The Bomb

[LARSSON at vax1.mankato.msus.edu]

As part of a project I'm working on now, I've been watching a lot of films
from the Japanese New Wave (c. 1960--Oshima, Imamamura, Shinoda, etc.).
Though coming far after the New Wave had washed ashore, Imamura's BLACK
RAIN is worth a look as a document of what happened to the survivors of the
bomb and how they were treated.  At the end, as the young heroine falls
ill to radiation poisoning (some five years after the fact), her survivor
uncle looks in the sky and wishes for a colored rainbow--then he'll know
that she'll get well again, but a white rainbow means she'll die.

Don Larsson, Mankato State U (MN)
BTW, Imamura's BLACK RAIN should never be confused with that Jap-bashing
American film with Michael Douglas that was released about the same time!