Black Rain (Kuroi Ame) by Yoshiro Fukui (1953)

The Completed Painting Showers (Shuu) 

This sketch, Black Rain, is a preparatory study for the painting, Showers (Shuu). Fukui completed the painting in 1953, and it is now housed in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. Made between 1952 and 1953, Showers was part of Fukui's series, Pictorial Record of the Atomic Bombing.

Showers (Shuu), painting, oil on canvas

The museum holds two additional sketches by Fukui: Woman Holding Child and Other Persons (子供を抱いた母と人 - Kodomo wo Daita Haha to Hito) and A Mother Holding a Dead Child and An Another Woman (死んだ子を抱いた母と女性 - Shindako wo Daita Haha to Jyosei).

Sketch Woman Holding Child and Other Persons

Sketch A Mother Holding a Dead Child and An Another Woman

Other paintings in the series Pictorial Record of the Atomic Bombing include Small Children (幼子 - Osanago), which depicts a group of children and a teacher suffering from burns over their entire bodies and The Next Morning (その翌日の朝 - Sono Yokujitsu no Asa), which depicts charred corpses, reddish-brown and swollen, lying on the ground.

Small Children

The Next Morning

Yoshiro Fukui (1912-1974)

Yoshiro Fukui (福井芳郎) was a Japanese painter who survived the Hiroshima atomic bombing. He produced myriad sketches and paintings about the traumatic event and its aftermath.

Born in Danbara (present-day Minami Ward in Hiroshima City) in 1912, Fukui loved painting as a child and showed promise in the arts. He attended the Osaka School of Fine Arts where his work was accepted into the Imperial Art Exhibition. Here, he gained a public audience for his art practice. A leading figure in western-style painting, Fukui established the Hiroshima Western Painting Institute with other artists including Sho Yamaji. 

During the war, Fukui was serving in a medical unit in the Nishikanon-machi (present-day Nishi ward) that was 1.5 kilometres away from 'ground zero'. In later accounts of his experience during the deadly A-Bomb blast, Fukui mentioned how he had been trapped under rubble. He was rescued by a medic and a fellow soldier. 

After he survived the blast, he immediately began sketching the harrowing scenes around him, capturing the devastation that had obliterated the city and its inhabitants. Kenji Fukui, his eldest son, recalls how his father had seemed uninterested in politics before the war. 

Kenji posits that it was his father's lived experience of the war and the A-Bomb that made it pertinent to express himself and the suffering he bore witness to. The sketch for "Showers" is inscribed: "6th August, Showa Year 20 (1945)—Sketch of the Atomic Bombing Paintings, Yoshiro Fukui.", on the back. It depicts a mother holding her dead child, alongside a female student, all soaked in the radioactive "black rain" that fell in the hours after the bombing—a haunting symbol of the bomb's destructive effects.

Fukui is often credited as one of the first artists to capture the immediate aftermath of the bombing, giving his work an intensely personal dimension. Having witnessed the destruction firsthand, Fukui’s art reflects not only the physical devastation but also the deep emotional trauma of the survivors. His sketches, which served as the foundation for later works, such as Showers, convey the profound human cost of the bombing, offering a visceral and personal account of the suffering and loss that followed. In his use of colours for these paintings, he recalled how, "All of the colours on this earth were peeled away, revealing colours I had never before seen in this world." Fukui had perhaps realised how the process of sketching and painting could be a method to reconcile his emotional and physical trauma as a survivor. 

It is also symbolic of survivors taking charge of their lives and accounts. Art serves as a method to document and to share their lived experiences of the A-Bomb explosion. It serves as a safe space to express difficult emotions like grief, anger and hurt. More significantly, it frees them from the burden of carrying their stories alone as they rebuild their lives.

Silence Around Hiroshima

After the bombing, Fukui actually stayed in silence until 1952, preparing for the series of his future artworks, Pictorial Record of the Atomic Bombing, which includes Showers. His silence was presumably attributed to the US press code—the post-war control of speech legislation imposed by the US General Headquarter(GHQ).

Soon after the surrender of Japan, the GHQ legitimated the press code which strictly forbade anyone in Japan from publicly discussing any subject around the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and their consequences. The press code was finally lifted in 1952, the year the American occupation ended.

However, even after 1952 artworks and texts covering the painful subject took years to gain wider audience. A pivotal moment was the publication in 1965 of the book, Hiroshima Notes written by the later Nobel Prize winning author, Kenzaburo Oe (1935—2023). The book vividly portrays the plight of the survivors and calls for peace.

The US Press Code

After the Second World War, the General Headquarters (GHQ) - the US occupation military force in Japan, censored photographs taken in Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the atomic bombings; the censorship was called the US Press Code. 

The Press Code was in effect until 1952, the year of Japan's 're-independence'. Meanwhile, it affected many of the journalists, including the two photo journalists, Eiichi Matsumoto and Hajime Miyatake (1914-1985), who would later report on the consequences of the Hiroshima bombing to the Japanese public. They were dispatched to Hiroshima City soon after the bombing to document the aftermaths of the bombing, they took the photos of the ruined city and the victims in September 1945.

Under the Press Code, the news agency ordered them to destroy their negatives but they did not. Matsumoto managed to conceal his films inside his personalised locker in the company, while Miyatake hid his films beneath the fringe of his house. Their photos finally appeared on the magazine called Asahi Graph on 6th August in 1952, showing the devastation of the Hiroshima bombing. It became the first press report exposing the reality of the bombing to the Japanese public.