2025) Selected works:
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