Kuroi Ame (Black Rain) marks a new dimension in "A-bomb literature." A portrayal of the intrusion of the atomic bomb into the ordinary rhythms of a small farming village, its special blend of "the usual" and "the unprecedented" enables it to transmute that experience into significant artistic form. The violence and conflict surrounding the bomb are illuminated by means of a leisurely chronicle of seemingly inconsequential everyday events, in the manner (as one critic put it) of "an old-fashioned family novel." (p. 543)

As a survivor of holocaust Shigematsu does not believe that any record, least of all his diary, can convey what really happened ("Not even a thousandth of what I really saw is described in it"), but he persists in recording small details as well as large scenes…. However he demeans his own efforts, he sees value in the information as such: "The style of my writing...