[2][3] Lead actress Yoshiko Tanaka, who plays Yasuko in the film, was widely recognized for her valuable performance in Black Rain.

Half-orphan Yasuko, who lives with her uncle Shigematsu and his wife Shigeko in Hiroshima, is in the middle of moving family belongings to the house of an acquaintance in the vicinity, when the atomic bomb is dropped.

Yet all prospects' families withdraw their proposal when they hear of Yasuko's presence in Hiroshima on the day of the bombing, fearing that she might become ill or be unable to give birth to healthy children.

They passed many misshapen bodies and some who had their ,“skin peeling off just like that of an over - ripe peach, exposing the white fat underneath.’” When the uncle of the main character exits the train station, there are black skinned bodies everywhere and countless others who are so disfigured that their own family could not even recognize them, which ultimately reveals in dramatic detail the lifelong negative effects of nuclear weapons on a population.

Imamura, known for his focus on marginalized individuals and unflinching portrayals of Japanese society, approached the project with a commitment to authenticity, capturing the lingering trauma of the hibakusha while rejecting overt melodrama.

[4] The film was shot in black-and-white, a deliberate stylistic choice that not only reflects the historical setting but also emphasizes the stark, haunting nature of the narrative.

In the ending of the film, the little girl suffers from the radiation and starts to hallucinate, her uncle is bringing her to a pond, which is an extremely beautiful and peaceful scene to see, according to his words.

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave it 3½ of 4 stars, praising its "beautifully textured" black-and-white photography and pointing out that its purpose was not an anti-nuclear message movie but "a film about how the survivors of that terrible day internalized their experiences".

[8] Geoff Andrew, writing for Time Out, stated that "despite the largely sensitive depiction of waste, suffering and despair, the often ponderous pacing and the script's solemnity tend to work against emotional involvement".

Numerous film clubs use Black Rain to display, "Neoliberalism has done an exceptional job of convincing us that history is something in the past that we read about in books.