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Transnational Korea 3
Zainichi Literature: Japanese Writings by Ethnic Koreans
John Lie, editor

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December 2018
Zainichi Literature
TRANSNATIONAL KOREA 3

Zainichi Literature
Japanese Writings
by Ethnic Koreans

Edited by
John Lie
A publication of the Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California,
Berkeley. Although the institute is responsible for the selection and acceptance of
manuscripts in this series, responsibility for the opinions expressed and for the
accuracy of statements rests with their authors.

The Transnational Korea series is one of several publication series sponsored by

the Institute of East Asian Studies in conjunction with its constituent units. The
other series include the China Research Monograph series, the Japan Research
Monograph series, the Korea Research Monograph series, and the Research
Papers and Policy Studies series.

Send correspondence and manuscripts to

Katherine Lawn Chouta, Managing Editor

Institute of East Asian Studies
1995 University Avenue, Suite 510H
Berkeley, CA 94720
ieaseditor@berkeley.edu

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Lie, John, editor.

Title: Zainichi literature : Japanese writings by ethnic Koreans / edited by
John Lie.
Description: Berkeley, CA : Institute of East Asian Studies, University of
California, Berkeley, [2018] | Series: Transnational Korea ; 3 | Includes
bibliographical references.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018034053 (print) | LCCN 2018044769 (ebook) | ISBN
9781557291813 (ebook) | ISBN 1557291810 (ebook) | ISBN 9781557291806 |
ISBN 1557291802
Subjects: LCSH: Japanese literature—Korean authors—Translations into English.
| Japanese literature—20th century—Translations into English.
Classification: LCC PL782.E1 (ebook) | LCC PL782.E1 Z35 2018 (print) | DDC
895.608/08957—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018034053

Copyright © 2018 by the Regents of the University of California.

Printed in the United States of America.
All rights reserved.

The cover image of a gate in Korea Town (Tsuruhashi), Osaka, is an adaptation

of an image published by author Oilstreet on Wikimedia Commons under the
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Cover design by Mindy Chen.

Contents

Preface vii
Contributors ix

Introduction 1
John Lie

1. Two Essays: “Letter to Mother” and “Colonial Koreans

and Peninsulars” 25
Kim Saryang, translated by Nayoung Aimee Kwon
2. Trash 35
Kim Talsu, translated by Christina Yi
3. In Shinjuku 55
Yang Sŏgil, translated by Samuel Perry
4. Selected Poems from Nagune Taryong: Eternal Traveler 67
Lee Jungja, translated by Haeng-ja Chung
5. Lee-kun’s Blues 121
Won Soo-il, translated by Nathaniel Heneghan
6. Selected Poems from I Am Twelve 139
Oka Masafumi, translated by Youngmi Lim
7. Specimens of Families 165
Yū Miri, translated by Abbie (Miyabi) Yamamoto

Appendix 183
John Lie
Preface

Zainichi (diasporic Koreans in Japan) writings contain signal achievements,

but they are virtually unknown outside Japan, and, to a lesser extent, the
two Koreas. Melissa L. Wender’s pioneering anthology in English, Into the
Light (University of Hawai‘i Press, 2010), remains a beacon; I can only hope
that others will follow this modest collection of translated pieces in order
to illuminate the sea of variegated—searing and shattering—works that
should be better known. There is something remarkable in the vast corpus
of Zainichi literature, and it’s a pity that it has fallen between the proverbial
stacks of nationalist literary scholarship.
This collection is the outcome of two workshops held at the University of
California, Berkeley. In organizing the workshop and making this volume
possible, I would like to thank Dylan Davis, Stephanie Kim, Laura Nelson,
Kate Chouta, and the staff of the Center for Korean Studies and the Institute
of East Asian Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. This work
was supported by the Academy of Korean Studies [KSPS] Grant funded by
the Korean Government [MOE] [AKS-2012-BAA-2102]. Thanks also to Kiri
Lee, Christopher D. Scott, and Melissa L. Wender who participated in one
or both workshops but were unable to contribute to this volume.
Contributors

Haeng-ja Chung is a cultural anthropologist. She received her PhD from

the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Los An-
geles. She is an associate professor at Okayama University. Before joining
Okayama University, she taught at Colorado College, Hamilton College,
and Smith College in the United States. She also conducted research on
the intersection of gender and ethnicity as a postdoctoral fellow at Har-
vard University and University of Tokyo. She has given numerous lectures
and has published in both English and Japanese. Her publications include
“Transnational Labor Migration in Japan: The Case of Korean Nightclub
Hostesses in Osaka,” “‘THAT’S IT?’ How Conflicts and Confusion are Ne-
gotiated in the Globalized Contact Zone of a ‘Japanese’ Club,” and “In the
Shadows and at the Margins: Working in the Korean Clubs and Bars of
Osaka’s Minami Area.” 

Nathaniel Heneghan is a visiting assistant professor in the department of

East Asian Studies at Oberlin College. His research encompasses topics of
modern Japanese literature and visual media, transnational and postco-
lonial theory, pop and subculture mediums, and gender and ethnic stud-
ies. He is currently at work on a manuscript that considers the changing
representation of Zainichi Korean identity in postwar literature and film.

Nayoung Aimee Kwon is an associate professor of Asian and Middle East-

ern Studies, the Program in the Arts of the Moving Image, and the Program
in Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies at Duke University. Her publica-
tions include Intimate Empire: Collaboration and Colonial Modernity in Korea
and Japan (Duke University Press, forthcoming in Korean from Somyŏng
Press) and a coedited volume Transcolonial Film Coproductions in the Japanese
Empire: Antinomies in the Colonial Archive. She is currently translating Kim
Saryang’s works into English and editing a transnational volume of critical
works about his legacy.
x Contributors

John Lie teaches social theory at the University of California, Berkeley. He

has written Multiethnic Japan (Harvard University Press, 2001) and Zainichi
(Koreans in Japan): Diasporic Nationalism and Postcolonial Identity (University
of California Press, 2008).

Youngmi Lim is an associate professor of sociology at Musashi University,

Tokyo. She received her PhD in sociology from the City University of New
York (CUNY) Graduate Center and has taught at various CUNY campuses
for ten years. She is currently writing a book on Japanese and Zainichi
intermarriages.

Samuel Perry is an associate professor of  East Asian studies at Brown

University. His research brings together the fields of modern literature,
translation, and cultural history as he seeks to understand the strategies
by which marginalized people have contested dominant cultures in East
Asia. His published work includes Recasting Red Culture in Proletarian Japan:
Childhood, Korea, and the Historical Avant-Garde (University of Hawai‘i Press,
2014), and two books of translation from Korean and Japanese, From Wŏnso
Pond by Kang Kyŏng-ae (Feminist Press, 2009) and Five Faces of Japanese
Feminism: Crimson and Other Works by Sata Ineko (University of Hawai‘i
Press, 2016). He is currently writing a monograph about Japanese literature
at the time of the Korean War and translating a collection of queer Korean
literature.

Abbie (Miyabi) Yamamoto received her PhD in Japanese and Korean lit-
erature from the University of California, Berkeley, in 2011. She currently
lives in San Diego and works as a translator and cultural consultant. Her
latest research project, Girls Who Become Mothers…Or Not: Young Women and
Sexuality in Twentieth-Century Japan, focuses on the Japanese shōjo (young
woman) figure and how it has changed over the course of the twentieth
century.

Christina Yi is an assistant professor of modern Japanese literature at the

University of British Columbia. She received her PhD in modern Japanese
literature from Columbia University. In 2011, she was awarded the William
F. Sibley Memorial Translation Prize for her translation of Kim Saryang’s
“Pegasus” (Tenma). Her research focuses on the rise of Japanese-­language
literature by Korean colonial subjects during the 1930s and 1940s and its
subsequent effect on discourse regarding “national” and “ethnic minority”
literature in postwar Japan and Korea.
Introduction

JOHN LIE

In 1972 Lee Hoesung (Ri Kaisei) won the Akutagawa Prize, the most pres-
tigious literary award in Japan.1 The event inaugurated a Zainichi Korean
literature boom in Japan.2 Not only were pioneering Zainichi authors such
as Kim Saryang (Kin Shiryō) and Kim Talsu republished and reread, but
Lee and his peers also received renewed attention from the Japanese lit-
erary world (bundan).3 Although it is problematic to equate prestigious
awards with literary influence or even greatness, it is nevertheless s­ triking

1 
Transliteration encapsulates the divides and confusions of Zainichi life. In the colonial
period and thereafter, many ethnic Koreans living in the Japanese archipelago adopted Japa-
nese pseudonyms. Even when they retained their Korean names, they employed the Japa-
nese pronunciation: hence, Kin Shiryō rather than Kim Saryang. The problem runs deeper,
however. A very common surname, usually rendered as Lee in English, is pronounced Yi
in southern Korea, whence most Zainichi hailed, and Ri in northern Korea. Because of the
lingering awareness that the proper (or the received Chinese) pronunciation is Lee or Ri,
most educated Koreans sought to transliterate it into English as Lee or Ri (or Rhee as in the
case of the first president of South Korea, Syngman Rhee, or Lie as in the case of my father).
The most common South Korean transliteration is Lee, whereas that of North Korea is Ri.
Furthermore, many Zainichi employ Japanese phonetics even when they speak Korean. That
is, Kim Saryang in Zainichi Korean would be Kim Saryan. Given that Kim Saryang wrote
and lived as Kin Shiryō when he wrote his Japanese-language texts, the historically accurate
rendering should probably be Kin Shiryō rather than Kim Saryang. Given the strength of
nationalist, anti-, or postcolonial convictions, however, contemporary scholars, whether in
Japan or the United States, use the Korean rendering.
2 
Zainichi, which means “residing in Japan,” does not necessarily refer to ethnic or dia-
sporic Koreans; one may be Zainichi American or Zainichi Chinese. Here I use the term
Zainichi as a common referent to a demographic group: postcolonial ethnic or diasporic Ko-
reans in Japan.
3 
See, e.g., Shiraishi Shōgo, “‘Zainichi’ bungaku nijūnen no inshō,” Kikan seikyū 1 (1989).
There was another boom of sorts around 1940 after two Zainichi writers were nominated
for the Akutagawa Prize. Bundan is a term often employed in modern Japanese cultural life,
denoting a central stage for authors, critics, and publishers, who in turn constitute a concen-
trated and overlapping web of relations. An influential account is Itō Sei, Nihon bundanshi, 18
vols. (Tokyo: Kōdansha, 1954–1973).
2 John Lie

that Zainichi writers have proceeded to win the Akutagawa Prize on sev-
eral occasions: Lee Yangji in 1988, Yū Miri in 1996, and Gen Getsu in 1999.
Needless to say, the list omits several others whose claim to literary emi-
nence would be difficult to deny, including Kim Talsu, Kim Sokpom (Kin
Sekihan), Kin Kakuei, and Sagisawa Megumu. If we turn to the Naoki
Prize, geared toward popular works of fiction, we also find a series of
Zainichi recipients: Tachihara Masaaki in 1966, Tsuka Kōhei in 1981, Ijūin
Shizuka in 1992, and Kaneshiro Kazuki in 2000. Given that no estimate of
the Zainichi population exceeds 1 percent of the total population of Japan,
it would appear that Zainichi are overrepresented in the top echelon of the
literary world.4
The accounting exercise suggests that Zainichi literature has a prima
facie claim to the attention of Japanese literature aficionados and scholars.5
Not surprisingly, the secondary literature in Japanese is immense. Save per-
haps for a recent surge of interest among South Korean scholars, however,
there is nary any recognition of Zainichi literary achievements, perhaps
even its very existence, elsewhere. It is a pity, as the body of work in and
of itself continues to have literary significance, because it is an exceedingly
interesting instance of diasporic literature: a phenomenon of world litera-
ture that is of great and growing interest to readers and critics. This book
seeks to redress the neglect.6
This introductory essay provides a conspectus of Zainichi literature—
serving as something of a truncated Zainichi literary history—and que-
ries in particular its shifting and conflicting boundaries. Classification of
Zainichiness and Zainichi literature raises the inevitable question of be-
longing and identity. It may very well be that these sociological consider-
ations pollute and pervert the purity of literature—though very few have
claimed that literature has no ethnonational boundaries given the inevi-
table importance of language—but we cannot bypass them when the very
definition of a literary genre is sociological, not literary, in character.

4 
The same generalization can be made for other spheres of culture and entertainment, in-
cluding music and movies. A proximate reason is the manifold obstacles toward professional
and other prestigious employment in postwar Japan.
5 
There is a question as to whether Korean-language writings by Zainichi writers should
be included in the study of Zainichi literature. The short answer, argued cogently by Song
Hyewon, is affirmative (“Zainichi Chōsenjin bungagushi” no tame ni [Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten,
2014]). It is also possible to expand the ambit of Japanese literature to include works in non-
Japanese languages, most obviously Ainu, Okinawan, Korean, Chinese, and English. Need-
less to say, as of the late 2010s, such a perspective would be a minority view.
6 
For a pioneering anthology of Zainichi literature in English, see Melissa L. Wender, ed.,
Into the Light (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2010).
Introduction 3

The Ambit of Zainichi Literature

If we classify Zainichi literature as literary works by ethnic or diasporic
Koreans in Japan, then its exemplar can be found in the distant and misty
past. The first monument of Japanese literature, the eighth-century poetry
compilation Man’yōshū, was not only heavily influenced by continental
(what we would now call Chinese and Korean) language and literature, but
also included some poems by recent exiles or sojourners from the Korean
peninsula.7 It would be possible to chronicle a pageantry of ethnic Koreans
writing in Japan, but it would also be a hodgepodge of disparate literary
achievements, without rhyme or reason. Strong national identification did
not exist before the era of modern nation-states, and the idea of national
literature or even national language is something that gains credence only
in the period of modern national identity.8 In any case, Zainichi literature,
whether for contemporary scholars and writers or the general reading pub-
lic, is perforce a colonial and postcolonial phenomenon.9 After all, only
several thousand Korean subjects were residing in the Japanese archipelago
at the time of Korean annexation to Japan in 1905 (Korea became a protec-
torate in 1905, then a full-fledged colony in 1910). Erstwhile denizens of the

7 
See Kajikawa Nobuyuki, Man’yōshū to Shiragi (Tokyo: Kanrin Shobō, 2009). For early
emigrants from the Korean peninsula to the Japanese archipelago, see Ueda Makoto, Torai no
kodaishi (Tokyo: Kadokawa Shoten, 2013). For a transnational look at early eastern Asia, see
Suzuki Yasutami, Kodai Nihon no Higashi Ajia kōryūshi (Tokyo: Bensei Shuppan, 2016).
8 
See John Lie, Modern Peoplehood (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004).
9 
The standard anthology of Zainichi literature in Japanese is in eighteen volumes: Isogai
Jirō and Kuroko Kazuo, eds., “Zainichi” bungaku zenshū (Tokyo: Bensei Shuppan, 2006). See
also Song Hyewon (Sō Keien), ed., Zainichi Chōsen josei sakuhinshū, 2 vols. (Tokyo: Ryokuin
Shobō, 2014). There is a vast secondary literature in Japanese. See inter alia Isogai Jirō, Shigen
no hikari (Tokyo: Sōjusha, 1979), Takeda Seiji, “Zainichi” to iu konkyo (Tokyo: Kokubunsha,
1983), Hayashi Kōji, Zainichi Chōsenjin Nihongo bungakushi (Tokyo: Shinkansha, 1991), Imu
Jone, Nihon ni okeru Chōsenjin no bungaku no rekishi (Tokyo: Hōsei Daigaku Shuppankai, 1994),
An U-sik, “Zainichi Chōsenjin no bungaku,” Iwanami kōza Nihon bungakushi, vol. 14 (Tokyo:
Iwanami Shoten, 1997), Kawamura Minato, Umaretara soko ga furusato (Tokyo: Heibonsha,
1999), Yamasaki Masazumi, Sengo “Zainichi” bungakuron (Tokyo: Yōyōsha, 2003), Kim Huna,
Zainichi Chōsenjin josei bungakuron (Tokyo: Sakuhinsha, 2004), Isogai Jirō, “Zainichi” bungaku-
ron (Tokyo: Shinkansha, 2004), Nozaki Rokusuke, Tamashii to zaiseki (Tokyo: Inpakuto Shup-
pankai, 2008), Song, “Zainichi Chōsenjin bungakushi” no tame ni, and Isogai Jirō, “Zainichi”
bungaku no hen’yō to keiju (Tokyo: Shinkansha, 2015). The secondary literature in Korean,
after a belated beginning, has exploded in the past fifteen years. See, e.g., Yu Suk-cha, Chaeil
Han’gugin munhak yŏn’gu (Seoul: Wŏrin, 2000), Hong Ki-san, Chaeil Han’gugin munhak (Seoul:
Sol, 2001), Kim Hak-tong, Chaeil Chŏsonin munhak kwa minjok (Seoul: Kukhak Charyowŏn,
2001), Kim Hwan-gi, Chaeil tiasŭp’ora munhak (Seoul: Saemi, 2006), Hwang Pong-mo, Chaeil
Han’gugin muhak yŏn’gu (Seoul: Ŏmunhaksa, 2011), and O Ŭn-yŏng, Chaeil Chosŏnin munhak
e issŏsŏ “Chosonjŏk in kŏt” (Seoul: Tosŏ Ch’ulp’an Sŏin, 2015). The only major monograph in
English is by Melissa L. Wender, Lamentation as History (Stanford, CA: Stanford University
Press, 2005).
4 John Lie

Japanese archipelago who hailed from the Korean peninsula had by and
large become enmeshed in and assimilated into Japanese life; descendants
of Korean Man’yōshū poets had become Japanese.10 Some Japanese denizens
maintained memories of ancestral links to the Korean peninsula—indeed,
it is true for the imperial household itself11—but even those who retained
their Korean surnames and more or less conscious identification with Ko-
rean peoplehood did not leave substantial literary traces that disclose their
ethnonational identity. It would also be possible to identify Yi Su-jŏng, who
arrived in Japan in 1882 and was the pioneer translator of the Christian
Bible into Korean, as sort of an ur-Zainichi literary figure. However, not
only did he write exclusively in Korean, but he also expected to return to
Korea after a short stay in Japan.12 Yi Kwang-su published probably the
first Japanese-language modern fiction by a Korean in 1909, “Ai ka?” (Is it
love?).13 It is possible to dismiss it as juvenilia, but in dealing with homo-
erotic desire across ethnonational boundaries, the short story remains an
intriguing but neglected work by the putative founder of modern Korean
literature. If we include ethnic Koreans writing in the main Japanese is-
lands, then much of modern Korean literature would be part of Zainichi
literature: from Yi Kwang-su and Yi Sang to Yi Ch’an and Yun Tong-ju.
It may also be tempting to include the considerable population of ethnic
Japanese who peopled the Korean peninsula during the colonial period
and then returned to Japan, but no one has seriously advocated considering
their works Zainichi literature.14 Put simply, ethnic criterion (being ethnic or
diasporic Korean in Japan) remains the received way to categorize Zainichi

10 
We should remain cognizant of those who, even after centuries in the Japanese archi-
pelago, retained a sense of Korean identification. Shiba Ryōtarō’s thinly fictionalized portrait
of one such descendant is memorable: Kokyō bōjigataku sōrō (Tokyo: Bungen Shunjūsha, 1976).
11 
John Lie, Multiethnic Japan (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001).
12 
Cf. Imu, Nihon ni okeru Chōsenjin. Yi translated a Japanese version of the Bible into Ko-
rean, becoming something of a pioneer of this important but neglected, and frequently de-
nied, genre. To be sure, the more salient occlusion is that in virtually every account of the
history of Christianity in the Korean peninsula, Horace G. Underwood and Henry G. Ap-
penzeller, among other North American missionaries, are central. Yi, who taught Korean to
both Underwood and Appenzeller—they in turn carried Yi’s translated Bible with them to
Korea—remains a shadowy, neglected figure.
13 
I have not been able to locate the original, which was published in Shirogane gakuhō,
1909, under the pseudonym Yi Po-gyŏng. It is readily available in Kurokawa Sō, ed., “Gaichi”
no Nihongo bungaku sen (Tokyo: Shijuku Shobō, 1996).
14 
The hegemonic nature of ethnonational distinction precludes the possibility of regard-
ing a substantial body of work by ethnic Japanese writers who were reared in colonial Korea
and often wrote about the experience and its allied manifestations, such as the place of Kore-
ans in Japan. See, e.g., Kajiyama Toshiyuki, “Ri-chō zankei,” Bessatsu Bungei Shunjū (March
1963). For scholarly treatments, see Nakane Takayuki, “Chōsen” hyōshō no bunkashi (Tokyo:
Shin’yōsha, 2004), and Nan Pujin, Bungaku no shokuminchishugi (Kyoto: Sekai Shisōsha, 2006).
Introduction 5

literature, however nationalistic and at times ambiguous the classificatory

scheme may be. In this regard, we should recall that almost all the major
bookstores in Japan placed works of Zainichi literature under the category
of foreign literature, not as part of Japanese literature, presumably on the
ground that ethnic Koreans were foreigners in monoethnic Japan.
Liberation, or the end of World War II, marks another common divid-
ing line: the before of colonial rule and the imperative of cultural assimi-
lation against the after of political independence, national division, and
conflicting political loyalties. That is, there is a difference between being
a colonial subject and an ethnic minority. Consider, for instance, a major
anthology of colonial literature, by so-called peninsular writers, that ap-
peared in 1944. Almost no one would regard the roster of authors—most
famously, Kayama Mitsurō or Yi Kwang-su—as Zainichi writers, however
much they may have resided in the main Japanese islands, wrote in Japa-
nese, and used Japanese names.15 Almost certainly the best-known ethnic
Korean writer in Japan during the colonial period was Kim So-un, less
for his poetic achievements and more for his Korean literary and cultural
compilations.16 Yet, he too is almost always excluded from any sustained
study of Zainichi literature. The colonial period presented Japan as the
broad horizon against which everyone operated; however, the allegiances
of ethnic Koreans may have spanned from pro-Japanese to anti-Japanese
(and their beliefs and loyalties may have changed over time). After all, al-
most every ethnic Korean was an imperial Japanese subject, and very few
were consciously and actively anti-imperialist in Japan.17 In the postcolonial
period, there were distinct choices of homeland: North Korea, South Korea,
or Japan. In turn, being in Japan offered distinct modes of consciousness
and expectation. The curious constraint of being postcolonial Koreans in
Japan—and often writing in Japanese to boot—provides a particular ur-
gency to Zainichi literature.

On ethnic Japanese in colonial Korea in general, see Jun Uchida, Brokers of Empire (Cam-
bridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2014).
15 
Chōsen Tosho Shuppan, ed., Hantō sakka tanpenshū (Keijō: Chōsen Tosho Shuppan,
1944). Note that perhaps the first book of literary criticism appeared in 1943: Sai Saizui, Ten-
kanki no Chōsen bungaku (Tokyo: Jinbunsha, 1943). In the postwar period, the foundational
work is Ozaki Hotsuki, Kyūshokuminchi bungaku no kenkyū (Tokyo: Keisō Shobō, 1971). In
the case of South Korea, see Kim Yun-sik, Han-Il kŭndae munhak ŭi kwallyŏn yangsang (Seoul:
Ilchisa, 1974). On Yi Kwang-su, see Kim Yun-sik’s influential but devastating account, Yi
Kwang-su wa kŭ ŭi sidae (Seoul: Han’gilsa, 1986).
16 
For the earliest publications, see Kim So-un, Chōsen min’yōshū (Tokyo: Taibunkan, 1929).
17 
For two telling narratives of proimperial ethnic Koreans in Japan, see Ko Samyon, Ikiru-
koto no imi (Tokyo: Chikuma Shobō, 1974), and Kim Sijong, Chōsen to Nihon ni ikiru (Tokyo:
Iwanami Shoten, 2015).
6 John Lie

Not surprisingly, then, the very term Zainichi literature (Zainichi

Chōsenjin bungaku) becomes common only in the 1960s.18 Hence, it is possi-
ble to consign writers active in the colonial period as proleptic figures, who
in turn should be distinguished from postcolonial authors. Nevertheless, it
does not require a heroic suspension of disbelief to assert and accept a line
linking colonial writers, such as Kim Saryang, and postcolonial writers,
such as Kim Talsu and Kim Sokpom. In fact, they are largely coevals, whose
shared experience of Japanese colonialism—most importantly, living as an
ethnic Korean in the Japanese archipelago—overlapped with strong Korean
identification, including the desire to return to homeland, and the mastery
and employment of the Japanese language. Yet, Kim Saryang returned to
the Korean peninsula, started writing in Korean, allied himself with the
communist North during the Korean War, and disappeared.19 Kim Talsu
and Kim Sokpom, in contrast, stayed in Japan, wrote almost exclusively in
Japanese, and became the founding figures of Zainichi bundan. Neverthe-
less, we include Kim Saryang’s piece in this book because he continued to
be read by Zainichi writers, especially after his collected writings came out
in the early 1970s.20
Zainichi literature is not only a sociological phenomenon but also a
historically specific one.21 The very presupposition of Zainichiness encap-
sulated its evanescence; the overwhelming expectation was that ethnic
Koreans would repatriate to the Korean peninsula in due course. Hence,
Zainichi literature was fated to disappear from the outset, which is one of
the main reasons that immediate postwar ethnic Korean writers in Japan
called themselves (North) Korean, rather than Zainichi, authors.22 Needless
to say, the curtailment of the anticipated future was made possible by the
18 
Isogai Jirō, “Dai issedai no bungaku ryakuzu,” Kikan seikyū 19 (1994).
19 
See An U-sik, Kin Shiryō (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1972). The most notable Korean-­
language work is Noma malli (in Kim Sa-ryang sŏnjip, Pyongyang: Kungnip Ch’ulp’ansa,
1955). See also Jung Beak Soo, Koroniarizumu no chōkatsu (Tokyo: Sōfūkan, 2007), esp. part 2.
20 
Kim Saryang, Kin Shiryō zenshū, 4 vols. (Tokyo: Kawade Shobō Shinsha, 1973–1974).
21 
For references to the information in the next three paragraphs, please see John Lie,
Zainichi (Koreans in Japan): Diasporic Nationalism and Postcolonial Identity (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 2008). For representative works on Zainichi history and culture in the
past decade, see the special issue of Bessatsu Takarajima 245 (2013), Mizuno Naoki and Mun
Gyongsu, Zainichi Chōsenjin (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2015), and Yoon Keun Cha, “Zainichi”
no seishinshi, 3 vols. (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2015).
22 
The politics of nomenclature is omnipresent in matters Zainichi. North Korea in Japa-
nese was usually “Kita Chōsen,” whereas South Korea was often called “Kankoku.” Given
the preponderant identification of ethnic Koreans in Japan with North Korea in the imme-
diate postwar decades, the most common term was “Zainichi Chōsenjin.” It is only in the
1980s that “Zainichi Kankokujin”—usually added to the earlier term, so “Zainichi Chōsen
Kankokujin”—becomes common. To avoid the confusion and unintended political alle-
giances, it is increasingly common to use “Zainichi Korian” (Korean), which is of course
Introduction 7

neglect of the immediate past. The Zainichi population, as was the case
for ethnic Koreans in the Korean peninsula, had experienced considerable
cultural assimilation during colonial rule. At the same time, we should
not neglect that Korean-language writings and publications were under
considerable threat of censorship and even outright suppression, especially
as the Japanese war effort intensified from the late 1930s. Yet by Liberation
Japanese was the de facto native language for second-generation Zainichi
and an official language for any ambitious first-generation Korean (in both
naichi, the main Japanese islands, and gaichi, the colonies). Given the pres-
tige of the ruling power—and one that also provided a window onto the
larger world of the West—ethnic Korean writings in Japanese proliferated
by the 1930s, most visibly in the proletarian literature movement.23 The
red tide would soon recede, replaced by waves of Japanese nationalist
and assimilationist writings. In 1941, the leading light of modern Korean
literature, Yi Kwang-su, writing under the Japanese name Kayama Mitsurō,
urged fellow Koreans to abandon the Korean language and embrace the
Japanese. The same year Kim Saryang’s story “Hikari no naka ni” (Into the
light) was nominated for the Akutagawa Prize. Yi, Kim, and many other
ethnic Koreans writing in Japanese during the colonial period—perhaps
the most prolific was Chō Kakuchū—constitute something of a prehistory
of Zainichi literature.24 Indeed, if we had an expansive view of ethnic Ko-
rean writings in Japan, they would fit comfortably in any comprehensive
account of Zainichi literary history.
Beyond the colonial–postcolonial divide is the choice, however con-
strained, of residence and language. It is safe to say that ethnic Koreans—
many of whom were fluent in Japanese and, because all higher schooling
implied Japanese-language instruction, often had better command of liter-
ary Japanese than literary Korean—who returned to either North or South
(or pre-division) Korea and wrote in Korean are almost always excluded
from the Zainichi canon. I know of no professional writer who continued
to publish Japanese-language fiction in North or South Korea. In contrast,
continued residence in Japan meant that Japanese was the dominant lan-
guage. Some wrote energetically in Korean, but Japanese would supersede

the adoption of the English term that encompasses both North and South Koreans. See Lie,
Zainichi, preface.
23 
Samuel Perry, Recasting Red Culture in Proletarian Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i
Press, 2014).
24 
For Japanese-language writings by ethnic Koreans during the colonial period, see
Ōmura Masao and Hotei Toshihiro, eds., Kindai Chōsen bungaku Nihongo sakuhinshū, 5 vols.
(Tokyo: Ryokuin Shobō, 2004). On pro-Japanese writings by Korean writers during the colo-
nial period, see Shirakawa Yutaka, Chōsen kindai no chinichiha sakka (Tokyo: Bensei Shuppan
2008).
8 John Lie

Korean. Kim Sokpom is symptomatic. Seeking to write his magnum opus

Kazantō (Volcano island, 1983–1987) in Korean, he eventually failed and
went on to write seven tomes in Japanese.25 We should stress, however, that
the monolingual hindsight has systematically effaced the place of Korean-
language writings among the Zainichi.26 We might also consider diasporic
Koreans who were born and reared in the Japanese language, but went on
to write in other languages, such as English for Younghill Kang and Richard
E. Kim, and French for Ook Chung.27 Out of sight, out of mind: ex-Zainichi
writers would shed their Japanese background, and therefore they may be
discussed as part of Korean or diasporic Korean literature but almost never
as part of Zainichi literature.
The essentially contested criterion of Zainichi literature—beyond ethnic,
linguistic, and historical—stems from a series of political and ideological
orthodoxies. Whether in terms of what I call Sōren ideology or Zainichi
ideology, the postwar decades featured politically correct definitions of
Zainichiness. Most importantly, Zainichi identity entailed not only a com-
mitment to homeland—however contested the seemingly simple idea
proved to be, among distinct allegiances to North Korea, South Korea, or
a future unified Korea—but also a strong declamation of anticolonial and
therefore anti-Japanese standpoints (hence Japan was never mooted as a
serious place of settlement in the immediate postwar decades). There is
a tendency to divide colonial-era Korean writers as either heroic resist-
ers to Japanese rule or misguided collaborators, but the political classifi-
cation misses not only individual ambiguities and nonpolitical—indeed,
aesthetic—­concerns, but also their transformation over time. Tei Zenki,
almost surely the first ethnic Korean to publish a full-length novel in Japa-
nese, began as a proletarian writer but soon converted to Japanese ultra-
nationalism.28 He made yet another radical turn after 1945 and became a
leftist. As twisted and unprincipled as he may seem in retrospect, Tei’s
was not an uncommon trajectory for ethnic Korean intellectuals who lived
through the turbulent mid-twentieth century. The aforementioned debut
work of Chō’s, “Gakidō” (Hungry world, 1932), was a socialist-realist de-
piction of Korean peasants’ impoverished condition, but he became in-
creasing pro-Japanese. He was naturalized in 1952 and henceforth wrote as
Noguchi Minoru. In spite of divergent destinations, Tei and Chō are both

25 
Kim Sokpom, Kazantō (Tokyo: Bungei Shunjū, 1983–1987).
26 
See esp. Song, “Zainichi Chōsenjinbungakushi” no tame ni.
27 
Younghill Kang, The Grass Roof (New York: Scribner’s, 1931), and East Goes West (New
York: Scribner’s, 1937). Richard E. Kim, The Martyred (New York: Braziller, 1964), and Lost
Names (New York: Praeger, 1970). Ook Chung, Kimchi (Paris: Le Serpent à Plumes, 2001).
28 
Tei has not received much critical attention. His representative Japanese writing is Kōdō
seijiron (Tokyo: Kōgakkai, 1940).
Introduction 9

often excluded from the category of Zainichi literature.29 There is no point

in denying their place in any consideration of ethnic Korean writings in
Japanese, but their inclusion in the Zainichi canon is often tenuous because
Zainichi literature was not the production of and by ethnic Koreans living
and writing in Japan, but of and by ethnic Koreans who in turn were pre-
paring for their ultimate return to homeland and engaged in anticolonial
independence struggles. Given the explicit political orientation of many
Zainichi writers, who overwhelmingly identified themselves with North
Korea, those who were sympathetic to South Korea or insufficiently anti-
Japanese were not considered to be part of Zainichi literature. Being cast
as pro-Japanese almost always led to their expunction.30
Sociological, historical, political, ideological, and other forces rendered
Zainichi literature not only contested but also exclusionary. Paradoxical
given the widespread discrimination against and disrecognition of eth-
nic Koreans in postwar Japan, Zainichi writers, critics, and readers were
in turn wont to exclude numerous writers from their circle. Perhaps the
best-selling work by a Zainichi writer in the immediate postwar decades
was Yasumoto Sueko’s Nianchan (1958). Yet, it is almost never mentioned
in any discussion of Zainichi literature because it is based on a diary of a
young girl. Beyond its status as nonfiction lies the pervasive masculinist
and patriarchal outlook of the Zainichi literary and political establishment.
Pioneering postwar women writers, such as Ri Kum-ok and An Fukiko,
hardly merit a mention in most accounts of Zainichi literature.31 Nianchan
also violated a crucial credo of Zanichi writers at the time: the orientation
toward homeland and the expectation of return. In this regard, Tachihara
Masaaki was an immensely successful writer, who even touched on Korean
29 
Given Chō’s explicit criticism of Zainichi mainstream views, it is not altogether sur-
prising that almost no Zainichi writers regarded him as “one of us” (see, e.g., “Zainichi
Chōsenjin hihan,” Sekai shunjū, December 1949). His later works, such as Kuroi chitai (Tokyo:
Shinseisha, 1958) and Gan byōren (Tokyo: Kōdansha, 1959), dealing respectively with tuber-
culosis and cancer, retain considerable interest. See Yan Hisuku, “Chō Kakuchū sengo cho-
saku nenfukō,” Nihon Ajia kenkyū 8 (2011): 111–120.
30 
The same generalization can be applied to North and South Korea as well. Anticolonial,
anti-Japanese sentiments remain a largely unquestioned orthodoxy more than seven decades
after Liberation. For the foundational work on pro-Japanese or collaborationist literature in
South Korea, see Im Chong-guk, Ch’inil munhagnon (Seoul: P’yŏnghwa Ch’ulp’ansa, 1966). It
is worth stressing, however, that collaboration was widespread. Consider the Zainichi writer
Ko Samyon’s recollection of the Japanese defeat: “I was first unable to understand the mean-
ing of the words ‘we lost.’ Within me there were words for winning and dying, but the word
losing was not planted.… What does it mean for a Korean child—someone who was beaten
almost every day—to feel this dark desperation in my entire being when the Japanese loss
meant the liberation from oppression” (Yami wo hamu, 1:48–49 [Tokyo: Kadokawa Shoten,
2004]).
31 
See, however, Song, “Zainichi Chōsenjin bungagushi” no tame ni, especially chap. 1.
10 John Lie

themes, but he is usually not discussed in Zainichi literary scholarship

because he underplayed his ethnic Korean identity and even sought to
pass as Japanese. Ijūin Shizuka has written extensively on classic Zainichi
themes—the transnational sojourn across the Sea of Japan—and has been
open about his ethnic Korean origins, but he is almost always not consid-
ered part of the Zainichi literary canon. This is in part because of his im-
mense popularity as a writer of popular fiction and essays. He has become
a Japanese, not a Zainichi, writer. Similarly, the mystery writer Rei Ra is
almost never discussed as a Zainichi author. Beyond their lack of explicit
North Korean identification lies the perception that they are light or popu-
lar writers, unbefitting of Zainichi literature. Put differently, the sociological
stress went well beyond ethnonational identification to political standpoint
and moralist aesthetics.
The labyrinthine nature of literary reputation casts a not only inconsis-
tent but also flickering shadow. Kyo Nanki, or Hŏ Nam-gi, remains part of
the Zainichi canon, when his remnant claim to fame is surely his leadership
role in the North Korea–affiliated organization Sōren, or Chongryun. His
contemporary Yi Un-sik (Ri Inchoku or Unjiku), in spite of being a fellow
nominee with Kim Saryang for the 1939 Akutagawa Prize for “Nagare”
(Flow), has disappeared into oblivion. Never mind that Yi was active in
ethnic education and continued to write idiosyncratic but intriguing works,
such as his five-volume Chōsen no yoake wo motomete (Pursuing the dawn of
Korea, 1997). It is not only from the vantage point of literary value that the
early contributions to Minshu Chōsen—the first periodical devoted to ethnic
Korean writings, first published in 1946—provide a misleading source for
Zainichi literary history.32 In any case, if we can be sure of anything about
Zainichi literary history, it is that it has been embroiled in polemics and
struggles among would-be Zainichi writers. Perhaps one indisputable and
pioneering Zainichi literary father would be Kim Talsu, but Kim Sokpom
and others have dismissed him.33
Strait is the gate of Zainichi literature. It is not just about being anti-
Japanese or pro–North Korean or about toeing the party line or about mani-
festing requisite seriousness. Criteria shift and will undoubtedly change
again. Yet, what is indisputable is the overdetermination of sociological,
political, and ideological factors that place a straitjacket of political correct-
ness, however shifting, on the free-floating life of literature. It is precisely
32 
See, e.g., Hayashi Kōji, Sengo hi-Nichi bungakuron (Tokyo: Shinkansha, 1997), 8–14. See
also Takayanagi Toshio, “‘Minshu Chōsen’ kara ‘Atarashii Chōsen’ made,” Kikan sanzenri 48
(1986), and “‘Chōsen bungei’ ni miru sengo Zainichi Chōsenjin bungaku no shuttatsu,” in
Bungakushi wo yomikaeru, ed. Kawamura Minato, vol. 5 (Tokyo: Inpakuto Shuppankai, 2002).
33 
See, e.g., Kim Sokpom, Kim Sokpom “Kazantō” shōsetsu sekai wo kataru (Tokyo: Yūbun
Shoin, 2010).
Introduction 11

being against this orthodoxy that made writers such as Kaneshiro Kazuki
in the post–Cold War years so refreshing. By then, the narrow circle of
Zainichi literature and identity had expanded considerably. Put differently,
it became difficult to reproduce the strictures of Zainichi life, which stressed
the imperative of return and therefore cast Zainichi writers as exiles, delin-
eating more about heroic combats in mainland Asia than personal struggles
in Japan.

Exile
The pervasive sense of exile marked Zainichi literature during the immedi-
ate postwar decades. After Liberation, some two-thirds of ethnic Koreans
in the Japanese archipelago returned to the Korean peninsula. The esca-
lating Cold War and the Korean War stopped open and legal movements
of people between Korea and Japan, though illegal passages continued.
In fact, people from the Korean peninsula never stopped going to Japan
even after Liberation and the end of the Korean War. More significantly,
those who remained in Japan did not always do so out of constraint: many
had children who spoke only Japanese and knew only Japan; others had
roots and incentives to stay in Japan; the Korean peninsula was not only
geopolitically insecure but also impoverished; and we should never ignore
the humdrum reality of inertia. Yet the overwhelming consensus of active
and outspoken ethnic Koreans was that they were exiles waiting for the
right time to return, most commonly defined as when their homeland was
unified and peace reigned.
There are at least two identifiable strains of exilic identity. One line of
thought suggested that ethnic Koreans happened to be in Japan but that
they were fated to repatriate. Hence, they are in principle no different from
Korean writers in Korea, albeit with the misrecognition that no writer in
Korea would have written in Japanese. Sōren ideology—after the main
ethnic organization of Koreans in Japan, which was affiliated with North
Korea—was fundamentally an ideology of exile, but overlaid by North
Korean allegiance and outlook. In the realm of literature, the privileged
modality was to write socialist-realist works that featured anticolonial,
proletarian, and other struggles, which took place usually on the Korean
peninsula or places of Korean independence struggles, such as Manchuria.
Representative works in this vein are mammoth epics, such as Yi Unjik’s
trilogy Dakuryū (Muddy stream, 1967–1968), Kim’s aforementioned seven-
volume Kazantō, and Lee Hoesung’s hexalogy Mihatenu yume (Unrealized
dream, 1972–1975). Like nearly all socialist-realist works, they are unknown
to most twenty-first-century readers, and the few intrepid souls engaged
in epic bouts of binge reading find them replete with long passages that
12 John Lie

often result in drooping eyelids. To be sure, like minimalist music that is

paradoxically very long, they are not without moments of inspiration and
insights. It is fair to say, however, that these works have fallen out of fash-
ion. Most damningly, the very writers who exemplified this genre have by
and large moved on to write different sorts of literature.
Another variation of exilic identity manifested itself as narratives of per-
sonal struggle. Drawing on the major mode of modern Japanese literature,
shishōsetsu (the “I” novel), Zainichi writers limn protagonists who face a
series of contradictory demands: they should be in Korea but they find
themselves in Japan; they should be in love with a Korean but are in love
with a Japanese; and so on. The binary choice confronts the protagonist,
encapsulating the contradictory—and presumably evanescent—character
of Zainichi life.34 The classic work of this genre is Kim Talsu’s Genkainada
(Genkai Strait, 1952), which follows the Korean protagonist and his travail
over his relationship to his Japanese lover and life in Japan.35 Kim would
spend considerable energy identifying the Korean legacy in the Japanese
archipelago and working actively in literary politics (launching journals,
for instance). He stands as a major founding figure of Zainichi literature.36
Exilic identity presupposed the promise of repatriation. In the imme-
diate postwar decades, the most likely place of return was North Korea
(however inappropriate geographically, since most Zainichi hailed from
southern Korea). Indeed, there was a repatriation campaign, which, at its
height in 1960 and 1961, moved some seventy thousand Zainichi to North
Korea.37 The reputed paradise, however, turned out to be an impoverished
and authoritarian country to which many Zainichi, however poor and com-
munist, found difficult to adapt. The plausibility of return to North Korea
diminished, though many Zainichi retained loyalty to Kim Il-sung’s polity
long after they had resigned themselves to living in Japan.
After the 1965 Normalization Treaty, South Korea emerged as a poten-
tial homeland. Yet a military dictatorship, economic backwardness, and
cultural otherness rendered concrete experiences of return difficult, if not

34 
This is the major motif of the important early critical work on Zainichi literature: Takeda
Seiji’s “Zainichi” no konkyo.
35 
Kim’s early work, Kōei no machi (Tokyo: Chōsen Bungeisha, 1948), deals with a similar
theme. As suggested earlier, Kim’s tendency to engage with personal issues in the manner
of the “I”-novelists of Japan, such as Shiga Naoya, left him open to considerable criticism by
other Zainichi writers.
36 
See especially his autobiography, Kim Talsu, Waga Ariran no uta (Tokyo: Chūō
Kōronshinsha, 1977). See also the critical works by Choi Hyoson, Kaikyō ni tatsu hito (Tokyo:
Hihyōsha, 1998), Shin Gisu, Kimu Darusu runesansu (Tokyo: Kaihō Shuppansha, 2002), and
Hirose Yōichi, Kimu Darusu to sono jidai (Tokyo: Kurein, 2016).
37 
See Tessa Morris-Suzuki, Exodus to North (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2007).
Introduction 13

impossible. The linguistic gulf (even relatively fluent Korean speakers were
marked by their Japanese accents) and the cultural chasm (incompatible
notions of private space or presentation of self) made the return to South
Korea painful. Far from the ideal of heroic struggles for national unification
implied in the first manifestation of exilic identity, these personal, individ-
ual concerns struck closer to the experience of second- and later-generation
Zainichi. Lee Kisun’s Zerohan (Zero half, 1985) and Lee Yangji’s Yuhi (1988)
are among two of the many works that explore the infeasibility of return
and assimilation to South Korea. Yet the difficulty or impossibility of return
came to be articulated only in the 1980s; before then, the promise and the
goal of return remained the unquestioned orthodoxy.
There are several other dimensions of exilic ideology worth noting. Exilic
identity placed Japan as a land of temporary residence. Sōren, for example,
discouraged activities or interventions in domestic Japanese politics. The
1970 Hitachi employment discrimination case—from one perspective, a
heroic victory over the Japanese discrimination of Koreans—was widely
deemed by Sōren-affiliated figures as an unfortunate sideshow. The disre-
gard for their future in Japan therefore accounts in part for the paucity of
works dealing with Zainichi characters in Japan. In spite of considerable
individual successes by athletes, singers, actors, and entrepreneurs, there
was hardly a literary work that depicted, much less celebrated, them. The
bildungsroman of rags to riches would be a belated phenomenon, and
usually written by Japanese authors as nonfiction to boot.38
Another occluded dimension is the patriarchal and masculinist cast of
exilic ideology and literature. It may be counterintuitive given the progres-
sive cast of socialist or communist ideology, but the reality is that Zainichi
women writers were underrepresented and underrecognized. I have al-
ready mentioned that the writings of Ri Kum-ok and An Fukiko remained
almost invisible and forgotten. Chon Chuoru’s (Chŏng Ch’u-wŏl) poetry
collection about Ikaino that had appeared in 1971 was a major exception,
though its literary reputation relies more on later rediscoveries.39 Perhaps
the first major postwar Zainichi woman’s novel was Son Yurucha’s Ikaino
no seishun (The youth of Ikaino, 1976).40 It is fair to say that these works
were neither well read nor widely discussed during the 1970s.

38 
A good example is Sano Shin’ichi, Anpon (Tokyo: Shōgakkan, 2012), which is a biogra-
phy of Son Masayoshi, the founder of Soft Bank.
39 
Chon Chuoru, Chon Chuoru shishū (Tokyo: Henshū Kobo Noa, 1971). A more accessible
collection is Ikaino taryon (Tokyo: Shisō no Kagakusha, 2003).
40 
Son Yurucha [Sŏng Yul-cha], Ikaino no seishun (Nagoya: Banryūsha, 1976). Another im-
portant work is Kin Sōsei, Watashi no Ikaino (Tokyo: Fūbaisha 1982). It is probably not an
accident that the pioneering Zainichi women writers hailed from and wrote about Ikaino,
the Korean district of Osaka.
14 John Lie

Sōren ideology and exilic identity cast Zainichi literature of the immedi-
ate postwar decades as almost inevitably political, realist, and masculine.
The heart of the political rested in the house of mourning: lamenting their
exile, pondering about homeland and heroic struggles, and their contra-
dictory existence in Japan. Longing for return, almost all of the Zainichi
writers stayed in Japan. The debacle of the repatriation campaign dented,
if not destroyed, the possibility of return to North Korea and thinking of it
as homeland, much less as paradise. In the process, Sōren ideology unrav-
eled and became passé.

Zainichi Ideology
The overwhelming sense of being in exile rendered many Zainichi writ-
ers of the immediate post–World War II period as ethnic Koreans who
happened to write in Japanese but expected to return to Korea and, most
devastatingly, probably should be writing in Korean. Yet, it is precisely
these writers—Kim Talsu and Kim Sokpom, and their slightly younger
counterparts, such as Lee Hoesung—who laid claim to genuine Zainichi-
ness and ruled the Zainichi literary establishment. What is striking is
the insistent identification as not just Korean, but at the same time the
impossibility of a hybrid or in-between identity. One had to be either
Korean or Japanese: the pure binary precluded the possibility of being
in-between or both or embracing alternative ways of identifying and be-
ing. In the appendix, I elaborate my argument, which is that the condi-
tion of possibility of Zainichi identity was precisely the acceptance of
in-betweenness and hybridity: that being Zainichi was perforce being
both Japanese and Korean, or being neither Korean nor Japanese. Exem-
plified in the incandescent works of Kin Kakuei, these concerns escaped
the advocates of Zainichi ideology. Be that as it may, there is no reason to
exclude these writers from any anthology of Zainichi literature. If nothing
else, they were defined at once by themselves and the Japanese bundan as
the quintessential Zainichi writers. It is not surprising, then, that Zainichi
literature was long considered part of foreign literature, though it was
mainly written in Japanese. Zainichi ideology, like monoethnic Japanese
ideology, made it impossible for an ethnic Korean to be part of Japanese
literary history.
Zainichi ideology emerges in the 1970s, superseding Sōren ideology.
It is a direct descendant of the North Korea–affiliated Zainichi establish-
ment, which is to say the vast majority of immediate postwar Zainichi,
who remained true to the dream of unification and the standpoint of anti-
Japanese sentiments. Yet it was also critical of the authoritarian overreach
Introduction 15

of both North Korea and Sōren and valorized the ethnonational unity of
Koreans. In spite of partially embracing diasporic identity, Zainichi ideol-
ogy turned out to be ephemeral precisely because it clung to the dream
of return. Unable to shed exilic identity, Zainichi ideology proffered a
kinder and gentler version of Sōren ideology. Put polemically, longing for
home and return, Zainichi ideology misrecognized Zainichi entrenchment
in Japan.
The ascendance of Zainichi ideology is characterized by the journal Kikan
sanzenri. Launched in 1975, the quarterly was born of Zainichi criticism of
North Korea and Sōren, and its editorial board members were a who’s who
of Zainichi intellectuals. Nevertheless, its orientation remained squarely
on the Korean peninsula, and its patriarchal nationalist tenor echoed the
doctrinaire and pedestrian character of North Korean and Sōren literature.
What is undeniable is that Zainichi writers, who had written almost exclu-
sively about socialist-realist epics on mainland Asia, shifted their gaze to
Korean lives in Japan. After Mihatenu yume, Lee Hoesung turned his atten-
tion to Zainichi lives that take place in Japan, as well as diasporic Koreans
around the world.41 Kim Talsu and Kim Sokpom also began to pay more
attention to Zainichi lives, especially in fictional writings that teetered close
to being nonfictional works.42
In the postwar period, it was a common trope of Japanese intellectuals
to discuss and criticize the emperor system. Although the prewar emperor
system had transmogrified into a source of symbolic power, postwar intel-
lectuals were keen to squelch any remnants or renascences of the prewar
system. In this spirit, one might say that exponents of Zainichi ideology
lambasted the emperor system embedded in Sōren. Yet another might also
say that Zainichi ideology reformulated the authoritarian and exclusionary
mode of thought that they sought to excoriate. Given the predominance of
Kim Talsu, Kim Sokpom, and others, it is not surprising that their national-
ism and seriousness led to the near permanent exclusion of other Zainichi
writers, such as Tachihara Masaaki and Tsuka Kōhei. It also largely ignored
Kin Kakuei’s brilliant oeuvre, which provided the point of rupture from
exilic to diasporic literature. That is, the postwar reckoning of Zainichi,
both by ethnic Koreans and ethnic Japanese, essentialized Koreanness, fun-
damentally equating the place of ethnic Koreans in Japan with that of ethnic

41 
A representative work is Shiki (Tokyo: Shinchōsha, 2005), which focuses on Zainichi life
in the context of the far-flung Korean diaspora.
42 
See, e.g., Kim Talsu, Shōsetsu Zainichi Chōsenjinshi, 2 vols. (Tokyo: Sōkisha, 1975), and
Kim Sokpom, Chi no kage (Tokyo: Shūeisha, 1996).
16 John Lie

Koreans in Korea.43 Diasporic, as opposed to exilic, literature sundered

the homogeneity or isomorphism of ethnic Koreans in Korea and Japan.44
Whereas socialist-realist epics gather dust in the library shelves, some
Zainichi works under what I call Zainichi ideology continue to be read. In
part the interest stems from the inward turn, which explores less the per-
fidies of Japanese colonialism or racism, and instead focuses on external
oppression and problems in the realm of Zainichi family and community.
The aforementioned Lee Hoesung, after a spate of socialist-realist writings,
wrote prolifically on the problem of exilic or diasporic identity. What does
it mean to be Korean when one is perhaps “half” Japanese or married to a
Japanese woman? What should we make of the far-flung Korean diaspora
and its variegated existence? Lee’s vast output would repeatedly explore
the theme of Zainichi identity.45 Another important figure was the poet Kim
Sijong, who wrote extensively in prose about Zainichi identity. Although
safely ensconced in exilic identity, the idea of living in both or between
Korea and Japan became his major motif.46
Lee’s and Kim’s works garnered considerable critical attention, but
much more widely read was the vast, sprawling oeuvre of Yang Sŏgil,
whose work is included in this volume. Beginning with a loosely fictional-
ized account of his experience working as a taxi driver, Yang wrote pow-
erfully but accessibly about a range of Zainichi experiences, such as the
indelible accounts of the Zainichi underworld in Shinjuku nightlife.47 Per-
haps his most powerful work remains the autobiographical Chi to hone
(Blood and bone). The novel is at once a chronicle of his father’s struggles
in Japan and his father’s seemingly limitless capacity for patriarchal vio-
43 
As I noted, Zainichi writings were often shelved under “foreign literature,” next to
South and North Korean writers. Watanabe Kazutami, in spite of his good intentions, cannot
but treat Koreans in Korea and Zainichi as part of the same population (“Tasha” to shite no
Chōsen [Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2003]).
44 
In many ways Lee Hoesung’s literary exploration of the Korean diaspora comes to the
same outlook, but his commitment to exilic identity led him to misrecognize the insight. See,
however, his vitriolic debate with Kim Sokpom (Lie, Zainichi, 144–146).
45 
Representative works include Lee Hoesung, Shiki, and Chijō seikatsusha, 2 vols. (Tokyo:
Kōdansha, 2005).
46 
Kim Sijong, “Zainichi” no hazama de (Tokyo: Rippū Shobō, 1986), and Chōsen to Nihon ni
ikiru.
47 
Kyōsōkyoku (Tokyo: Chikuma Shobō, 1980) was preceded by a poetry collection the year
before, but Yang has made his career as a novelist. The debut work was made into an ac-
claimed movie, Tsuki wa docchi ni deteiru, directed by Sai Yōichi, in 1993. It was the first popu-
lar movie since Kyūpora no aru machi (1962) to feature significant Zainichi characters. Yoru wo
kakete (Tokyo: Nihon Hōsō Kyōkai, 1994) is representative among his works depicting the
nightlife in Shinjuku. For an overview of his career and oeuvre, see the special issue of Yuriika
(December 2000), and Yang Sŏgil, Shura wo ikiru (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1995).
Introduction 17

lence.48 Although reared in the political-intellectual milieu of Zainichi ide-

ology, Yang’s writings would transcend the Zainichi straitjacket to reach a
large and appreciative audience. Probably the best-selling Zainichi author
since Yasumoto and Tachihara, Yang would not only remain open about
his Zainichi background but also put Zainichi livelihood at the center of his
work. In so doing, he retained in theory but severed in practice his roots in
exilic ideology and identity.
Zainichi ideology, though often voiced by second-generation Zainichi,
was ephemeral precisely because it neither relied on the organization pow-
er of Sōren nor rejected the implausible dream of return. With the rise of
second- and third-generation Koreans in Japan—almost all of whom spoke
Japanese as a native language and, more importantly, became culturally
assimilated, however much they continued to face formal and informal
discrimination—the very notion of exile became overtaken by the reality
of in-betweenness: a member of an ethnic minority without an obvious
path to return or assimilation. It is from this group that some of the greatest
works of Zainichi literature emerged.

Beneath and Beyond Zainichi Orthodoxy

The Zainichi population faced decades of disrecognition in postwar Ja-
pan.49 For much of the 1950s through the 1980s, they were ineligible for
government employment or welfare. They were also systematically exclud-
ed from prestigious jobs. Police and popular harassment were common.
Marriage discrimination and social ostracism were ubiquitous. Even as
they were discriminated against, they were also said not to exist in mono-
ethnic Japan. In this context, it is not surprising that Sōren proved to be
a major bulwark. Most importantly, it provided financial support (when
Japanese banks would not lend money to Zainichi) and sustained ethnic
education (when Japanese schools were rife with bullying). Sōren schools
offered Korean language instruction and sought to instill ethnic pride to
their pupils. Given that some Zainichi lived far away from Sōren schools
or were unable to pay tuition (Japanese public schools were free), many
Zainichi lived outside Sōren’s aegis. Moreover, the growing skepticism
about and criticism of North Korea led to a slow but growing rift between
the ethnic organization and the ethnic population. It is not surprising that
many Zainichi literary expressions occurred outside of the Sōren literary
establishment or even beyond what I call Zainichi ideology.

48 
Yang Sŏgil, Chi to hone (Tokyo: Gentōsha, 1998). Sai Yōichi turned it into a powerful and
critically celebrated movie in 2004.
49 
See Lie, Multiethnic Japan and Zainichi.
18 John Lie

Indeed, many prominent Zainichi writings were by rank outsiders. Their

raw, searing voices spoke of their alienation not only from mainstream
Japanese society but also from Sōren-based Zainichi life. Perhaps the most
sensational was the correspondence of Ri Chin’u, a young man who al-
legedly murdered an ethnic Japanese woman and was later hanged with
Pak Sunam. Beyond its depiction in Oshima Nagisa’s 1968 film Kōshikei
(Death by hanging), the Komatsuskawa Incident not only attracted wide-
spread media coverage but also made the publication of Ri’s letters a major
cultural event in Japan.50 Similarly, the 1968 Sumatakyō Incident became
perhaps the biggest news in that turbulent year. Kin Kirō (Kim Hiro) took
people hostage and managed to coax an apology from a police chief for a
racist statement he had made earlier. Beyond the dramatic nature of the
incident, what made it so distinctive was that a Zainichi person, who was
virtually invisible and silent during the entire decade, commanded the
national stage and spoke directly of ethnic discrimination on national tele-
vision.51 The 1960s was the decade when monoethnic ideology began to
dominate in Japan, but paradoxically it is also the decade when Zainichi
presence manifested itself in words and deeds.
Ri and Kin were not professional writers, but it would be problematic
to dismiss their trenchant voices. They set the stage for the efflorescence
of Zainichi literature that was written by Koreans in Japan who were not
part of Sōren, and they spoke directly of their experiences. The aforemen-
tioned Lee Kisun and Lee Yangji are exemplary in this regard. In particular,
Lee Yangji’s lyrical but searing prose explored the interiority and linguis-
tic complexity of Zainichi life.52 Often featuring a Zainichi protagonist in
South Korea, she limns the impossibility of being either Korean or Japanese.
Perhaps more than any previous Zainichi writers, she received not only a
great deal of critical attention in Japan but was also avidly read in transla-
tion in South Korea in the 1980s. Won Soo-il, whose work is part of this
volume, belongs to this group, with his 1987 collection centered on Ikaino,
the heartland of the ethnic Korean population in Osaka.53
In the postwar decades, Zainichi writers not affiliated with Sōren often
wrote about the darkness and despair of their lives. Bullied at school or
discriminated against at work, they were not supposed to be in Japan.

50 
Pak Sunam, ed., Ri Chin’u zenshokanshū (Tokyo: Shinjinbutsuōraisha, 1979). See also
Ogasawara Kazuhiko, Ri Chin’u no nazo (Tokyo: San’ichi Shobō, 1987).
51 
Kin Kirō Kōhan Taisaku Iinkai, ed., Kin Kirō mondai shiryōsū, 12 vols. (Tokyo: Kin Kirō
Kōhan Taisaku Iinkai, 1969–1975). See also Suzuki Michihiko, Ekkyō no toki (Tokyo: Shūeisha,
2007), chaps. 3–4.
52 
Lee Yangji (Yi Yang-ji), Chosakushū (Tokyo: Kōdansha, 1993).
53 
See Won Soo-il, Ikaino monogatari (Tokyo: Sōfūkan, 1987), and Ikaino taryon (Tokyo:
Sōfūkan, 2016).
Introduction 19

Hence, passing came to be the normative mode of navigating Japanese

life. Yet disrecognition or illegitimacy struck Zainichi, especially young
Zainichi, hard. It is at times difficult to escape the suspicion that the modal
outlook and expression in the 1960s and 1970s was one of desperation and
despair. Suicidal narratives—and acts—were far too frequent.54 Existing
between Japan and Korea but not belonging to either, Zainichi seemed
fated to disappear.
The 1980s marked not only a generational change—those born in Japan
as second- or third-generation Koreans had no experiential ties to their
homeland as they were growing up—but also the emergence of women
writers. It is not that there were no Zainichi women who wrote in the im-
mediate postwar years, but it is not until the 1980s that prominent female
voices would arise.55 As mentioned earlier, Chon was part of an impressive
roster of Zainichi poets. Indeed, ethnic Koreans versified eloquently about
the lives, experiences, and yearnings of Zainichi.56 Most of them—befitting
the legacy of classical Chinese poetry and the popularity of short poems
in Japan and Korea—were short poems. However, Lee Jungja, included
in this collection, made a spectacular debut by expressing Zainichi con-
cerns and themes through Japanese tanka (short poems) in Housenka no
uta (Songs of impatiens, 1984).57 As she wrote in 1994: “My encounter with
ethnicity was in the spring when I was six, teased as Korean [Chōsenjin
in katakana, a Japanese script now used to denote things foreign]. . . . I
passed my adolescence listening to the teasing refrain of ‘Korean, return
to Korea.’”58
Another way in which the new Zainichi voices departed from the almost
exclusively male chorus of the postwar decades was that they articulated
distinct experiences of ethnicity or diaspora. Most of them were distant
from Korean or Zainichi (Sōren) culture. That is, not only were they not
exposed to the Korean language, but they were also not familiar with el-
ements of ethnic culture, such as Korean food or Korean rituals. Some
of them were hāfu (half; sometimes called daburu or double)—of mixed
ancestry—and some even grew up without any knowledge of their Ko-
rean ancestry. The pioneering articulation, included in this volume, was
by twelve-year-old Oka Masafumi, who committed suicide after his father,

54 
See Lie, Zainichi, esp. chap. 3.
55 
See Kim, Zainichi Chōsenjin josei bungakuron.
56 
A good collection is Morita Susumu and Sagawa Aki, eds., Zainichi Korian shi senshū
(Tokyo: Doyō Bijutsusha Shuppan Hanbai, 2005).
57 
Housenka is pongsŏnhwa in Korean, a representative flower of the peninsula. Lee Jungja’s
works were collected in school textbooks, which made headlines in the 1980s.
58 
Lee Jungja, Furimukeba Nihon (Tokyo: Kawade Shobō Shinsha, 1994), 39–40.
20 John Lie

Zainichi writer Ko Samyon, had published a book on the meaning of life.59

Although the precocious poet left no death notes, it became almost impos-
sible for readers to overlook the tragic premonition of being “half” Korean
and “half” Japanese (his mother Oka Yuriko was Japanese).60 Sagisawa
Megumu garnered considerable attention as a young woman writer, but
she did not realize that she had Korean ancestors. The shocking recogni-
tion led her to explore Zainichi thematics, such as ethnic discrimination
and passing.61 Kyō Nobuko was aware of her Korean ancestry and made
her debut as an essayist writing about “ordinary Zainichi”: that is, Zainichi
such as herself who were not drenched in North Korean ideology or even
familiar with Korean culture. Later, however, she expended considerable
energy exploring Korean culture, especially diasporic music, in her long
and distinguished writing career.62 Fukazawa Kai’s Yoru no kodomo (Chil-
dren of the night, 1992) explored the variegated world of Zainichi: not only
those acculturated to Japan but also those who held Japanese citizenship
or were children of mixed marriages.63
The sheer preponderance of Zainichi written expressions since the
1980s is staggering. It would be possible to identify predominant preoc-
cupations—encounters with ethnic prejudice and exclusion, the impos-
sibility of assimilation and the thought of suicide, dysfunctional family
dynamics and especially patriarchal violence—but what is impressive in
retrospect is the considerable diversity of style and substance within the
common lot of Zainichi life in postwar Japan. Differential experiences
based on region and religion, gender and class, rendered any essentialized
expression all but impossible. Perhaps the only essential background was
the broader Japanese culture of bildung (kyōyō), which valorized great
works of literature and the arts, and the immense place of books among
many Zainichi youths. Perhaps Yū Miri hit upon the Zainichi propen-
sity toward literature when she observed: “I couldn’t make friends when

59 
Ko Samyon, Ikirukoto no imi. Ko would delve deeply into Buddhism after the death of
his son. See, e.g., Tan’ishō to no deai, 3 vols. (Tokyo: Komichi Shobō, 1983–1985).
60 
Oka Masafumi’s work was collected by his parents: Ko Samyon and Oka Yuriko, eds.,
Boku wa 12sai (Tokyo: Chikuma Shobō, 1976).
61 
Sagisawa Megumu, “Hontō no natsu,” in Kimi wa kono kuni wo sukika (Tokyo: Shinchōsha,
1997).
62 
Kyō Nobuko, Goku futsū no Zainichi Kankokujin (Tokyo: Asahi Shinbunsha, 1987). See
also Kikyō nōto (Tokyo: Sakuhinsha, 2000), and Uta no okurimono (Tokyo: Asahi Shinbunsha,
2007).
63 
Fukazawa’s works are conveniently collected in Fukazawa Kai sakuhinshū (Tokyo: Shin­
kansha, 2015).
Introduction 21

young, so I could only talk to the dead who left books and passed away
from this world.”64

Beyond Ghostlier Demarcations

As I argue in the appendix, Kin Kakuei’s late-1960s work provided a criti-
cal turning point away from the illusions of homeland. Both Sōren and
Zainichi ideology posited the Korean peninsula as the past and future of
the Zainichi population. The utter implausibility of repatriation, whether
to North, South, or unified Korea, was blithely ignored. After all, by the
time of Liberation, the Zainichi lingua franca was already Japanese. With
the passing of years, Zainichi who were born and reared in Japan had nei-
ther memories of nor the wherewithal to live in their putative homeland.
Yet Zainichi selves, ensconced in the dogma of homeland and essential
Koreanness, faced the ethnic discourses and organizations that located the
future in the Korean peninsula that was at best foreign and usually alien.
The appearance of the new voices in the 1980s—accompanied by the
coeval antifingerprinting movement—shifted the gravity of the Zainichi
population to embrace Japan as a semipermanent or even permanent home,
however ambivalently. Either/or became both or in-between. Simultane-
ously, nascent criticisms of North Korea, South Korea, and Zainichi culture
manifested themselves as more emancipatory, antipatriarchal, and even
anti- or postnationalist discourses emerged. Yū Miri, who is part of this vol-
ume, and Kaneshiro Kazuki exemplify a mode of writings where Zainichi
thematics commingle with much more general concerns, whether Japanese,
diasporic, or even universalistic ones. Put differently, Zainichi writers could
begin to shed ethnic and sociological baggage to become writers, Zainichi
though they may be, who write on non-Zainichi and non-Korean characters
and themes. Yū’s early work often dealt with Zainichi concerns—though
Gōrudo rasshu (Gold rush, 1999) does not—but her tetralogy Inochi (Life,
2000–2002), which focuses on her life with and the death of her mentor
and lover Higashi Yutaka, does so only incidentally.65 Indeed, Yū’s vast
outpouring ranges far and wide from a fantasy and horror novel to a for-
mally innovative meditation on the body and sexuality.66 It is of course
possible to identity her leitmotif as Zainichi life, but her best writings easily

64 
Yū Miri, Kotoba wa shizuka ni odoru (Tokyo: Shinchōsha, 2001), 148.
65 
Yū Miri, Gōrudo rasshu (Tokyo: Shinchōsha, 1999), which was translated by Stephen Sny-
der as Gold Rush (New York: Welcome Rain, 2002). See also Yū Miri, Inochi, 4 vols. (Tokyo:
Shōgakkan, 2000–2002).
66 
Yū Miri, Tairu (Tokyo: Bungei Shunjū, 1997), and Otoko (Tokyo: Media Fakutorī, 2000).
22 John Lie

reach beyond the narrow Zainichi readership.67 The same can be said about
Kaneshiro. From the Zainichi protagonist of his sensational debut novel
Go (2000), Kaneshiro has written widely, including scripts for television
and manga, and the police thriller SP (2007–2010).68 Kaneshiro’s fast-paced
and energetic writings are a world away from the darkness and despair of
suicide-obsessed 1960s Zainichi expressions.
Kaneshiro and Yū are merely two of the most successful Zainichi writers
in contemporary Japan. Like them, Zainichiness is no longer a conundrum
or a fate. Many Zainichi writers go in and out of Zainichi thematics. Gen
Getsu has shifted from his early, critically acclaimed work on Zainichi life to
write a series of quasi-pornographic works on contemporary sexual lives.69
Kim Jungmyeong has written a series of historical novels that span ancient
and medieval Northeast Asia.70
The partial emancipation from the straitjacket of Zainichiness occurred
from the gradual reorientation of ethnic and diasporic Korean identity in
Japan. Although it would be problematic to characterize contemporary
Japanese society as being free from prejudice and discrimination against
the Zainichi population, there is little doubt that Zainichi face greater op-
portunities and experience an extremely high rate of out-marriage and
even naturalization. In this context, it is not an exaggeration to consider
the possibility of the end of Zainichi: not because of their repatriation to
homeland, but the hitherto unconsidered future of assimilation to main-
stream Japanese life. Just as significant is the dynamic transformation of
the ethnic Korean population in Japan. Far from being made up solely of
the descendants of colonial-era migrants, there are “new comers”—South
Koreans who emigrated to Japan from the 1980s, if not earlier—as well as
diasporic Koreans from China and elsewhere. As a narrator in Gen Getsu’s
novel notes, “In the past ten plus years, many people have settled in this
town from South Korea or the Korean Autonomous Prefecture of northeast-
ern China. Even during the economic depression in Japan, which was es-
pecially serious in Osaka, they have saved a little money, married Japanese
and Zainichi, and proudly own houses.”71 Not only have many Japanese
come to recognize Japan’s multiethnic constitution, but the same can be
said about the diasporic Korean population in Japan. Zainichi youths in
particular envisioned possibilities outside the national boundaries of both

67 
Yū’s massive novel 8gatsu no hate (Tokyo: Shinchōsha, 2004) is at once thematically and
stylistically syncretic, though it focuses on her grandfather, an Olympic marathon runner.
68 
Kaneshiro Kazuki, Go (Tokyo: Kōdansha, 2000).
69 
See, e.g., Gen Getsu, Mutsugoto (Tokyo: Āton, 2006).
70 
Kim Jungmyeong, Kyokai ni idento hossu (Tokyo: Kōdansha, 2003), and Kōmō no orumu
(Tokyo: Shinjinbutsuōraisha, 2006).
71 
Gen Getsu, Ibutsu (Tokyo: Kōdansha, 2005), 5.
Introduction 23

Koreas and Japan. As Lee Hoesung had explored the Korean diaspora,
younger Zainichi writers took up the theme of Zainichi in a transnation-
al, globalizing world. Kim Masumi’s Nason no sora (The sky of Nason) is
emblematic. The novel places the Zainichi protagonist in multiethnic Los
Angeles. To be sure, in spite of the considerable diversity and reflective-
ness of Zainichi writings, it is striking that almost no one has explored the
bright side of Zainichi life in contemporary Japan. As I mentioned before,
it is difficult to find any work that celebrates the actually existing successes
of Zainichi individuals. At the same time, Zainichi superiority over other
ethnic minority groups, such as Burakumin or Chinese, and even Zainichi
prejudice against them, remain underexplored. The modal and dominant
outlook is to regard Zainichi as oppressed and victimized in Japanese his-
tory, which is of course broadly true.
The post–Cold War transformations—though the Cold War has not ex-
actly ended on the Korean peninsula—have affected not only the Koreas
and Japan but also the Zainichi population. Perhaps most strikingly, the
representative Japanese intellectual at the turn of the twenty-first century
may very well be the Zainichi scholar Kang Sangjung. In this context, it is
possible to see that Zainichi literature was a particular product of postwar
Japan.72 More concretely, Zainichi writers may simply be writers in Japan,
without any manifest attachment to Zainichi motifs. Lee Yongduk would
be one instance of this possibility.73
Nevertheless, it would be premature to pronounce the imminent demise
of Zainichi identity or Zainichi literature. Consider only the celebrated de-
but novel of Che Sil, Jini no pazuru (The puzzle of Jini, 2016), which traces
the “puzzle” of the Zainichi protagonist’s identity struggles from her ethnic
Korean school in Japan to a school in Oregon.74 Fukazawa Ushio has pub-
lished prolifically, exploring contemporary Zainichi lives and identities.75
Yang Yonghi has written and directed films about the fate of Zainichi re-
turnees to North Korea.76 As long as ethnic and national boundaries exist
and cast influences and pressures on individuals, it is unlikely that medi-
tations on them will cease. This is especially the case when hate speech

72 
John Lie, “The End of the Road,” in Diaspora without Homeland, ed. Sonia Ryang and
John Lie (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009).
73 
Lee Yongduk (Yi Yondoku), Shinitakunattara denwashite (Tokyo: Kawade Shobō Shinsha,
2014), and Mukuwarenai ningen wa eien ni mukuwarenai (Tokyo: Kawade Shobō Shinsha, 2016).
74 
Che Sil, Jini no pazuru (Tokyo: Kōdansha, 2016).
75 
Fukazawa Ushio, Hansaran - aisuru hitobito (Tokyo: Shinchōsha, 2013), and Hitokado no
chichi e (Tokyo: Asahi Shinbun Shuppan, 2015).
76 
Yang Yonghi, Ani - kazoku no kuni (Tokyo: Shōgakkan, 2012). The film based on the novel
and script was released as Kazoku no kuni in 2013. See also Yang, Chōsen Daigakkō monogatari
(Tokyo: Kadokawa, 2018).
24 John Lie

and discriminatory statements are expressed and at times enacted against

Zainichi in Japan.77 Meanwhile, the substantial and impressive body of
Zainichi literature provides inspiration not only to Zainichi readers and
writers, but anyone interested in colonial and postcolonial relations and
identities, diaspora and its multifarious trajectories, or the entwinement
of family, nation, ethnicity, and other unities and divides of human life.
This volume features merely a small sample of Zainichi writings. Each
translator has provided a brief note to introduce the translated piece. I
can only hope that others will follow in the excavation and exploration of
Zainichi literature.

77 
Lee Sinhae, #Tsuruhashi annyon (Tokyo: Kage Shobō, 2015). See also Yasuda Kōichi, Heito
supīchi (Tokyo: Bungei Shunjū, 2015).
ONE

Two Essays: “Letter to Mother” and

“Colonial Koreans and Peninsulars”

KIM SARYANG
Translated with an introduction by Nayoung Aimee Kwon

Kim Saryang (1914–1950; Jp. Kin Shiryō) is a remarkable bilingual writer

who came of age in colonial Korea at the height of the Japanese Empire.
Like many of his intellectual counterparts from the colonies, he went to
Tokyo to be educated in the colonial education system. He rose to the
limelight of the Japanese literary establishment as a young man and was
even nominated for the prestigious Akutagawa Prize. “Letter to Mother”
is a pseudo-autobiographical snapshot of this experience in the epistolary
form. It was written in Japanese and published in the journal Bungei shuto
(Literary capital) in March 1940, and then reprinted in The Complete Works
of Kim Saryang (Kin Shiryō zenshū, 1972–1973). We do not know whether it
was an actual letter Kim wrote to his own mother or if it was performa-
tively written for the Japanese reading public. The indeterminacy of its
“authenticity” raises important questions about the colonized bilingual
writer’s predicament of writing for multiple audiences in the empire. The
final line, which asks “Mother” to have his little sister translate the letter
into Korean so that she can read it, exposes the gap between the sender and
the receiver, the writer and his mother tongue, as well as the gendered and
generational untranslatability produced in the colonial divide.
The second essay, “Colonial Koreans and Peninsulars” (Chōsenjin and
Hantōjin), also written in Japanese and published in Sin fūdo (New cli-
mate), is Kim’s musings on the issue of naming and labeling the racial-
ized Other among us. Coursing through this essay is a question: how do
subjects, especially colonized or racialized subjects, negotiate the ways in
which they are being named by a racialized society? The essay embodies
an uncanny coexistence of contending emotions and rhetorical devices: it
appears to be both a powerful indictment of a racist Japanese society and a
26 Kim Saryang

desperate appeal to the same Japanese readership by exposing vulnerable

emotions that erupt in racialized encounters.
It is curious how the essay begins with an apparently strong call for
change in the racist perspectives of the Japanese, then ends abruptly with
a deflated conclusion that appears to re-direct the culprit to be the colo-
nized Koreans, themselves responsible for their own plight. This seem-
ing inconsistency in tone may have something to do with the era’s heavy
censorship practices (both external and self-imposed), but we can only
speculate. After the collapse of the Japanese Empire, Kim ended up “going
North” during the Korean War, adding yet another layer of censorship to
his works in the subsequently divided Koreas and in U.S.-occupied Japan.
Until recently, Kim’s legacies have survived only in bits and fragments
between the fractured postcolonial and post–Cold War histories of Japan
and the two Koreas. While Kim’s prewar writings predate the emergence of
the category of Zainichi literature per se, his works are often acknowledged
as its indispensable colonial-era antecedent, anticipating the marginal post-
colonial formation of Zainichi literature in postwar Japan.
Translator’s Note
Kim’s texts are full of double entendres and word plays, making them si-
multaneously alluring and challenging for the translator. An avid translator
himself, Kim was conscious of multiple audiences and multiple languages
in every piece he wrote. How to capture the unease of a performative piece
published in Japanese addressed to Mother, who presumably speaks only
Korean? How to capture the varied nuances of words in a piece about the
power hidden beneath those very words, where seemingly innocuous de-
scriptors of someone’s origins or identity within one linguistic context can
take on stinging and thorny significance in new ways when transliterated
into another through socially imparted meanings in a racist society? These
are some of the questions that still linger. On a technical note, in translating
the second essay about the familiar predicament of naming and racism, and
variations and unspoken nuances in naming conventions, I have left the
terms in the original with glosses in the notes as needed.
The question of censorship and the related question of authorship or
authenticity also lingers for the translator. The abrupt shift in tone at the
end of the second essay leads us to ask: how many of these words, which
Kim was so careful to craft, were, in the end, his own?
“Letter to Mother” and “Colonial Koreans and Peninsulars” 27

Letter to Mother
Dear Beloved Mother,
So my story “Into the Light” was published in Bungei shunjū as a finalist for
the Akutagawa Prize. I’m recalling that bone-chilling windy day in Febru-
ary on the train station platform in Heijō.1 I had that terrible cold and you
were so worried about my journey ahead even as you hurried me onto the
morning express, Nozomi.2 Hurry, hurry, get on, get on!
During a quick stop at Shinmaku at noon, I grabbed a copy of the Osaka
Asahi daily and saw the advertisement for the featured journal issue.3 I
eagerly spread open the paper and a silent cry escaped me: My story, it’s
published! But underneath the advert copy for the story was the following
commentary by the author Satō Haruo in parentheses4: This is a work with
the tragic fate of an entire people squeezed into it.
I couldn’t help but ask, Really? Is this right?
By then, I was already coming down with a severe fever. It wasn’t the
scoop on the story’s forthcoming publication that shook me up. It had al-
ready been some time since I received Yasutaka Tokuzō’s telegram about
the news.5

Dear Beloved Mother,

So this is what I was thinking: Have I really written what Satō Haruo just
said? I sensed that something much bigger might be lurking here behind
the small story I had penned. My chest ached as if a tightly wound spring
had suddenly sprung from it. These were just some random thoughts I was
fretting over at the time.
Of course I was the one who wrote “Into the Light,” but there was al-
ways something about that story that filled me with unease. It’s a lie. I’m still
telling lies, I kept telling myself the entire time I was writing it. A number
of senior cohorts and friends also pointed out some of this to me, but I just
kept silent.

Dear Beloved Mother,

My head was filled with so many thoughts as I dragged my body onto
that violently shaking train. The thought of even the remote possibility of
1 
The Japanese pronunciation for P’yŏngyang.
2 
Nozomi, the name of the train, also means “hope” in Japanese.
3 
Shinmaku is the Japanese pronunciation for Sinmak.
4 
Satō Haruo (1892–1964) was an influential poet, novelist, and literary critic.
5 
Yasutaka Tokuzō (1889–1971) was a fellow writer affiliated with the coterie journal
(doninshi) Bungei shuto that first published Kim’s “Into the Light.” Because of his father’s
business, he lived in colonial Korea as a child and became instrumental in introducing colo-
nial writers such as Kim Saryang to the Japanese literary establishment.
28 Kim Saryang

writing in Tokyo from then on filled me with terror. I was seventeen when
I first boarded this train on another cold day in December. You came with
me to the tiny station while evading the eyes of passersby.
I had removed the insignia buttons from my school uniform and the cap
from the junior high that I had attended for five years. You were crying
uncontrollably as you wrapped your shawl around my head. I also burst
out sobbing. My plan was to attend university in Beijing after graduating
from junior high, and then from there, head to America. But here I was on
another southbound train instead. So is this just another rebellious antic
of my youth?
What gave me the courage to get on that train while avoiding the sus-
picious gaze of others was the singular burning desire to make it to high
school. As the train left the platform, I watched your back turning away
from me. But this time as I left, you said you were happier than when I got
the high school acceptance letter. For some reason, I would never forget
your words.
Some people might wonder what all this fuss was about. Maybe it had
something to do with the fact that on the third-class ferry crossing the
Dark Sea,6 I was suffering from a severe fever. And from Shimonoseki,
I was slumped over in a near faint the entire way. Throughout the trip I
kept telling myself over and over again, from now on, I must write what
is really true.

Dear Beloved Mother,

The Akutagawa Prize awards ceremony was on the evening of March 6. I
had the invitation from Bungei shunjū in hand and headed for the venue
Rainbow Grill with Yasutaka Tokuzō. Allow me to tell you about that night.
The event hall was quite magnificent, and in attendance were the prize
judges and other literary figures. At last, the time had come, and we were
seated in rows facing one another around a banquet table. Since I was there
to offer my heartfelt congratulations to the winner Samukawa Kōtarō, I sat
quietly in the corner.7 But Mr. Kume Masao insisted that I go up front and
center and sit next to Samukawa.8 I had no choice but to leave Yasutaka’s
side and head over to Samukawa. And that’s when I confirmed what I had
been thinking to myself: I realized that I had met Mr. Samukawa before at
a friend’s place on the night before my return trip home.

6 
A reference to Genkainada (K. Hyŏnhaet’an), the Sea of Japan or the East Sea, which lies
between Japan and Korea.
7 
Samukawa Kōtarō (1908–1977) was the first writer from Hokkaido to win the Akutagawa
Prize. His winning story “Mitsuryōsha” (Poacher) tells of experiences in Karafuto.
8 
Kume Masao (1891–1951) was an influential playwright, novelist, and poet.
“Letter to Mother” and “Colonial Koreans and Peninsulars” 29

Well, isn’t this a surprise? We eyed each other and chuckled. Samukawa
was my senior, both in age and in literary cultivation. Since his literary
journey contrasted significantly with my own, I had a great deal to learn
from him. He was an unassuming guy. In front of him sat Kikuchi Kan.9 He
is a writer and the owner of the Bungei shunjū publishing company. Both
of them are short and chubby. This might be rude, but it occurred to me
that they made quite a dynamic duo. At first, however, no matter which
way I thought about it, I was just too embarrassed about this awkward
predicament of mine and was at a loss as to what to do with myself. Maybe
I was never cut out to win public recognition. That time in primary school
suddenly came back to me—I had rehearsed an acceptance speech for an
outstanding achievement award, but when the day came I ended up not
getting it. I was besides myself thinking how funny the present situation
was in light of that earlier memory.
What’s more, Mr. Samukawa’s father, who was seated next to him, had
come all the way from Karafuto no less. It reminded me how you weren’t
able to come to my high school graduation or even my college graduation
last year. Mr. Yasutaka smiled at me from across the way. I couldn’t help
breaking out laughing like a small child.
Mr. Kikuchi Kan’s speech began shortly after that. In a rather humor-
ous tone, he joked about how it was his strong opposition that shot down
the idea of giving me the award, but seeing the two of us side-by-side, he
now wished he could give me something after all. He closed with some
words of encouragement for me. I must say, I wasn’t left with an altogether
negative feeling. It did conjure up more memories from my primary school
graduation.
We then started on the dessert course. Mr. Kume Masao, who by the way
resembles a straw voodoo doll, stood up and started to praise Mr. Samu-
kawa’s work. Then he roundly praised my story. He said, just as they had
given the award to two works before, Journal of Koshamain and Beyond the
Castle Wall, they should have given the award to both finalists this time.10 I
became so embarrassed and self-conscious I didn’t know what to do.
After that, Yasutaka Takuzō stood up at the moderator’s beckoning and
said some very nice things about me and also conveyed how happy you
had been to hear the news. But Mr. Nagai, the evening’s moderator, told
me that Mr. Yasutaka apparently suffered a great deal on my account. At

9 
Kikuchi Kan (1888–1948) was a novelist, critic, and publisher, who established the influ-
ential journal Bungei shunjū as well as the Akutagawa Prize and the Naoki Prize.
10 
Two winners were simultaneously awarded the Akutagawa Prize in the first competi-
tion of 1936: Tsuruda Tomoya for Journal of Koshamain and Oda Takeo for Beyond the Castle
Wall.
30 Kim Saryang

the request of Bungei shunjū he was about to send over ten copies of the
Bungei shuto issue featuring my work. As he was climbing into the car, he
apparently bumped his head and then began bleeding all the way up the
stairs of the Osaka Building. He said it was his own clumsy fault, but I felt
so terrible, I didn’t know what to do.
I was extremely happy that day. Apparently when anyone receives the
Akutagawa Prize, they all end up saying how surprised they are. As for
me, I told myself that even if I did receive the prize, I would try not to
be surprised. So I was even a bit disappointed in the end. Then again, as
everyone said, maybe this was the hand of fate. A young writer, Ishikawa
Tatsuzō, also said something similar to encourage me.11
So as I departed Korea alone, there was not a trace of the turmoil that I
had felt before. I calmly whispered to myself, from now on, I will write what
is truly good. I’m just wondering whether I may have been grinning too
widely at the time, even though I didn’t even receive the award. There are
many people in Japan who believe in Zen Buddhism.12 Some may think
lesser of people who wear their emotions on their sleeve.
Is Little Sister coming home soon from Keijō for spring break?13 Please
ask her to translate this letter from Japanese so you can read it. So long!

Colonial Koreans and Peninsulars

The other day a Japanese person asked me: so what do you people really
prefer to be called, a colonial Korean or a Peninsular?14 I was at a loss for
a moment. On the one hand, both seemed fine, but then again, they both
seemed troubling. In either case, there is a problem when the word is ut-
tered in contempt. The problem is, at the core, the words Chōsenjin and
Hantōjin are already tainted by the touch of contempt within. So then the
question of what one should be called becomes even more difficult.

11 
Ishikawa Takuzō (1905–1985) was an author who won the first Akutagawa Prize in 1935.
12 
In the original text, the term used for Japan was Naichi, which means “Inner Territories.”
13 
Keijō is the Japanese pronunciation for Kyŏngsŏng, the capital city of colonial Korea
and today’s Seoul.
14 
The original title of this essay was “Chōsenjin and Hantōjin.” Chōsenjin 朝鮮人 or
チョウセンジン in Japanese usage at this time literally means “person from Chōsen” (colonial
Korea) and is not a reference to the Chosŏn dynasty (1492–1910); Hantōjin 半島人 literally
means “person from the Korean peninsula.” Naichijin 内地人 refers to a Japanese person and
literally means “person from the Inner Territories.” The contrasting term is Gaichijin 外地人,
meaning “person from the Outer Territories,” i.e., the colonies, similar to the French concept
of outre-mer (overseas territories). In translating this essay about the predicament of naming
and racism, and variations and unspoken nuances in naming conventions, I have left the
terms untranslated and added glosses in notes as needed.
“Letter to Mother” and “Colonial Koreans and Peninsulars” 31

For example, I am of course technically an imperial subject of Japan, and

within this broader category, I am also a Chōsenjin.15 I do not feel inferior
because of this, and on the contrary even feel rather proud. Yet, to be per-
fectly frank, when I am called a Chōsenjin or Hantōjin by others, I do feel
a momentary sense of discomfort. I suppose this really can’t be helped.
But then I also find myself carefully eyeing the other person’s face try-
ing to read the expression written there. Ah, what a hateful predicament! If
my searching eyes detect some sense of gentleness or warmth, only then
am I able to drop my guard. From the beginning, the words Chōsenjin and
Hantōjin have been used with contempt, so as a result people have learned
to become hypersensitive perhaps even unnecessarily at times.
The fact of the matter is, I am a Chōsenjin and I am a Hantōjin. I am not
asking to be addressed as “that fellow hailing from Korea” or “the man who
was born in Korea” or in some other excruciatingly polite and roundabout
manner. But I cannot deny that being called thus is still so much less irk-
some to me. And so our problem persists. At the very least, if people were
able to use the terms Chōsenjin or Hantōjin much more transparently, then
the situation might improve.
I wonder how people from Taiwan feel when they are referred to as Tai-
wanjin or Hontōjin.16 I know that Shinajin prefer to be called Chūgokujin
rather than Shinajin.17 Then there is an even more perplexing term for Shi-
najin: Changkoro.18 I am not sure if the name Taijin is offensive to Taiwan-
jin, but it is certain that for Chōsenjin, the terms Senjin and Yobo are truly
offensive to the ear.19
Of course, there are also those who seem completely unaware of the
fact that the words Senjin and Yobo are offensive but continue to use them
regularly. For example, the elderly woman who manages the apartment

15 
All colonial subjects of the Japanese Empire were considered to be imperial subjects of
Japan (Nihon teikoku shinmin 日本帝国臣民), similar to the Japanese.
16 
Taiwanjin 台湾人 means “person from Taiwan”; Hontōjin 本島人 means “native is-
lander.” Hontōjin is a term that is used to distinguish the indigenous or aboriginal people of
Taiwan from the mainland Chinese settlers in Taiwan, Gaihonjin 外本人.
17 
China was demoted from being referenced as Chūgoku 中国 (the Middle Kingdom) to
the derogatory term Shina 支那 (originally a neutral phonetic transcription of the Sanskrit
word Cīna चीन ), as it was declining in the regional and global context at the time.
18 
Changkoro チャンコロ is an even more derogatory name for Chinese. Here Kim uses the
katakana script reserved for foreign transliterations.
19 
Taijin 台人 and Senjin 鮮人 are abbreviated variations for Taiwanese and Koreans. Yobo
ヨボ is a derogatory term for Koreans believed to be a pidgin derivation of the general term
Koreans used to call people (Yŏbo 여보).
32 Kim Saryang

where I live says, “Hey, there was that, what’s his name, Mr. Senjin, who
came by again today.”20
I spent my high school days in Kyūshū Prefecture. There was a gentle-
man there who might have even mistook Senjin as a term of endearment
or some such because he kept calling me that over and over, to my speech-
less dismay. Such stories may induce a sardonic grin, but for us, the words
Senjin, Yobo, “Yobo-Yobo-like,” and so on trigger an instinctively allergic
reaction. It appears that those who despise Chōsenjin in particular seem to
know no other vocabulary than Senjin and Yobo.
Then there was the following incident: I had an old high school friend
from Kyūshū who is now a high official in Korea. In high school, we were
on a train together when he suddenly started shouting angrily at three men
who had been talking among themselves across the aisle: “What . . . I am
a Chōsenjin. So what of it?!”
He was a towering man of six feet, with deep-set eyes and dark brows.
He had a slight stutter but his words held tremendous weight. When he
was angry, he appeared like Guan Yu, the warrior from the classic Romance
of the Three Kingdoms.
The men, who appeared to be merchants of some sort, shrunk back
at first then quipped, “Oh ho. I see, so you are the honorable Monsieur
Senjin.”21 And so our problem persists.
The following story pertains to me even more directly. On another oc-
casion, when I was a high school sophomore, I had taken ill and was on a
break from school. I was returning home and was about to board the ferry
at the Shimonoseki port.22 I was feeling quite sick and the station was very
crowded, so even though I was just a student, I decided to indulge and take
the second-class overnighter. Early the next morning, the ferry arrived in
Fusan.23 The inside of the boat was swarming with passengers preparing
to disembark.
A porter clad in white scurried about labeling bags as passengers hand-
ed them over. He bowed to each passenger as he affixed labels on everyone
else’s bags, but he did not seem at all inclined to take my bag. He kept say-
ing, Please wait, wait just a moment. I’m a bit busy here, another porter will be
here soon, would you mind just waiting before disembarking, and so on and so
on, with such nonstop nonsense. . . I finally lost my temper and ended up
exploding, Are you really not going to tag my bag?! The bastard finally tagged
20 
Senjin-san. San さん is an honorific suffix attached to names. Adding the honorific to the
derogatory term Senjin causes special consternation.
21 
Go-Senjin-sama. The prefix go and suffix sama indicate honorifics. Adding them to the
derogatory term Senjin deliberately pokes racist fun.
22 
A port city in southern Japan commonly used for travel to and from Korea.
23 
The Japanese pronunciation for Pusan.
“Letter to Mother” and “Colonial Koreans and Peninsulars” 33

it, muttering under his breath reluctantly. I instructed him, My last name is
Kim, don’t make a mistake. He replied, Yes, I know, of course, and appeared to
be scribbling the name down. I noticed, though, that he had not bothered
to jot it down in his log, but there was nothing else I could do at that point.
I swallowed the anger rising inside and descended from the deck. After
purchasing a northbound express train ticket, I sat down and waited for
my bag. But the bag delivered to me was labeled Yobo—One Count (But this
pertains to the bag only). Maybe it was because I was still young back then,
but my face blanched and my body began shaking all over. Throwing down
the bag, I rushed off the train. I felt like giving the boy a good thrashing
and tossing him overboard. I tried to climb back onto the ferry again, but
this was not allowed. I waited and waited. But my express train was about
to depart, and in the end, the bastard did not alight from the ferry. I never
rode the second-class ferry again after that incident.
Maybe this was an especially egregious case, but you hear of so many
other similar stories on the Shimonoseki-Fusan Connector. Something truly
must be done about this. To think that the situation is so terrible starting
from the ferry crossing over to Korea! In these times, when Asia is being
called to unify, and when the Naisen ittai slogan of Japan becoming one
with Korea has become a political and ethical necessity, we most certainly
want to put an end to this type of scenario altogether.24
Above all, the road to Naisen ittai should begin by making efforts so that
the names Chōsenjin or Hantōjin will not be automatically associated with
any needlessly derogatory undertones.
The terms Senjin and Yobo are simply unacceptable in today’s political
climate. These two words must disappear posthaste from the lips of Japa-
nese settlers living within colonial Korea. But the derogatory term Senjin
still frequently appears even in official documents today! Even written next
to the term Naichijin the word Senjin appears woefully haphazard.

Even so, it is true that after the Manchurian Incident, the references about
Chōsenjin did change to a much more civil nature.25 First of all, major pa-
pers around Tokyo and Osaka began to replace Senjin with Chōsenjin or
Hantōjin. One cannot underestimate how much impact even such a small
change has had to salve the sensibilities of Koreans.
In the past when reading the newspaper, I would feel aversion when my
eyes happened to land on the word Senjin, no matter how small the type

24 
Naisen ittai 内鮮一体 was the ubiquitous imperial slogan calling for Japan and Korea to
unify.
25 
The Manchurian Incident refers to the sabotage of the Manchurian Railway in 1931 that
was used as a pretext for Japan to invade China.
34 Kim Saryang

or obscure its placement—even in a remote corner of the page. It was very

strange how quickly the word would immediately strike my eyes without
fail, as if a sharp laser had been shot forth. I would then read on anxiously,
thinking, oh damn, now what?—feeling as if a bug was crawling over my
back the entire time.
Is this because I had become an overly sensitive individual? Or is it
because of some original perversion in my personal character? I think not.
Even today, when I read an article about Chōsenjin this or Hantōjin that, I
become anxious and even offended, but in fact, I have learned to read with
much less strain behind my eyes than before.
And so the topic of Chōsenjin and Hantōjin has come as far as this.

Come to think of it, the term Hantōjin began to emerge after the Man-
churian Incident, and it appears that some people were using the term as
their way of expressing camaraderie or intimacy. When we consider this,
we can see that even some Naichijin have become aware that the word
Chōsenjin has a derogatory nuance associated with it. But even a term such
as Hantōjin, which is spoken with an attempt to create a sense of intimacy,
still resonates as a half-baked negative echo with us Chōsenjin. Of course,
the culprit does not lie in the word in and of itself. And the problem arises
foremost from the shameful way of life that the Chōsenjin themselves have
lived. So as long as it is not a purposefully racist term such as Senjin or
Yobo, it is fine whether one is called Chōsenjin or Hantōjin.
When I was traveling in Beijing last year, the people of Shina [Shina no
hitotachi] called us Gaoliren or Hanguoren.26 The terms stood out to me,
and I found them refreshing at first. But after a few days, even these names
did not appear as a laudatory appellation. While writing this, I sense that
the problem has become much more complex, strange, and troubling. My
personal view is that it is much more natural, and as a matter of fact, makes
more sense to refer to Chōsenjin as Chōsenjin rather than Hantōjin.
In the end, it seems that there is nothing more to be done other than for
Chōsenjin to work hard to improve their own lives materially and physi-
cally, in order to avoid a sense of shame and to be able to live with pride
and without embarrassment. This is the most fundamental way to reclaim
the meaning behind the expressions Chōsenjin and Hantōjin.

Gaoliren 高麗人 (Jp. Koraijin; K. Koryŏin) and Hanguoren 韓國人 (Jp. Kankokujin;
26 

K. Hangugin).
TWO

Trash

KIM TALSU
Translated with an introduction by Christina Yi

Kim Talsu (1919–1997; Jp. Kimu Darusu or Kin Tatsuju) is widely recog-
nized as one of the most prominent Zainichi Korean writers of his gen-
eration. Born in Korea but raised primarily in Japan, Kim remained in
Japan after the end of the Fifteen Year War (1931–1945) and became heav-
ily involved in leftist politics and literary culture there. Much of his early
fiction, including the short story translated here, celebrated the end of the
Japanese Empire while also attempting to come to terms with its enduring
legacies. Indeed, throughout his writing career Kim would consistently call
attention to the impossibility of fully separating the colonial past from a
“post”(colonial/war) present, particularly given the neocolonial configura-
tions that emerged through the partitioning of the Korean peninsula and
Allied Occupation of Japan (1945–1952).
Kim first published “Trash” (Gomi) in the Japanese literary coterie jour-
nal Bungei shuto (Literary capital) in 1942 as a short, humorous sketch about
a Korean colonial subject making his living in mainland Japan as a scrap
collector. He later revised and republished the story in 1947 in the journal
Minshu Chōsen (Democratic Korea), of which Kim was also the primary
editor and cofounder. The revised edition featured a more nuanced por-
trait of the central protagonist and his relationship with the other Korean
characters who populate the story. It also foregrounded the oppressiveness
of the wartime climate, turning the narrative into a critical exploration
of the imbrications of Japanese imperialism and capitalism. Although the
Korean protagonist of “Trash” works hard to turn the junk he collects in
metropolitan Japan into capital to be used to buy land in Korea, the narra-
tive constantly underscores the fragile contingency of any “success” gained
by working within, rather than without, the systems of imperial control. In
the final line of the story, for example, the protagonist yells out “Aigu!” The
Korean interjection is glossed in that instance as “I’m happy,” even though
36 Kim Talsu

in an earlier passage it had been used as an expression of distress. Which

interpretation are we to believe? How are we to understand the function
of the narrator/translator here? In ending the story on such an ambiguous
note, Kim deliberately makes visible the seemingly transparent relationship
between reader and text, asking us to consider the linguistic, social, and
political fractures of postwar Japan.
Translator’s Note
This translation is based on the postwar version of “Gomi,” printed in The
Collected Fiction of Kim Talsu (Kim Talsu shōsetsu zenshū, 1980), which closely
follows the postwar version published in Minshu Chōsen in 1947. Any major
discrepancies between the 1947 and 1980 versions are marked in the notes.

Trash
Before he gained the rights to the trash from U Dock Company, Hyŏn
P’algil was a constant source of trouble for the police.1 He showed up at
police headquarters so often it was as if he were visiting family.2 If P’algil
hadn’t returned home before dark, people in the neighborhood would say,
“Guess he’s gone off to ‘pay his respects’ again.”
Back in Korea, P’algil had spent four years dreaming of Japan as he
toiled on a tenant field always on the brink of collapse. When he finally
managed to make his way over, he thought he had landed in paradise.
The constant visits he had made to the village police over those four years
in order to receive his travel permit seemed like a small price to pay in
hindsight. Once he had been kicked in the head by a Japanese constable
who hadn’t liked the way he bowed, but he was so grateful to be in Japan
he would have willingly bowed to that man again if he could. Setting out
with his trash cart, he found there was money to be made everywhere.
Truly, there were treasures thrown out on the street no matter where you
looked. In his village he might slave all day and only make a mere forty
or fifty sen, but in Japan he could make twice that if he worked hard for
it. Work hard: that was the one principle that guided him in everything he
did. In the village it hadn’t gotten him very far, but he was sure it would
be a different story here. And so he spent every waking moment working.

1 
In the Bungei shuto (1942) and Minshu Chōsen (1947) versions, the character’s name is not
glossed. The Kim Talsu shōsetsu zenshū (1980) version glosses his name as Pyon Parukiru, but
that may have been a typographic error; later published versions use Hyon instead.
2 
The word used for “family” is honke, or “main house.” The implication that P’algil is
like a member of a branch house (bunke) paying his respects to the main house ironically
echoes Japanese colonial discourse in which Korea was presented as a branch house “return-
ing” to the head house of Japan.
Trash 37

P’algil was convinced that people in Japan lived richly. He never once
considered what he did to be theft. He had been born and raised in a moun-
tain village where there was nothing to steal, even if you had wanted to.
Once, as a child, he had plucked a persimmon from a neighbor’s tree
without permission, but that was as close as he had ever gotten. In Japan,
all kinds of things were left next to the trash containers outside people’s
houses (the first time he ever saw such containers was in Japan), like dirty
aluminum pots with holes in the bottom. He took these things on the as-
sumption they were household goods no one wanted anymore. So, as you
can see, his “stealing” was done with no ill intention, and in the firm belief
that those around him had wealth to spare. Sometimes he was confronted
by the mistress of the house or a maid, but because he couldn’t understand
what they were saying, he simply bowed and scraped his way past them.
P’algil found all sorts of things in the trash containers, so lavishly built
from dazzlingly white concrete. There were times when he found nearly
brand-new socks that had been thrown out because of one small hole, or
white bed sheets stained from a child’s bedwetting. So it made sense when
he assumed a cloth diaper blown off a clothesline was trash, too. One thing
he feared above all else, though, was the police station. It was much larger
than the local substation, and it was filled with important men in shiny uni-
forms. The sight flabbergasted him. He was detained there so many times
he finally gave up trying to figure out what was trash and what wasn’t.
Unexpected cracks began to appear in his once iron-clad principle, and he
abandoned the rag-picking business.
By the time he figured out that you couldn’t light a cigarette with an
incandescent light bulb as you could with an oil lamp or candle, no mat-
ter how much more brightly it shone, and that you could in fact touch the
bulb without burning off a finger, he had managed to learn a handful of
Japanese phrases. This meant he could now barter with people directly
for their goods as a scrap collector. Being a scrap collector was considered
one step above being a rag-picker, but P’algil couldn’t care less about the
distinction. The only change he cared about (and hated) was the fact that
he couldn’t begin working at the break of dawn anymore. If he went too
early he would sometimes get a bucket of old rice water thrown at him
by the wife or maids of the household who were preparing the morning
meal in the kitchen; sometimes they even screamed when they saw him,
mistaking him for a thief.
Even so, P’algil’s cart was always piled high with goods by the end of
the day. He consistently ranked first or second among his fellow scrap
collectors, and the local broker was more than happy to let him wear the
uniform of the trade, a short cotton coat with white lettering on the collar.
The younger men—the ones who tried to attract the maids by growing out
38 Kim Talsu

their hair and slicking it back with grease—would sometimes complain

about him behind his back. “How does an idiot who can’t even speak the
language manage to get so much stuff? Damn bastard,” they’d grumble.
You could say that P’algil possessed a strange talent in that respect—and
not just for scrap collecting, as he was the one who set his sights on the
industrial waste produced by U Dock Company.

The rights to the waste from U Dock belonged to a man named Nojiri. Once
a day (recently sometimes even twice a day, as U Dock had stepped up its
production since the Incident on the continent3), the industrial waste was
sent away in a trash barge and then dumped in the shoals of the U-shaped
bay by the dockyards. But that didn’t mean that it was simply being thrown
away. On the barge, Nojiri and a handful of his employees sifted through
the waste for any “scraps” (though often they were more than scraps) of
iron, copper, brass, aluminum, gunmetal, and so on; the remaining waste
was then dumped. The materials that ended up in the water were then
sifted through a second time by a different group of people. In the begin-
ning one household of fishermen had undertaken the task, but now there
were around seven or eight such households who had a tacit understand-
ing with the barge. The families had formed a kind of village right by the
shores of the U-shaped bay.
The town in which U Dock Company was located followed the natural
line of the bay, and was surrounded on three sides by hills characteristic of
the peninsula. It was said that the town had great historical significance,
being the place where the first black ships came to open up Japan, but aside
from the rolling hills there was nothing to recommend it over any other fac-
tory town.4 The only thing that made it rather unusual was the existence of
this group of fishermen. The village was cut off from the mainland during
high tide, making it inaccessible to anyone who didn’t have a boat. If you
waded a bit in the waters of the bay, using the rocks that jutted around the
Hachiman Shrine on the outskirts of town, you would be able to catch a
glimpse of the village scattered along the shoals of a shallow valley.5 The
seashore was dyed red from the scrap iron and other junk that littered the
water, and the waves were constantly capped with filthy froth. The fisher-
men used their boats to chase after the old rags and rusty iron pans that

3 
A reference to the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937.
4 
The town is Uraga. In 1853, Commodore Matthew Perry sailed into Uraga Bay with a
fleet of warships (the infamous “black ships”) with the goal of establishing U.S.–Japan trade
relations—by force if necessary. His visit is commonly understood as one of the events that
precipitated the end of the Tokugawa shogunate in 1867 and subsequent Meiji Restoration.
U Dock Company most likely stands for Uraga Dock Company.
5 
Hachiman Shrine was a Shinto shrine dedicated to the martial deity Hachiman.
Trash 39

streamed from the barge and wore underwater goggles to dive for the scrap
metal that had sunk to the bottom of the bay. The scrap collectors called the
village “Higashi” [East], with emphasis on the first syllable, “Hi,” perhaps
because it sat on the eastern tip of town or because it had naturally come
to be called that way. To the scrap collectors, Higashi was both a stage and
an arena, a place where the best of the best gathered to compete for goods
and show off their bargaining skills.
By the time P’algil learned about Higashi, the Incident on the continent
had taken on the contours of an outright war, and people were being urged
to dig in their heels against the enemy. Scrap iron and even regular junk
were declared crucial to the war effort, and so recycling and collection
services were dutifully taken up by women’s associations, youth organiza-
tions, and other groups. As a result, an increasing number of scrap collec-
tors found themselves out of a job. Some of them switched to construction
work or other manual labor. However, because the value of scrap iron and
other such materials increased precipitously during this time, those who
had the means to buy up goods could make a small fortune in no time at all.
Scrap collectors who could no longer buy from households began to flock
to Higashi, which was like a junk shop on a much bigger scale. Naturally,
the bidding wars grew fiercer as a result, as did the fights that broke out
among scrap collectors competing with each other. It wasn’t unusual to
have the bids climb not only close to wholesale prices but sometimes even
higher than them. The fishermen of Higashi were able to generate a steady
profit from these price fluctuations. Of course they could always have gone
directly to the scrap metal brokers, but they found it was more profitable
to let the scrap collectors compete among themselves for the goods, which
were locked up in storage sheds the fishermen had built specifically for
that purpose.
How did the scrap collectors make a profit then, if they bought the junk
at such high prices? The answer lay in their scales. If two or more scrap
collectors got together, the conversation would inevitably turn into a dis-
cussion about new scale tricks: “Ya know, some city councilor or someone
was saying that Japan might start an even bigger war than the one we’re
in now, so scrap iron’s gonna get more and more expensive. Yesterday I
got told, it’s fifty sen for eight pounds or else the whole thing’s off. Then
he had the nerve to bring out a furnace rod. That gave me no choice, so I
did my ‘foot’ move, like this, and got it to eleven pounds. The guy gave
me a fishy look . . .” and so on. The number of scrap collectors grew, and
not just in Higashi. The housewives grew shrewd from interacting with
so many of them, and it became quite rare that you could buy something
at a rate below the wholesale price. But even if you could get away with
manipulating the scales in town, it was a different story in Higashi. Not
40 Kim Talsu

only were the fishermen experienced with scales due to their profession,
they also became increasingly aware of the scrap collectors’ tricks, which
meant that you might get duped yourself if you didn’t keep your wits about
you. The scrap collectors found themselves waging fierce battles over scale
manipulation techniques.
Hyŏn P’algil of course knew the basics. At times he even won the day
with some audacious move others found difficult to imitate. He wasn’t
really part of the “techniques” crowd, though; his trump card was his te-
nacity. Once you showed something to him, he wouldn’t rest until he had
it, be it stacks of old newspapers or empty bottles or old rags or whatever.
But even P’algil could do little about the shrinking availability of goods
due to the efforts of the collection groups, and he too saw the pile of junk
in his cart grow smaller and smaller every day. P’algil became anxious. He
roamed around like a madman. He set out farther and farther afield. He
couldn’t understand why the housewives who had always sold their junk
to him suddenly began collecting trash so carefully, their sleeves all tied up
with strips of cloth that had characters he couldn’t read written on them.
They said it was for the war, but it wasn’t as if war could make everyone
into scrap collectors, could it? He was terrified of the prospect. He grew
more haggard with each passing day.
It was right around this time that P’algil learned about Higashi.
One evening, he appeared at Hachiman Shrine with an air of great ex-
citement about him. Wiping away the sweat that poured down his face like
muddy soup with the palm of a hand, he set down his cart and took out his
scales and a gunnysack. After surveying his surroundings, he headed in the
direction of Higashi. Most likely he had heard of the place from someone in
the neighborhood. Having failed to get people to sell their junk to him, he
had probably been told, “Try going over there. Guys like you buy tons of
things from there every day. I bet you’ll find plenty of things you want.” No
doubt that person had explained the reason for the fishermen’s bounty too.
The tide was rising by the time P’algil arrived, which meant that every-
one else had either already left or else was in the midst of packing goods
onto boats. The fishermen had odd smiles on their faces as they watched
P’algil wade through the water with noisy splashes. The other scrap collec-
tors knew they had to leave before the tide began to rise. If they came late,
the fishermen deliberately drew out the bargaining process until the tide
rose, trapping everyone on shore. The fishermen knew they would win if
that happened, because without their boats a scrap collector had no other
means of getting home. The scrap collector would be forced to buy the junk
at astronomically high prices, because the fishermen had an ironclad rule
where they would only transport paying customers. It might have been
possible to catch a ride with a fellow scrap collector, but on the fishermen’s
Trash 41

boats only those who had bought something were allowed. That is how
savvy the fishermen were when it came to the scrap collectors.
Like a dog who is able to locate his prey by instinct, P’algil rushed about
the village sniffing for treasure. When he saw what was inside the storage
sheds, his heart gave a great leap. Crammed inside broken trash drums and
boxes were iron, brass, copper, aluminum, and other valuable metals. The
heaps of oil rags weren’t too shabby, either.
P’algil was filled with joy. He thought back to the first time he came to
Japan, and the police constable from home who had been his first great
benefactor. He decided he owed just as much to the old man who had told
him about this place. Why couldn’t he have run into him sooner? What rot-
ten luck! But it wasn’t too late to take as much as he could to the wholesal-
ers now . . . In his head, P’algil was already thinking of the junk as his own.
“Sell to me . . .” P’algil went over to a fisherman who was sorting through
the scrap metal in front of his shed. It was rare for different metals such as
copper, brass, and bronze to be separated out beforehand; scrap collectors
usually did the work themselves, and profited from what they could sal-
vage. This fisherman, however, was carefully sorting even the brass from
the less valuable gunmetal, which was almost identical in color. P’algil
sensed this was going to be a tricky business.
“Yeah, we’re selling,” came the offhand reply.
“Oh! Sell to me.”
“How much will you pay for iron?”
“Eighteen sen,” P’algil said courteously. It was a considerably generous
offer, just four sen away from the going rate. He was hoping he could offer
a lower price next time. But the fisherman didn’t even try to haggle, merely
waved his hand.
“Eighteen sen five rin.”
The fisherman shook his head without pausing from his work.
“Nineteen sen.”
Another shake of the head.
“I’ll buy for twenty sen. Sell to me for twenty sen.”
“Clear off! You’re in the way.”
In a flash P’algil remembered his scales. “I’ll give you twenty-two sen!”
That was the wholesale price.
The fisherman raised his eyes and studied P’algil’s disheveled state. “Do
you even have any money?” he asked.
“I have money, I have lot of money!” P’algil frantically thrust his hands
into his money belt, contorting his waist left and right like a bizarre parody
of a belly dancer as he rummaged around. P’algil flashed a wad of bills at
the fisherman, and just as quickly hid the money back in his belt with the
same contorting hip motions.
42 Kim Talsu

“It’s twenty-four sen. If you don’t like it, you can leave,” the fisherman
announced, and then pretended to go back to his work. No doubt he would
have called P’algil back if he did try to leave.
“OK!” P’algil agreed. “Twenty-four sen, OK!” They then settled on
prices for the brass and copper, which all ended up being higher than the
wholesale prices. Others who saw what was going on rapidly brought out
their goods too.
P’algil bought enough to fill his cart to the brim. Seven or eight specta-
tors had gathered around him. Large beads of sweat formed on P’algil’s
forehead. He trembled as he prepared himself for the next move. He took
out his fifty-pound scale from its bag. He latched the trash drum that held
the scrap metal to the scales with a lock that dangled from a chain. Blood
rushed to his face. He tried to wrap the chain around the scale beam, but the
fisherman from before promptly stopped him. Bursts of laughter came from
the crowd. The fisherman gave P’algil a sign to continue. P’algil looked at
the fisherman with a strange, wretched smile on his face. It looked like he
was on the verge of tears. P’algil put the lock on again and positioned his
scales. Another burst of laughter. P’algil was trying to push the trash drum
up with his right foot. The fisherman kicked at his foot. P’algil lost his hold
on the drum, and both tumbled to the ground.
Someone gave him a blow to the head. “Look at this bastard, trying to
make trouble for us! Unruly bastard.”6
“Put it all back in the shed!”
A punch came. A kick. Transformed from a group into a mob, the fisher-
men laughed as they punched and kicked him.
“Aigu, aigu . . . ” Wailing, P’algil knelt down on the sandy soil and bowed
over and over in first one direction and then another. This was the most ter-
rible experience of his life. The thought came to him that he might not make
it home alive. The faces of his wife and children flashed through his mind.
“Hurry up and beat it, you bastard!” someone shouted, kicking him in
the chest. P’algil was knocked backward. As he tumbled, he accidentally
swung the heavy scale counterweight into his own face. The fishermen
roared with laughter.
P’algil fled. He had only gone a few feet, however, before he realized
he had left behind his gunnysack, which was worth as much as one yen
and fifty sen. Like a mad cow, he instantly reversed course. The fishermen

6 
Here, the Japanese for “unruly bastard” is futei yarō. It is meant to deliberately echo futei
senjin (unruly Koreans or malcontent Koreans), an ethnic slur that was commonly employed
by the police and other extensions of the Japanese colonial apparatus to describe what they
saw as a recalcitrant, dangerous, politically radical, or otherwise undesirable Korean. This
scene, along with other strongly anticolonial passages, is not in the 1942 version.
Trash 43

who had laughed as P’algil ran away were gone. As soon as he found his
gunnysack, still right where he had left it, he took to his heels again. One of
the younger fishermen, spotting P’algil’s fleeing figure, grabbed a nearby
bamboo stick and began chasing after him. He soon caught up, and gave
P’algil a heavy blow from behind. P’algil ran. The young fisherman, who
had a large burn scar on his face, was frenzied with rage.
Oh god, the tide was rising! P’algil was convinced the whole universe
was trying to kill him today. He ran to the waves in a panic. The angry
fisherman with the bamboo stick was still chasing him, joined by five or six
of his peers. P’algil threw himself into the water, but the young fisherman
followed. Blows rained on his back. P’algil was sure he was done for. Born
in a mountain village, he had never learned how to swim.
The fisherman waded into the water until he was knee deep, but he re-
treated to the shore when his stick could no longer reach P’algil. On shore,
he and the other fishermen began lobbing stones at P’algil, laughing as they
did so. A large mudstone fragment bounced off P’algil’s head, but he barely
even noticed. The tide was now up to his chest, and all his concentration
was dedicated to keeping afloat. With a loud wail, P’algil began bawling
like a child. He didn’t have the luxury to even register the fact that stones
were crashing into the water all around him. His body rose and fell with the
waves. Each time he felt himself being lifted by the water he shut his eyes,
prepared for the worst. And each time he found himself still alive, he gave
out another wail. Despite all this, he somehow managed to hold onto his
scales and gunnysack with one hand, using the other hand to grasp at the
sheer rocks that jutted out from the sea. Blood dripped from the wounds on
his face and disappeared into the swirling tide. P’algil put a foot between
two slabs of rock, choking on a gulp of seawater. A wave carried his body
and slammed it against a boulder. P’algil clung to it desperately.
Step by miserable step, he made his way through the waves. When he
finally reached the shore, he coughed up the seawater he had swallowed
and then shook his body all over. A steady drip of water fell from his body
onto the path as he walked up the stairs to Hachiman Shrine, dragging his
water-logged gunnysack behind him. It was already well into the evening,
and the rays of the setting sun touched only about one half of the long flight
of stairs. When he reached the top, he flopped down, letting his scales and
gunnysack fall where they were. He cradled his head and began to weep
quietly. He was miserable. He felt a sudden horror at the way he made a
living. It was a bad life—wasn’t it bad? It was bad . . . A horrible sense of
doubt rose up in him, and he felt his faith in this way of life falling to pieces
before his eyes.
P’algil thought of home. For the first time, he was struck with a small
feeling of homesickness. A memory popped into his head of how he used
44 Kim Talsu

to plow the village fields with oxen. Sometimes he even sang as he worked.
His wife Sunii would carry his lunch over from the poplar woods, balanc-
ing the basket on her head . . . P’algil abruptly raised his face and scanned
the horizon before him, looking toward what he thought was the direc-
tion of Korea. He stared dully at the sky with tear-grimed eyes. Suddenly
his gaze sharpened on something. It was the trash barge. He stared at the
barge, his mouth wide open. The barge had just come from the factory, and
it was piled high with junk. There were three laborers on the boat, busily
sifting through the mound, and the setting sun lit up the faces of the boat-
men as they plied the oars towards Higashi. P’algil was struck with an
inspiration. The gloom cleared from his face and his eyes began burning
with ambition. As he leaned forward unconsciously, his bottom slipped off
the edge of the stair with a thud. It made no difference; his mouth stayed
open, he still craned forward, and his eyes never left the barge. That’s it!
Everything from Higashi comes from that boat. I need to make it mine!
Hyŏn P’algil was not the first person to have seen the barge, and certain-
ly not the first person to have come up with this idea. At the bare minimum,
you could say that every scrap metal broker from Y City and U Town had
thought of it at least once before, not to mention anyone else who knew
about the trash barge and the village of Higashi. A broker with some clout
in Y City had tried leveraging his connections with a certain city councilor
from U Town to persuade the people in charge at U Dock Company, but
to no avail. Precisely because the negotiations (and their failure) had been
conducted in secret, once word leaked out people began speaking of the re-
lationship between the company and Nojiri in almost mythological terms,
as something inviolable and even inevitable. Those who knew the value
of that trash barge resented how Nojiri’s generosity extended only to hir-
ing two or three scrap collectors with good business sense to sort through
the junk. There was no other way to get in on the deal, or so everyone had
come to believe. It was common knowledge that if you had the right skills
and knowledge to sort through the junk, you could ride the current wave
of rising prices with big results.
The relationship between Nojiri and the company was apparently so
strong not even the city councilor could undermine it. Nojiri had been a
low-ranking employee of U Dock when he discovered a way to improve
a certain part in the shipbuilding process. The grateful president, a vice
admiral with a generous spirit, offered to give Nojiri anything he desired
as a reward for his services. “I want your trash,” Nojiri replied. The presi-
dent laughed long and hard. “You’re a man of small ambition,” he said,
and laughed again. But not even the city councilor knew that Nojiri had
managed to become a major stockholder in the company because of that
trash. Of course, there was no way that Hyŏn P’algil could have known
Trash 45

that fact, either. He had heard, however, that the man who owned the trash
was named Nojiri and that he lived in U Town. He assumed Nojiri must
be some kind of VIP.
Hyŏn P’algil had been in Japan for about two years now, but during that
time he was able to buy less than half an acre of paddy fields and only one
dry field in his hometown. When he crossed the Genkai Sea from Korea to
Japan, he had made a resolution to himself and his wife Sunii: he wouldn’t
rest until he had enough money to buy at least two and a half acres. He
didn’t care if people called him a beggar in Japan, or even if he became one
in reality. He’d gladly endure it all if that’s what it took. Like many of his
fellow travelers, he had left all his concerns about honor and appearance
back in Korea. His heart was set. Only when he had bought up enough land
would he return home; only then would life truly begin.
Crawling into bed, P’algil starting daydreaming as always. The leaky
ceiling, streaked with water stains like sheets soiled from a child’s bed-
wetting, transformed into a movie screen upon which he could project
his fantasies. P’algil was still young. His hair might have been thinning,
but he was only thirty-two years old. Gazing at the papered ceiling, he al-
ways thought the same thing. When he returned home, he would find his
younger brother, who had been working as a tenant laborer since he was a
small child, and together . . . Climbing the mountain behind the village, he
can see his very own fields spread out below in a wide green expanse. His
brother looks so small from up here. He wants to shout down to him . . .
P’algil realized he had yelled aloud. In embarrassment he pulled the blan-
ket over his head. In that warm, pitch-dark space, he wanted that trash
barge more than ever. His chest tightened with resolve, and tears blurred
his vision. When he thought of his bleak life as a tenant laborer, all those
other countless hardships he had had to endure . . . He had to get that trash
barge, even if he lost a leg in the bargain. (He worried that successfully bar-
gaining with Nojiri might actually involve getting a leg cut off.) Suddenly
P’algil was hit with a gloomy thought, one that threatened to shatter his
resolve. What if, while he was daydreaming, someone else had thought up
the same plan? Worse—what if that person was already negotiating with
the man named Nojiri at this very moment?
P’algil bolted upright. His face was drenched with sweat, and his eyes
gleamed with a strange light. His wife Sunii woke up beside him. She half
rose, alarmed at his wild state. Their two sons continued to sleep peacefully
in the bed between them. “What is it?” she asked in concern.
Her words seemed to act as a spur. P’algil abruptly got up. “We’re in
trouble!” he shouted, as he threw on the clothes that lay beside the bed.
Then he flew out the door without another word, leaving a baffled Sunii
behind. Once outside, P’algil broke into a run. There was a hilly road along
46 Kim Talsu

the coast that went from his village, located on the outskirts of Y City,
straight to U Dock. The world was still hushed with sleep, and the waves
broke against the cliffs in steady intervals. The road rose up whitely against
the blackness of the night, and the lone figure of Hyŏn P’algil sped off into
the distance as if the road itself was pulling him along.
P’algil ran. He cleared the tunnel and began to climb the hill. By the time
he approached the top, his breath was labored, and he felt like he might
collapse. Thankfully, going downhill was easier. As he made his way down,
doubt began to creep in. His feet were like lead. He came to a standstill. He
had assumed that Nojiri would be at the factory, working to get the trash
onto the barge. But on second thought, he realized there was no way Nojiri
would still be there at this time of night. P’algil had heard that Nojiri lived
in U Town, but he didn’t know exactly where. Ahh! Stupid! He hit himself
in the head with his fist.
When P’algil finally found Nojiri’s house, the sun had not yet risen. An
old woman had showed him the sinographs that made up Nojiri’s name
and told him to look for a house with a white nameplate that had those
characters on it. When he found the house, he set his cart down and stood in
front of the gate, staring intently at the nameplate for a good long while. All
of his hopes depended on that name. He had never learned how to read, but
he knew he would never forget the two characters that made up “Nojiri.”
P’algil moved his cart about two meters away. He spread his gunnysack
on the cart and sat down on it, feet crossed and arms folded. He fixed his
gaze on the entrance to Nojiri’s house.
The sun rose. Factory workers on their way to work passed by. A large
wild dog appeared. It cocked its head at the man sitting so meekly on the
cart and decided to investigate. It pushed its wet nose against P’algil’s
knees, sniffing inquisitively, but soon went on its way after realizing it
would get no response. Some time passed. A noisy group of schoolchildren
walked by.
At around ten o’clock, the door to the house opened for the second time,
and at last a man who could be Nojiri came out. He was around fifty years
old, and he wore a suit and carried a walking stick. P’algil leapt off the cart
and ran past the man. He went up to a woman walking from the opposite
direction and asked if that man was Nojiri. Indeed, replied the woman,
and P’algil immediately spun around and flung himself at Nojiri’s feet. He
grabbed one of Nojiri’s legs and clung to it desperately.
Nojiri was taken back. “What on earth?” Struggling to get free, he gave
P’algil’s head a smart blow with his walking stick.
“Sir, please . . . Please, sell me th-the boat!” P’algil cried in clumsy Japa-
nese. “The boat—” No matter how many times Nojiri struck him or tried
Trash 47

to shake him off, he kept his hold on Nojiri’s leg, clinging so tightly it was
as if he meant to burrow into it.
A bewildered Nojiri began swinging his stick not only at P’algil’s head
but also his bottom, torso, and legs, but with no effect. He stopped when
he realized P’algil wasn’t putting up a fight at all.
“What are you talking about? Spit it out!”
“The boat, the boat . . . No one can beat me . . . I’ll buy at high price,
s-sell to me . . .”
At last Nojiri understood what the man before him was trying to say.
P’algil gazed up at him with an imploring expression, his eyes brimming
with tears. Blood gushed out of various wounds on his face. By now it was
midday, and a circle of spectators had formed around them. They listened
with amazement to the woman from before as she explained the situation.
P’algil still clung to Nojiri, rendering him immobile. Nojiri was at a loss
to respond to P’algil’s broken entreaties, but he gestured to P’algil to stand
up. “You can come inside, at any rate,” he said. “I’ll take a look at your
wounds.” And with that, he ushered P’algil into his home.

* * *
I was relaxing in my study as I always do after dinner, lingering over a
cigarette and not thinking of much in particular. I had a habit of sitting like
this for hours at a time. At the time of these events, I was using a Japanese
name and working—without much enthusiasm—as a reporter for a local
newspaper company in Y City. Every day I went to the police or walked
around town, writing up the latest news on gambling rings or thefts or
other crimes. Sometimes if there was a fire I followed the firefighters to
the scene. I was your average city news reporter, in other words, with four
colleagues. As a condition for being hired I had to use my Japanese name,
but because at my core I was one of those “inscrutable Koreans” I wasn’t
allowed to report on the local government or anything like that. That was
fine with me, though. I even occasionally wrote stories about Korean gam-
blers or thieves without remorse. The police didn’t really warm up to me
at first, but they came to treat me with a certain amount of fairness. The
police chief, who prided himself on his ability to do headstands, got so
used to me that he would do his prized party trick at company parties
even if I was there.
In gaining the trust of the police, I became a person of some influence.
At least, that’s what the Koreans struggling to survive in Y City believed.
An endless stream of people came to my house with their problems, such
as the mother of a thirteen-year-old boy who had been caught and detained
by the police for shoplifting a blouse for his younger sister, who couldn’t
48 Kim Talsu

go to school because she had no suitable clothes to wear; and the wife of
a man who drank too much and got into fights all the time. Sometimes I
got outrageous requests, such as the time a man who wanted to open up
a new business asked me to bribe the police chief for him. Not all of the
issues involved crime, however. People sought my help in getting licenses,
registering the births of their children, navigating death and cremation
procedures, writing letters on their behalf (this was the most common re-
quest) . . . My child is starting school this year; could you go to the parent-teacher
meeting for me? My teenage son has been acting out lately, and he could use some
good advice. My wife has run out on me for the third time. And so on and so on.
As it turns out, most of my time was spent running around trying to
help the people who came to me rather than doing my actual job. My edi-
tor couldn’t help showing his annoyance whenever I turned in only two or
three articles out of the six I had been assigned for the day. My coworkers
made fun of me with nicknames like “Custody Officer,” but I couldn’t af-
ford to let it get to me. After all, the only one who could really understand
me was me.7

I sensed the shōji door being quietly slid open behind me, so I turned
around. The door was steadily moving, but I could see neither the person’s
face nor hands. A curious tension filled me, and I started to stand. The dark
face of Hyŏn P’algil popped into view as he peered into the room. He gave
me a quick bow, anxiously twisting his hat in his hands.
“You startled me!” I told him. “What’s wrong? Come on in.”
Seeing P’algil always made me smile despite myself. Not out of con-
descension or amusement, but from a vague sense of cheerful pleasure. I
knew P’algil long before all this business with the U Dock trash barge made
him famous, having bailed him out several times in the past from Y Station
and U Station. The news that he had succeeded in gaining a monopoly on
U Dock’s industrial waste surprised me of course, but it also filled me with
more of that cheerful pleasure.
P’algil continued to fiddle with his hat with a restless energy. It seemed
like he was feeling apologetic for not having come earlier to pay his re-
spects. Suddenly he stepped into the room and sat crossed-legged on
the floor with a thud. “P-Please,” he choked out, “please help me! I’m

7 
The 1980 version cuts out several lines from the 1947 version describing the role of the
narrator in the community, and the pleasure he takes in helping out his fellow Koreans. The
1947 version ends this paragraph with the following lines: “They were all honest people,
dedicated to returning home the moment they had saved up enough money. I wanted to
spend my entire life writing about these people. That was what I was dedicated to.”
Trash 49

doomed!” He wrinkled up his dark, filthy face and began to sob uncontrol-
lably like a child.
“It surely can’t be worth crying about. What happened? Did you get
into a fight?” I had heard a little about how the Higashi fishermen went
into a fury when P’algil secured the rights to the trash barge, and thought
he might have gotten himself into a feud.
P’algil shook his head. “You need to help me. We’re gonna starve. The
boat doesn’t make any money at all . . .”
P’algil and Nojiri had settled on five hundred yen per month, which
included storage fees, for exclusive access to the trash barge. The news of
Hyŏn P’algil’s success was received with astonishment, and not just by
the Higashi fishermen. The scrap collectors of Y City and U Town were
collectively struck dumb by the news. The brokers had slapped their knees
and taken their defeat with good humor at first but soon found themselves
consumed with envy. The Higashi fishermen banded together and made
an appeal to Nojiri and the company heads, arguing that their livelihoods
had been stolen from them. Nojiri summarily dismissed them: “You and I
never had a formal contract—and in any case, it’s about time you gave up
this parasitic life. Aren’t you fishermen? Go out and fish! Given the gravity
of the current situation, we all need to contribute our services to the best of
our abilities. We can’t afford to let anything that can be used—even trash—
sink to the bottom of the sea. Fortunately that P’algil character doesn’t
know how to do anything but work, and he’s honest with his money. He
doesn’t let even one tin scrap fall into the sea, and I like him for it.” They
got the same response from U Dock. The fishermen sent defamatory letters
about Hyŏn P’algil to the police in an attempt to get him arrested, but in
the end they found they had no choice but to reluctantly mend their nets
and go out again in search of fish.
P’algil’s strategy to deter his competitors and deflect attention from
himself was to go around moaning, “The boat doesn’t make any money”
and “I’m going broke,” to anyone who would listen. In fact, he had visited
certain households for precisely that purpose.
Nojiri’s storage shed was located right where the fence around the fac-
tory ended. A plank connected the shed to the trash barge in the sea. P’algil
sorted out the iron, copper, oil rags, and other valuable materials from the
rest of the junk on the barge with a shovel or bamboo rake and then car-
ried them into the shed. P’algil and his wife Sunii got up every morning
before the sun rose and worked until the sun set, usually without even
taking a break for lunch. Because the boat came to the factory frequently
these days, P’algil often spread his gunnysack on the ground in the shed
and worked long into the night, even sleeping in the shed when he needed
to. He dreamed the same dream every night. He was buying a strong, big
50 Kim Talsu

bull with thick horns. His younger brother, still not used to the new bull,
was being dragged around in the fields . . . P’algil smiled innocently and
twitched his nose as he dreamed.
One day, he received a visit from a man named Sŏ Minhŭi. “How are
things going?” the smartly dressed Minhŭi asked without preamble as
he looked speculatively around the shed, which was piled high with
scrap metal.
P’algil sprang up from his work and immediately blocked Minhŭi’s way.
“It’s been terrible,” he said in a fluster, and launched into his standard spiel.
“I’m going broke. Really, I lose money every day.”
Sŏ Minhŭi was an insurance agent who lived in U Town. Each day he
made sure that his hair was immaculately combed and that his suit was
perfectly pressed, and he spoke Japanese with an almost flawless accent.
He was a man who could easily pass as Japanese. He was also married to
an older Japanese woman, which might have been part of the reason why
he was hired by A Life Insurance to be the director of their branch office in
U Town, despite being Korean.
“You’re going broke?”
“It’s terrible. I’m broke. I’m thinking I might return everything to Mr.
Nojiri and go back to bartering.”
P’algil instinctively knew that a person like Sŏ Minhŭi, with his expen-
sive clothes and leather briefcase, could only mean trouble. He had heard
rumors there was a Korean in the town who had as much power as a vil-
lage head, and suspected this might be the man. He didn’t care if he was
kicked or punched or insulted by a Japanese person, because he knew he
would never give in to them, but he was afraid of Koreans. Koreans knew
everything about each other; there was no playing dumb with your fel-
low countryman. He needed a more powerful weapon than the phrases
he usually used. But his head had gone fuzzy, and the right words just
wouldn’t come.
A few days ago, Sŏ Minhŭi had been visited by a short man in his fifties
just as he was preparing to leave the office. The man introduced himself as
a local merchant named Nakamura and then nonchalantly proceeded to
sign up for a ten thousand yen insurance policy, paying for the first year
in one lump sum right on the spot. It wasn’t the first time someone had
come to the office to sign up for a contract, but such events occurred two
or three times a year at most, and almost never for a policy worth as much
as ten thousand yen. Sŏ Minhŭi owed his early success to all the contracts
he had sold to other Koreans, but by the time he became the branch direc-
tor he had already exhausted that particular customer base. Nakamura
showed up right during the time when Minhŭi was beginning to worry he
might be a one-hit wonder—just another typical Korean. He looked at the
Trash 51

monthly sales performance chart that hung on the wall, and the numbers
posted there were a wake-up call. He was a man who found great meaning
in being an employee of A Life Insurance and in dressing the part.
Sŏ Minhŭi was handing over the receipt for Nakamura’s payment when
Nakamura casually mentioned he belonged to Nakamura Goods. “There’s
something I’d like to discuss with you,” he said. “Would you let me take
you out to Yamashiro-ya? It’s just down the street . . .”
Nakamura Goods was one of the largest Japanese-run salvage shops in
U Town. When Nakamura mentioned Yamashiro-ya, a fancy Japanese-style
inn and restaurant combined, Sŏ Minhŭi began to wonder what was really
going on. Sensing a potentially lucrative business opportunity, however, he
readily agreed to go. He hoped this might develop into something greater
than being the branch director of an insurance company. When he first
came to Japan he had toiled at all kinds of menial work, including hawk-
ing ginseng and miracle cures to people on the street. He was sick to the
teeth of that life.
At the restaurant, Nakamura explained the situation with Hyŏn P’algil
and the trash barge. Smirking over his sake cup, Nakamura let it be known
that he was prepared to give Sŏ the receipt and forget the contract had ever
happened.
Those are the events that led to Sŏ Minhŭi’s visit to P’algil at the storage
shed. “If it’s really going that poorly, I’d be happy to take all this off your
hands. You’d be amply compensated, of course.”
“Oh!” P’algil found himself bowing out of sheer fear. His face blanched,
and he began to shake all over.
Sŏ Minhŭi already knew all about P’algil’s tactics. According to Naka-
mura, there was no telling what treasures might be unearthed from the
trash once Nakamura had access to the factory through the trash barge.
P’algil didn’t have the same capabilities. For this reason Minhŭi intended
to throw his lot in with Nakamura.
“How about it? I’ll pay you. I’m giving you a good deal.”
“Oh!” P’algil was having difficulty speaking. His legs felt wobbly, and
his whole body continued to shake.
“So how about it? You keep saying you’re going broke. We have re-
sources that you don’t.”
“Oh! Well . . . Two days. Please give me until the day after tomorrow.
P-please . . .”
“I can’t really wait, but . . . OK. I’ll come again in the morning. With-
out fail.”
P’algil nodded, swallowing down tears. “Oh! U-until then . . .” He stood
like a statue as he watched the stylishly dressed Sŏ Minhŭi leave the shed.
He couldn’t stop the trembling in his legs. He felt as if the land he had so
52 Kim Talsu

painstakingly saved up for had been blown away by a typhoon before his
very eyes. He thought he was doomed for sure.
P’algil found himself unable to concentrate on his work. He gravely
stroked the mountains of tin plate scraps and metal that surrounded him.
At length he embraced the trash drum that held his most valuable copper
scraps. He couldn’t sleep. He wept.

“I know Sŏ Minhŭi. He doesn’t seem to be the type of person who’d do

such a thing, though . . .”
“No, he did. He wants to steal everything away from me. Please help
me, I’m gonna starve to death. I’m not making any money.”
P’algil was still trying to sniff back messy tears as he talked. A smile
tugged at the corners of my mouth as I looked at him, but it soon vanished
when I turned my mind to Sŏ Minhŭi.
Sŏ Minhŭi was a man who was constantly trying to hide his ethnic ori-
gins. As a result he tended to avoid the other Koreans in the community,
and my own interactions with him were mostly limited to short hellos on
the street or the bus. He held only disdain for his people, without quite
realizing that his disdain was also a kind of self-contempt.
The next day, I went to see Hyŏn P’algil at his storage shed. I had heard
descriptions, of course, but it was something else to see it with my own
eyes. Scrap metal and dirty rags filled every nook and cranny of the shed.
P’algil’s wife was busy at work on the trash barge docked just outside, her
body smeared with grime and oil. It was an extraordinary mound of trash.
Here and there you might find things that had no use, like lime, but for the
most part it was a trove of scrap iron, copper bits, and oil rags. I suppose
large factories could afford to be generous. A line of ships stretched out
along the overlooking dock, and the area was full of activity: the sound of
hammering filled the air; cranes rumbled on the ground; engines groaned;
and people scurried across the space like ants, blue sparks showering from
their tools as they worked.
P’algil was so agitated by the time I arrived he could barely concentrate
on his work. He stood rigidly on the plank that extended from the boat to
the dock, facing the direction of the land. I watched P’algil as I waited for
Sŏ Minhŭi. I felt the usual smile hovering on my lips, but the mood was too
serious for a smile. I was struck with a certain sadness, looking at P’algil.
Suddenly his body began to tremble violently as he stood on that plank.
I glanced behind me and saw that Sŏ Minhŭi had arrived and was look-
ing right at me. “How’s it been?” I said, walking toward him.
“Well, now . . . If you’re in this race, I can see I have no hope of winning.
Yes . . . I see now.”
Trash 53

“I’m sure you have your reasons for doing this, but you can see for
yourself what this means to him. Just look at him, shaking like that. Why
not give him some peace of mind?”
Sŏ Minhŭi seemed embarrassed. “Yes, I see . . . I give up. I know I can’t
win. In return, let’s go out for a drink. Please give me that at least.” He took
out a decorative handkerchief and blew his nose, looking like he didn’t
know whether to laugh or cry.
As soon as I heard Minhŭi capitulate, I walked onto the plank and
clapped P’algil on the shoulder. “There’s nothing to worry about,” I told
him. “He says he won’t ever come back here, so let’s concentrate on work-
ing hard and returning home.”8
“Ah!” P’algil let out a strange shout. He leapt up, tumbling into the sea
with a huge splash. “Aigu (I’m so happy)!” he cried, as he flailed about in
the water like a madman. “Aigu (I’m so happy)!”

8 
In the 1947 version, this line reads, “He says he won’t ever come back here, so work
hard and return home soon.” The word used for “home” is kokyō but is glossed to read kuni
(country). The word is unglossed in the 1980 version.
THREE

In Shinjuku

YANG SŎGIL
Translated with an introduction by Samuel Perry

Born in Osaka to Korean parents originally from the Korean island of Che-
ju, Yang Sŏgil (b. 1936) began writing for the Zainichi poetry journal Azalea
(Chindalle) in his youth before withdrawing from the publishing world for
some twenty years. “In Shinjuku” (“Shinjuku nite”) is the first chapter of
a longer work called “Aftershocks” (“Yoshin”), which Yang published in
1978 in the journal Literary Outlook (Bungei tenbō) and later included in his
debut collection, Rhapsody (Kyōsōkyoku, 1981). It appears as a separate story
in the 2006 Anthology of Zainichi Literature.1 Several of Yang’s later works
have been adapted as films, including most famously the semiautobio-
graphical Blood and Bones (Chi to hone, 2004).
One partial English translation of “In Shinjuku” ends up excising almost
all of the passages that deal with the political struggle of the Zainichi com-
munity, which is crucial for understanding the key conflicts in Yang’s story.
Korea’s experience as a former Japanese colony, as well as the relationship
of the Zainichi Korean community to the Japanese Communist Party and to
Japanese immigration law, go a long way toward explaining the particular
longing for homeland, the seemingly gratuitous violence, and the tortured
masculinity that often play an important role in Yang’s works, including
this story. The piece opens with a scene that takes place in Tokyo’s red-light
district, Kabukichō, located in the heart of Shinjuku.

1 
“Shinjuku nite,” in “Zainichi” bungaku zenshū, ed. Jirō Isogai and Kazuo Kuroko (Tokyo:
Bensei Shuppan, 2006), 7:31–41.
56 Yang Sŏgil

In Shinjuku
As we approached the Fūrin Kaikan building from Shinjuku Boulevard,
my friend Han Sŏnghyŏng and I caught sight of an unusual spectacle. A
tall, slender woman dressed in neon-green tights had brazenly lifted her
leg horizontally into the air, and was pumping her foot into a man in a suit.
Especially impressive was her beautifully curvaceous hip, which extended
from her raised thigh to her tight fleshy buttocks, bulging out in relief be-
neath the streetlights. On the point of running off, the man in the suit was
stopped short by another woman who quickly assumed the pose of a boxer
and threw him a left hook. In his effort to dodge the blow the man lost his
footing and tumbled over. It was a gruesome sight to witness these women
spring upon the man so ferociously, their done-up hair in a state of disarray,
their high-heels dangling from their fingers. If standing there watching the
man get beaten up was no less cold-blooded, no one else, needless to say,
seemed ready to come to his rescue. Astonished by it all, I simply stood
there transfixed, while beside me a con man or perhaps a pimp of sorts
started laughing uncontrollably. When the injured man finally managed to
retreat, painfully clutching his gut, the women proceeded to shower him
with curses. “Better stay the fuck away, asshole!” It was only then, after
hearing their menacing voices, that Han Sŏnghyŏng and I realized the two
women were in fact queers.
“Crushed by two homos. How pathetic!” said Han Sŏnghyŏng.
“Nah, you’ve got it all wrong, man. Those two homos are real dudes.
They’ve got moves that’d put us both to shame,” I said. “And besides,
they’re jacked.”
Still somewhat winded, the two queers cheerfully broke out into a peal
of laughter. For them, this was business as usual. They rejoined their posse
of pimps and comrades on the street corner and began to ply their trade
again, gliding up and down the street flirtatiously. Perhaps they deemed us
hillbillies from the way we dressed, or maybe we’d stared at them all too
eagerly, but the larger one with the stumpy neck approached us, entangling
himself between me and Han Sŏnghyŏng like a piece of seaweed.
“Well hello boys, where we all headed tonight? Don’t ya wanna have
a bit of fun?” Han Sŏnghyŏng smirked oddly, as though he weren’t nec-
essarily opposed to the idea. Given that he was somewhat tipsy, small
pools of desire, I noticed, had even welled up in the corners of his eyes.
Shortly thereafter, however, we began searching for a place to replenish
the booze in our sobering bellies, and swam through a labyrinth of cha-
otic alleyways, lined with bars, pubs, taverns, and other filthy shacks, all
awaiting their next customers. The streets were filled with the fragrant
stench of piss, vomit, semen, blood, and broken teeth, a stench that hov-
ered over the ground like a noxious gas. Long-haired hippies in trendy
In Shinjuku 57

clothes—androgynous beasts of who knows what sex—were squirming to

the beat of Soul II Soul’s latest tracks. The ordinary folk, meanwhile, milled
about. There were giant totem poles spewing flames from gaping mouths,
and neon lights on the fritz popping on and off.
“It’s your lucky day, Mister. Opening night. And no panties on the
girls tonight! We’ll show you a good time if you come on inside . . .” One
guy, dressed in a bow tie, hounded us relentlessly. And if only for an in-
stant the racy words rolling off his silver tongue managed to corner two
drunks, wobbling in front of a house of mirrors. He was a quick one, I’ll
give him that!
Suddenly, we heard a gut-wrenching moan coming from behind a hedge
in front of a love hotel. A woman had curled up on the ground, hugging
her stomach, and a yakuza-like punk was now grinding his foot into her
bloody-lipped face. She let out a horrible scream as passersby circled
around, keeping their distance but intent all the same on observing the
curious scene. The small-time thug then dumped a bucket of trash onto
the gruesome face of the woman, who proceeded to clutch onto his leg.
The man turned to the spectators. “This ain’t no circus, you idiots! Get the
hell outta here,” he barked.
“Pigs like him make me sick. Though back in the day we’d never walk
away from something like this. We’re finally over the hill, I guess?” Han
Sŏnghyŏng, suddenly the feminist, now sympathized with the plight of the
tortured woman, even if his words were tinged with self-regret.
Once we’d made our way through the public square in front of Koma
Theater, we paused before each poster mounted on the theater wall, observ-
ing each one scrupulously. The wall was a veritable panel of penance, its
stills of women moaning with pleasure, their heads thrown back.
“Look more like acrobats if you ask me. You ever screw like that? Way
back when, I used to try out new moves out of curiosity. But now I’d slip
a disk if I ever did that. Hell, they can do it upside-down, underwater,
however they want. But me, I go barnyard style—too lazy to take off my
pants. Pretty soon, at any rate, I’ll be too old for sex . . .” If these were his
thoughts on the matter, Han Sŏnghyŏng’s eyes soon shifted to the backside
of the woman walking in front of us, wiggling like a young sweetfish.
“Now, that’s the kinda ass that gets me stiff. Morality’s one thing, but
there ain’t nothin’ I can do about this. The more I try to keep it down, the
more it wants to jump right up. Just like the revolutionary masses, my
friend, when they’re getting all oppressed and shit.”
Several dozen crabs were lined up in front of a shop where cooks clad
in headbands were barbecuing skewers of jumbo shrimp, clapping their
hands and shouting, “Welcome, welcome! Come on in!” Drawn by their
spirited cries, we entered the shop. Taking a seat at the counter, we looked
over the menu, a long list of delicacies from the sea. But first off we ordered
58 Yang Sŏgil

some beer to quench our thirst. And sure enough, after just a few swigs,
good old Han Sŏnghyŏng started jabbering nonstop. When the food was
delivered, he declared, “It’s on me tonight. So eat on up,” pushing plate
after plate in my direction. Fatty tuna, squid sashimi, seared skipjack, fil-
leted prawns, salmon stew, and chilled raw flounder. For someone like me
who ate like a bird, just looking at the food amassed on the countertop was
enough to make me sick. Han Sŏnghyŏng stared at the seafood in front of
us and clicked his tongue in disappointment.
“What is this crap? Doesn’t look anything like the samples out front,”
he turned around unabashedly to face the staff, as if to gripe, prematurely,
about the food he hadn’t tasted yet. Whether short of booze, or just an ap-
petite, something had riled the heavy drinker’s gut.
“Back home on Cheju we’d never touch rotten fish like this. But you’ve
never been there, have you? Well, I pity the man who knows nothing about
it . . .” Han Sŏnghyŏng continued at length, noting how bad he felt for
me before launching, more typically, into a series of childhood memories.
About the masses of crabs crawling across the beach, turning the entire
coastline red at low tide, as far as the eye could see. About the mighty
shape of Mount Halla, which looked like the flexed bicep of a strapping
man. About the hot springs gushing around the island’s coast, and all the
schools of sardines, the color of tarnished silver, that leapt across the sea.
Han Sŏnghyŏng could sometimes see in his dreams the sight of whole vil-
lages going out to catch this fish with baskets, buckets, and scoops in every
hand. People hauled in so much fish they had to dry them, salt them, and
even use them as fertilizer in the fields. Pumpkins, melons, eggplants, and
gourds, they all grew like monsters in rich fields like this. It made perfect
sense to say the men on the island were lazy as shit. After all, who needed to
work in a place like this? Might as well pull out some local brew, play a bit
of chess, and spend the afternoon taking a nap. It was the womenfolk who
did the real work anyway, tilling the fields, diving the seas, giving birth to
the kids. And this was all one tiny part of almighty Nature for these ancient
folk, who had no values of their own to guide them but for the raw magma
of life itself, which moved via fire, water, and the shifting constellations,
and circled through their human veins until each turned to ash and at long
last sank into the great earth. His nostalgic feelings would flicker so vividly
in his mind’s eye that even decades later Han Sŏnghyŏng could conjure
up a picture of his very first love, as he drifted off into a state of dreams.
I myself had nothing to call my own. No family, no hometown. Han
Sŏnghyŏng’s words swept me away like a wind blowing across the empty
steppes.
Dizzyingly, his story continued to twist and turn with leaps and bounds.
We Zainichi had to make money as long as we lived in Japan. Who else,
after all, could we expect to help us out? We had to band together as a
In Shinjuku 59

group, each of us doing whatever he could. Only then would we manage

to forge an unassailable organization, he argued, and to build for ourselves
a “golden castle with iron-clad walls.”
“So you’ve got a job as a taxi driver. But tell me this: how long can
you go on living like an octopus, chewing off your own legs in order to
survive? That’s no job with a future. Which is why I’ve always said you
should come and work for me. I know you look down on moneylenders,
but as a business it’s hard to beat. Tell me, who turns his nose up to cold
hard cash just because it comes from someone in the trade like me? Money
talks, my friend. Might as well be written on the wall: you got no money,
you got nothing at all. And this is Japan, where capitalism’s the name of the
game. Anyone pretending to keep their hands clean—do everything just
right—well, they’re opportunists if you ask me, no different from the petit
bourgeoisie. When it comes to the spirit of self-sacrifice, hell, Koreans don’t
know shit.” Whenever Han Sŏnghyŏng mentioned the word self-sacrifice,
a shiver inevitably went down my spine. Not because I disagreed with his
theory—we should earn money like capitalists and plan like socialists—
that was fine with me. But the Japanese Communist Party had long since
repudiated the idea of self-sacrifice with its policy reversal of the Sixth
Congress, and listening to Han Sŏnghyŏng invoke the term by way of this
bizarre conclusion was unsettling.
We’d been innocent back then. The solution to life’s contradictions was
easily distilled into the simple notion of revolution. How had we come to
doubt it? In the springtime of our youths we’d been wanderers in search
of absolute values. In a sense, we were still searching. But at the end of the
day what exactly was resolved? Had we simply been holding out, hoping
time would be on our side? Or had we merely become experts at making
excuses and deceiving ourselves? Whatever happened, after all, to comrade
Kang Miung? Where did he go, and how is he getting by now? What about
Kim Ch’waeyŏng . . . and Kang Ch’ŏlbu . . . ?
“‘What’s going to happen to me?’ you ask. Well, that’s beyond the point.
I’m nothing but a pawn in a game chess—that much I do know. The nature
of human relations under capitalism will continue to desecrate me with all
its filth, and eventually it’ll do me in. The battle between revolution and
consciousness here in Japan is like the race between Achilles and the tor-
toise—man will never overcome the beast.”2 No matter the sacrifice, Han
Sŏnghyŏng contended, our emphasis had to be in uniting the homeland. If
2 
The purported progenitor of dialectical thinking, Greek philosopher Zeno of Elea,
offered up as a paradox an imaginary race between the swift-footed Achilles and a slow-
moving tortoise, to whom Achilles has given a head start. Theoretically speaking, according
to Zeno, the former will never catch up with the latter if distance and time are infinitely
divisible. The suggestion here is that efforts to unify the divided Korean nation should be
prioritized given that revolution in Japan was not on the horizon.
60 Yang Sŏgil

the present state of affairs continued much longer, we’d fall victim to the
dirty tactics of the United States, Japan, and Park Chung Hee. Eventually
we’d have to duke it out, he started yelling, so why not just fucking get it
over with?
“I mean, you never know what’ll happen when people are backed into a
corner. I get the chills just thinking about it. Kim Dae Jung gets kidnapped,
Mun Segwang tries to assassinate Park Chung Hee—and this is just the tip
of the iceberg.3 Park might end up sacrificing another five million Koreans.
Who knows what he’ll do if war breaks out again—drop the atomic bomb
maybe, or even the hydrogen one? That little Hitler is capable of anything.”
Han Sŏnghyŏng’s copper complexion flushed a deeper shade of red. After
scraping up the bottom of the pot, he shoveled what remained of the fish
and vegetables inside his mouth, chomping down on it with his healthy
teeth. His playful gluttony—and the wild swinging of his appendages
along with it—was a delightful sight to behold, I must admit.
Nearly all the seats inside the place were occupied. Two students from a
college infamous for acts of violence had stationed themselves diagonally
across from us. Their baggy uniforms, flipped-up collars, and gangster-like
pompadours were proof enough of their vulgar efforts to attract attention.
But in the cavernous sockets of their shifty eyes there shone not a twinkle
of intelligence. In the raised seating area behind us a veritable army of
beauties, serving a banquet, babbled on in high spirits, puffing on cigarettes
and emptying pots of sake.
Just then, from the opposite side of Han Sŏnghyŏng, came the voices of
a middle-aged gentleman and a slightly older man. The latter was going on
about how Taiwanese and Korean women really knew how to serve their
men: not only were they hardworking, but they were also good in bed.
This was the typical talk of overseas sex tourists. One of the men would
occasionally lean into the other’s ear—as though conducting a secret ne-
gotiation—and start snickering obscenely. It was just enough to rub Han
Sŏnghyŏng the wrong way.
“Did I ever mention,” began the older man, in a tone that was almost
wistful, “that I was stationed in South Kyŏngsang during the war?” By this
point Han Sŏnghyŏng was all ears.
The man had belonged to the 184th Regiment, but apparently spent most
of his time swimming in a nearby river, playing a lazy game of cards, and

3 
On August 8, 1973, dissident politician (and later president) Kim Dae Jung was ab-
ducted in Tokyo by the Korean Central Intelligence Agency, drugged, and brought back to
Pusan by boat. Allegedly, only intervention by the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force, which
pursued the boat, and the American ambassador to Korea kept the KCIA from assassinating
Kim. Zainichi Mun Segwang attempted an assassination of President Park Chung Hee on
August 15, 1974, at the anniversary celebration of Korean liberation from the Japanese, held
in the National Theater. A later attempt on Park’s life was successful.
In Shinjuku 61

polishing his Murata rifle. He was now talking about a particular summer
day, shortly after lunchtime. The regiment he belonged to kept half a dozen
pigs, a few chickens, as well as a goat in a separate, fenced-off area, and the
scene he painted was nothing short of idyllic. Into this, however, walked a
Korean coolie attached to the regiment, who had come to feed the livestock.
Nothing was covering his lower extremities but for a pair of pants that were
shamefully threadbare, while his upper torso, fully exposed to the elements,
appeared supple and well-tanned—with the kind of skin you might find
on a whip made of proper leather. With little else to keep them busy, the
Japanese soldiers usually came and went as they pleased, stopping by the
animal pen to smoke a few cigarettes and shoot the breeze. But on this par-
ticular day one of the soldiers suggested they try convincing the coolie to
mount the female goat. Craving a bit of excitement, the soldiers readily con-
sented to the man’s proposal, and they proceeded to entice the coolie with
three packs of Hikari. Now, the Korean coolie had been accustomed to col-
lecting the soldiers’ used cigarette butts, or else rolling up dried grass with
newspaper to make his own makeshift smokes. After initially hesitating,
however, he found three packs of Hikari cigarettes a temptation he simply
couldn’t resist. And so it was here in this outdoor theater of sorts that the
ever-so-rare spectacle of bestiality found an audience. Forcing the unwilling
goat into submission, the coolie inserted his member from behind, and then
using his hips began an exercise of vigorous pumps. Here, the middle-aged
gentleman, listening to the older man’s story with undivided attention,
leaned into the table, and asked, “So, what happened next?”
“Oh, it was classic. You see, the goat then narrowed her eyes, knelt for-
ward, and started to go baaa, baaa.”
“She had a good time of it then,” chuckled the middle-aged man, his
eyes sparkling with a lecherous twinkle.
“I wonder. Maybe so,” said the older man with a smile. It was at this
point that Han Sŏnghyŏng, looking appalled by what he’d just heard, in-
serted himself into their conversation. “So what happened after that?”
“After that?” asked the older man, somewhat perturbed by the unexpect-
ed intruder, but not yet mindful of the meaning of Han Sŏnghyŏng’s words.
“You mean to the goat? Well, there’s not much more to tell. That was
the end of it.”
“Surely that wasn’t the end of the story. Isn’t there a sequel?”
Han Sŏnghyŏng was clearly implying something with this line of ques-
tioning and the older man replied with bewilderment.
“A sequel? I’m not sure what you mean.”
“You know, the part when all the village girls are gang raped, for ex-
ample, and then slaughtered, or when a kid gets decapitated by some guy
testing out his new sword. Oh, I’m sure there’s plenty more to tell . . .”
The man was now alarmed.
62 Yang Sŏgil

“What exactly are you saying, sir? There was no reason for us to do
anything of the sort.”
“Well, you’ve got to admit it was pretty common over there in China
and Korea. I mean, wasn’t it?”
“No, sir, you’ve got it all wrong. Our regiment never fired a single
bullet.”
“Oh, I see. You never fired a single bullet. So is that supposed to mean
that it wasn’t a crime to force a poor coolie into fucking a goat? Well, as a
Korean myself, I find your story not only despicable, but unforgivable. To
me, that was an act of pure evil—on par with gang rape and mass mur-
der. But clearly you have a different take on the matter.” As soon as Han
Sŏnghyŏng identified himself as a Korean, the older man fell silent, his
humiliation making him bitterly regret the words he had just spoken. It
was the middle-aged gentleman, however, who seemed utterly bewildered
by the animosity he sensed in Han Sŏnghyŏng’s assigning of blame. He
proceeded to make excuses for his older friend.
“Now, I can understand why this was not a pleasant story from your
perspective. But I assure you it was just the alcohol talking, and you cer-
tainly needn’t make such a big stink over it. Japan is at peace now, and all
of us coexist happily.”
“Happily? I hardly think so. The Japanese detest Koreans. We’re the
scum of the earth from your perspective.”
“Well, I for one certainly don’t think that way,” replied the middle-aged
gentleman, adjusting his posture as though to affirm his incorruptibility.
There was something rather comical in the gesture.
Just then the two students across from us, whose ears were glued to each
word of our argument, raised their voices with a cobra-like hiss.
“Shit, I’ve heard enough from you kimchi crackers. Quit your whining,
and go back home, why don’t you? What gives you the right to boss us
around here in Japan? Huh?”
“Like my friend here says. You got a problem, and we’ll take you on
anytime. You just say when.” Their provocative words succeeded in push-
ing the short-tempered Han Sŏnghyŏng over the edge.
“Oh, so you wanna have a bit of fun, do you? You little punks!” Han
Sŏnghyŏng jumped to his feet, smashed a beer bottle on the counter, and
thrust the broken rim into the air like a dagger. Suddenly the whole room
fell silent. The first to be shaken were the two men sitting next to Han
Sŏnghyŏng, who quickly fled to the front of the restaurant. Two or three
of the cooks then jumped out from behind the counter. The floor was now
flooded with both cooks and customers trying to break things up between
us and the half-assed students. But we weren’t about to swallow our pride
until we’d landed the punks a crack or two across the jaw. After a bit of
pushing and shoving we heard a patrol car drive up with its siren blaring.
In Shinjuku 63

Tipped off by the two men who’d run outside, the policemen finally ap-
proached us.
“These two?” asked one cop, turning around to address the older
gentleman.
“Yes, they’re the ones,” replied the middle-aged man, pale-faced now,
and pointing to us with his index finger.
“All right. Let’s take you boys down to the station.” There was no ques-
tion whatsoever as to who the guilty party was.
“Hold on a sec. You’re not going to haul away those punks over there?”
I tried to draw the policeman’s attention in their direction, but he grabbed
my arm instead of answering, and pulled me away. “We’ll take down your
statement at the station.” All eyes were focused on us now. I noticed in the
crowd gathered around us the faces of two kind-hearted gentlemen: I had
seen them somewhere before. But then suddenly there appeared before me
several other faces, which broke through the shell of my present conscious-
ness: someone called after us, and we turned around only to see a thousand
different eyes, and then arms, tearing us to pieces—these were the faces of
a crowd that slaughtered more than five thousand Koreans after the Great
Kanto Earthquake. Brought back to the present, I found myself riding in
a patrol car for the first time in my life, and when we entered the station,
countless pairs of sadistic eyes proceeded to peel off our skin, layer by layer.
An obese man with no revolver and looking the part of a superior
grabbed onto his belt and hoisted up folds of his flesh. Toothpick in ac-
tion, dislodging food from his teeth, he sauntered over. “Alright, so what’s
happened? What’d they do?” His arrogant tone of voice lay bare his low-
ranking status—he was the sort of guy who sits on a high horse looking
down on all others.
“Drunken brawl,” said the cop who had marched us inside. Off-duty
officers hovered around us like a swarm of flies, a hidden desire to slowly
savor the taste of freshly caught prey showed vividly on their faces. They
sat us down in front of a desk and began the interrogation.
“Names.” The policeman ordered, initiating his effort to confirm our
identities.
“My name is Yang Chŏngung.”4
“Yang Chŏngung? Ah . . . so, you’re from over there?” The policeman
turned toward Han Sŏnghyŏng now, eyeing him suspiciously.
“And what about you?”
“. . .” Han Sŏnghyŏng looked away, and then lit a cigarette. The cops
took out their ballpoint pens and scrutinized our faces.

4 
It is unclear from the characters how Yang would have pronounced this name—which
bears a similarity to the name the author himself often went by—but the characters do sug-
gest possible pronunciations that would be recognizably Zainichi.
64 Yang Sŏgil

“You’ve got your alien registration cards on you, don’t you? Let’s see
them.” Han Sŏnghyŏng and I turned to each other. We were not carrying
our registration cards. And there was nothing unusual about it. It’s easy to
forget the card when you’re changing clothes or switching jackets.
“Forgot to carry their cards, huh? Sounds to me like they’re asking for
trouble.” These malicious words from a superior came from somewhere
off to the side.
“OK, give me your address.” I myself lived in Mishuku, and Han
Sŏnghyŏng, in Nippori.
“Hmm, opposite sides of town. Well, what about a phone number where
I can contact someone?” Both of us lived alone.
“So, basically, we have no way of proving who you are?” Han Sŏnghyŏng
and I could do little but snicker at the banality of the man’s reasoning. Of
course, we had friends who could confirm our identities. But the idea of
asking someone to find our alien registration cards and bring them to police
station in the middle of the night was just plain stupid. Having to carry
them around with us in the first place was already extremely unpleasant.
“I trust you boys have read the precautions printed on your alien reg-
istration cards. Or maybe you haven’t? That’s a bit careless though, isn’t
it? You should at least know you’re supposed to carry the things around
with you. Explain to me why don’t you have them? We’re not talking a
driver’s license, here. This sort of thing can get you deported.” The logic
of the man’s threats rested on a particular assumption: that one of the most
trivial of everyday matters—forgetting something, for example, or being
a bit careless—amounted to something criminal. Being Zainichi Korean
meant that our ability to remember, to pay attention, to do anything at all
was already subject to criminalization. At this point Han Sŏnghyŏng raised
his voice to object. Why had they arrested only us, and let those students go
free? The way the cops were going about their jobs was clearly prejudiced.
Two sides are always to blame in a fight, after all. And Han Sŏnghyŏng
had no intention of answering any questions until this particular issue
was clarified to his satisfaction. The head honcho now looked ready to
regurgitate something from the sewer-like recesses of his potbelly. His face
suddenly flushed, and saliva began to drip from the sides of his greasy lips.
“The issue of the fight has already been settled. Which is why the stu-
dents have been allowed to go free. You are now under questioning for
your violation of the immigration law. What about that don’t you under-
stand?” The policeman now spoke as though this new infraction were
the very reason we’d been arrested in the first place. Nevertheless, Han
Sŏnghyŏng proceeded with his objections: we never have and never will
accept the validity of alien registration cards. The Japanese government
arbitrarily ignores our fundamental civil rights, forcing us to carry ID cards
as though they were dog tags draped around our necks.
In Shinjuku 65

The Japanese imperialists continue to make false accusations against

us, and to infringe on our fundamental right to self-determination. The
demand that we show our alien registration cards itself constitutes a
crime. It distorts the historical truth and amounts to a criminal act of im-
mense proportion. Cutting off the head honcho before he could speak,
Han Sŏnghyŏng pressed on with his objections. Do you even know what
it means to be a Zainichi Korean? I mean, how do you think we got to
Japan in the first place—where we’re subject to all your scorn, all your
discrimination, and all this needless questioning? Do you boys even care
what brought us here today? Or do you simply have more fun defending
the crimes perpetuated against us by all your fellow Japanese citizens? Oh,
the government of Japan sang a good song of friendship with its neighbors
all right. Then it marched across the globe, robbing the hair off our asses.
And after all that, you now have the nerve to proclaim, “No trespassing
on Japanese soil.” Never has Japan hesitated to label other people thieves
precisely so it can call itself a paragon of the legal process. This shameless
behavior disguises its own vice under the banner of justice. So how about
you tell me this: are those half-assed students back at the bar your idea of
law-abiding citizens? Or maybe those pathetic, hypocritical businessmen
who turned us in? Do you really think the public prosecutor’s office is a
paragon of justice? Or even the judiciary? And the pack of dogs they keep
around to protect them? The police and the legislature are all cunning little
creatures living in the same hovel, who won’t tolerate the cry of a single hu-
man soul. But the soul, let me tell you, is unstoppable—just like the blood
coursing through it. As Han Sŏnghyŏng spoke, he held his fist raised into
the air, foam flying from the corners of his mouth. It was reminiscent of the
fervid orations he’d once delivered as a former organizer.
The officers had expected us to get on our knees and plead for forgive-
ness, so they now felt betrayed by Han Sŏnghyŏng’s provocations. The
head honcho’s patience had come to a breaking point, and the sound of his
voice soon resounded through the building like a broken bell.
“I’ve heard enough! We haven’t brought you here to listen to your ex-
cuses. The law has no place for them. We’ve been here for an hour already,
and we still haven’t gotten your name. This is a willful obstruction of our
official investigation: ‘Interference with a public servant in the execution
of his duties.’ And if you insist on being uncooperative, we have ways of
dealing with you. So what I’m saying is: don’t piss off a cop! We can always
hand you over to the South Koreans, and save ourselves some grief. Unless
you’re dying to stay here for a couple of nights, of course.” Imitating per-
fectly the tone of his superior, a young cop just out of training proceeded to
poke his nose into our faces. “You idiots broke the law. And if you’re living
in Japan you have to obey Japanese law. What’s so hard about getting that
into your thick skulls? I’ll bet a couple days in the slammer will teach you
66 Yang Sŏgil

a thing or two. You’re sure as hell not going home tonight so you’ll have
plenty of time to reconsider.” Having completely encircled us, several of
the man’s colleagues began taunting us and snickering. “Nah, let’s make
it a week in the slammer?” “Or how about we send them off to the Ōmura
Detention Center? Heh-heh.”5
“Well, that’s awful classy. But let’s not waste taxpayers’ money on trav-
el, okay? I already pay my share handsomely.” Han Sŏnghyŏng’s retort
dripped with sarcasm.
“Chief, I say we lock ’em up for the night and look into it tomorrow.
It’s a complicated case,” said the cop who’d brought us in, with a twirl of
his nightstick.
“Hmm . . .” The chief folded his arms, as though pondering the situation.
“Maybe that’s best. Let’s do it.” It was too much trouble, it seemed, to say
anything more. The policemen standing guard on either side grabbed a
hold of my arms to take me away. I tried to pull myself out from their grip.
“This is an abuse of authority!” I shouted. “What abuse of authority? You’re
the ones who broke the law,” objected one, squeezing my arm even tighter.
Having already belted out a long series of lectures, Han Sŏnghyŏng
suddenly squatted to the ground. When the policeman prodded him from
behind him, he finally stood up, rather meekly. It was then that a peculiar
stench suddenly filled the room. “Hey, what’s that smell? What is it?” They
started sniffing the air to locate the stench, and track it to its source. The
policeman assigned to Han Sŏnghyŏng then peered into Han’s face, “Is that
you?” No sooner had Han Sŏnghyŏng replied, with a straight face, “Yes,
it is,” then he slowly unbuckled his belt, inserted his hand down into his
pants, and pulled out a large brown clump of shit. Standing there in front
of the dumbfounded cops, an intrepid smile now rose over his lips as he
smeared it over his face, and then onto his torso.
“Stop it! Stop it!” shouted the policemen, now in a panic. Eyeing
them from the side, Han Sŏnghyŏng reached into his pants for still more
shit, and proceeded to smear it on the chairs, on the desk, on the filing
cabinet—everywhere.

5 
The Ōmura Detention Center, located in Nagasaki Prefecture, was a well-known site
used for detaining war refugees and other “illegal” Koreans during and following the Ko-
rean War.
FOUR

Selected Poems from Nagune Taryong:

Eternal Traveler

LEE JUNGJA
Translated with an introduction by Haeng-ja Chung

Translator’s Note
Nagune Taryong: Eternal Traveler, published in 1991, is a collection of 390
tanka poems by Lee Jungja, a Japanese-born Korean from the city of Iga in
Mie Prefecture.1 Nagune means “traveler,” and taryong means “lament” in
Korean. Some poems highlight visible and invisible characteristics of law,
history, and livelihood in Japan. Others capture the poet’s struggle in the
dichotomous framework between Korea and Japan or between the genera-
tion gaps imposed on her. Some poems show her attempt to transcend such
contradictions, and others express the moments of joy in between. Due to
space constraints, only selected poems are translated here.
A Japanese tanka poem consists of upper phrases (five syllables, seven
syllables, five syllables) and lower phrases (seven syllables, seven sylla-
bles). This succinct format, like that of haiku poems, may allow multiple
interpretations, and I often had to choose one among many possibilities.
I placed my translation along each original poem, so that readers may
entertain their own interpretations. My translation tries to represent the
tanka style by dividing each poem into five lines, although in the original
each poem is printed vertically in a single line. It is a challenge to convey
the possible meanings of a poem or the intention of a poet while retaining
the effects of this particular format and sounds. 
I used lowercase throughout the translations to show the nuances of the
original poems. For example, in tanka, the subject I is often assumed or
suggested. However, in English translation, it is hard to omit the subject.

See Lee Jungja 李正子, Nagune Taryong: Eternal Traveler ナグネタリョン：永遠の旅人 (Tokyo:
1 

Kawade Shobo Shinsha, 1991).

68 Lee Jungja

Therefore, I used a lowercase i to represent this difference. Furthermore,

some of Lee’s tanka poems capture the struggles and sufferings of lives
that are not neatly confined by the national borders that governments try to
impose on people. Therefore, I use lowercase for a country and nationality
against the convention. For example, Korea/Korean and Japan/Japanese
are replaced by korea/korean and japan/japanese. I hope this unconven-
tionality invites readers to question assumed categories, such as nation and
state. In addition, I use italics when a word is written unconventionally
in katakana (katakana being one of the writing systems of Japanese, along
with hiragana and kanji).
In this translation project, I have two goals in my mind: (1) to introduce
Japanese tanka poems to a wider audience, and (2) to model how a collab-
orative translation project between a faculty member and undergraduate
students might work. This is my first attempt to publish translated poetry,
and it is the fruit of assignments given to my anthropology and East Asian
studies students at Hamilton College and Smith College. Some students
had already studied university-level Japanese language, but their profi-
ciency level varied. Other students had never taken any Japanese language
courses and knew little Japanese. The latter group of students were in my
courses because they were interested in specific topics, such as Japanese
culture or cultural anthropology. Since most students had little or no ex-
posure to Japanese tanka, it was demanding for both the instructor and
students, as I anticipated. An interesting discovery was that the translation
process was somewhat exciting and even therapeutic for both, at some
points if not all the time. 
In order to overcome the language challenge, I came up with the follow-
ing approach: First, I read all the tanka out loud in Japanese in class, so that
students could appreciate the sound of the original poems of 5-7-5-7-7: five
syllables, seven syllables, five syllables, seven syllables, seven syllables.
Even those students who had never studied Japanese requested that I read
the tanka in Japanese when I asked the class if I should keep reading the
poems in their original language. I also gave them my literal, rough trans-
lation. Then, I discussed the social context, historical background, and cul-
tural nuances of each poem. I also created lots of opportunities for students
to ask questions and exchange their ideas. After students came up with
their draft translations, we shared our work and exchanged ideas both in
class and via online platforms, such as Blackboard and Moodle.
These were new learning experiences for students. One student had
never studied Japanese, but the process of understanding tanka was so
soothing that he wanted to continue reading tanka on his own, even after
the course ended. This student also said that he introduced the tanka to
Selected Poems from Nagune Taryong: Eternal Traveler 69

his father. Another student was assigned to translate tanka into English
for a local government in Japan where she found a job after graduating
from college. She said that the course had provided excellent preparation
for her new job. My reunion with her in Japan reminded us that a college
education can be useful in ways you do not expect.
I would like to thank all the people who were involved in this transla-
tion project. I would particularly like to thank those at the University of
California, Berkeley. Professor John Lie, who took the initiative to develop
this important project, hosted a workshop at the University of Califor-
nia, Berkeley, and showed invaluable support and patience to edit and
compile this book. Kate Lawn Chouta offered wonderful copyediting. I
also would like to thank workshop participants and administrative staff,
my former students, and the anonymous reviewers who offered insightful
comments and suggestions. Of course, all errors are mine.
Finally, I show my gratitude to readers who picked up this book. I hope
readers can feel the excitement and enjoy the therapeutic effects as I did
while reading, translating, and revising. I also hope that those who can
read Japanese will visit Lee’s original book and other anthologies to enjoy
more of her tanka and find your own favorite poems.
70 Lee Jungja

Selected Poems from Nagune Taryong: Eternal Traveler

Chapter 1. Japan If I Turn Around (ふりむけば日本)

潮ざかい Between the Tides

(pp. 12–14)

その海の果てはふるさとふるさとの大地はふたつ鳥は通えど

homeland lies on
the other end of the sea
although birds may fly free
back and forth
homeland is divided into two

うず お
朝鮮のおとこの胸に埋めえぬ身の堕ちゆくは潮ざかいなる

unable to root myself

in the embrace of
a korean man
the body is pulled under
into an eddy of colliding currents

愛しきれぬ日本の国のその国のアナタと結ぶ渇くナミダに

japan, the country

unable to fully love
i bind myself
to you of that country
with dried tears
Selected Poems from Nagune Taryong: Eternal Traveler 71

落魄の母 Poor Mother
(pp. 15–17)

くりや
秋の灯のこぼるる廚に母と煮る青唐辛子からく匂うや

in the kitchen
the light of autumn is pouring
the green chilies
i cook with my mother
smell spicy
72 Lee Jungja

雪あかり Snow Light
(pp. 18–21)

ね ふる
ハングルをつまずき読めば失いし身にとめどなく鈴の音震う

as i read the korean alphabet clumsily

the sound of the bell
trembles incessantly
within my body
that lost

ふかぶかと羽をたためる鳥の絵の李朝白磁の雪ふりしきる

paintings of the bird

that calmly folds their wings
snow falls on and on
the white porcelain
of the lee dynasty
Selected Poems from Nagune Taryong: Eternal Traveler 73

喪失者 The Person Who Feels Loss

(pp. 22–24)

あ
もの言えぬくちびるうすく生れ落ちてすなわちそれより喪失者なる

i was born with thin lips

that are muted
in other words
i have been deprived
since then
74 Lee Jungja

耳鳴り Tinnitus
(pp. 25–27)

日本人朝鮮人も信じ切れぬこころ踏みつつうたう歌あり

there is a poem
generated
while stepping on the heart
that can fully trust
neither japanese nor korean
Selected Poems from Nagune Taryong: Eternal Traveler 75

しなう身 Bending Body
(pp. 28–29)

宿命のごとく傷つけ合う言葉交わしどこまでか日本人と我ら

how far
japanese and we
exchange words
that hurt one another
as if it is destined

踏み迷う心の果てに歩みきて愛さむとする日本の風

i have walked
all the way
on the verge of my wondering heart
i attempt to love
japan’s wind
76 Lee Jungja

さくら列島 Archipelagos of Cherry Blossoms

(pp. 30–32)

たた やよいよいやみ
桜讃えたたえてやまぬこの国の弥生宵闇しんそこ寂し

in this country
that is endlessly praising
the cherry blossoms
i am lonely from the bottom of my heart
in the march dusk
Selected Poems from Nagune Taryong: Eternal Traveler 77

白き花 White Flower
(pp. 38–39)

す いた ほ
酸ゆくなりしキムチ炒める指さきのなに欲るごとぞほそき力は

dainty fingertips that

are frying
the kimchi
that has gone sour
what does the thin power want?
78 Lee Jungja

〈地の塩〉 “Salt of the Earth”

(pp. 40–43)

うべな
〈地の塩〉と告げられ肯いがたかりき植民地の子とし帆を張る我ら

it is hard to agree
even being told
we are the “salt of the earth”
we spread out our sails farther
as children of the colony

あずかり知らぬ歴史とし去る靴の音傷つきやすき日本人きみも

refusing the past

the sound of
your leaving footsteps
you are also the Japanese
who easily get hurt

たい
朝鮮人そのことのまえ母の慈悲母の胎よりさずけられたる

before being korean

i was born from
mother’s womb
given by
mother’s mercy
Selected Poems from Nagune Taryong: Eternal Traveler 79

朝鮮の母 Mother of Korea
(pp. 44–45)

夏あらし吹き荒れてなおしずかなる心よ朝鮮の母はいつわらぬ

even though
the summer storm
blows wildly
with a calm mind
the korean mother does not lie
80 Lee Jungja

父の朝鮮語 Father’s Korean Language

(pp. 50–52)

いさかいて言葉うしなうとき父のつねの呪文のごとき朝鮮語

whenever my father
loses his words
during argument
his korean tongue always
sounds like an incantation

シン セタリョン
さながらに身勢打鈴となる父の朝鮮語やはり呪文かしれぬ

as it were
my father’s speech transforms into
a life lamentation
his korean might be
an incantation after all

シン セ タ リョン
身勢打鈴となる美しき朝鮮語われは思うままに話せず

beautiful korean language

that transforms into
a life lamentation
yet i can’t speak it
as i wish

チャンゴ タ つ まが
長鼓打つ憑かれむまでに打つ音に紛いて風のなかの父の声

i play the korean drum

as if possessed
my father’s voice mixed with
the drumming sound
in the wind
Selected Poems from Nagune Taryong: Eternal Traveler 81

ふりむけば日本 Japan If I Turn Around

(pp. 53–55)

靴ぬぎてひとりたたずむすすき野のむこうは祖国ふりむけば日本

taking off my shoes

as i am standing alone
my fatherland
is just over silver grass
i see japan if i look back
82 Lee Jungja

Chapter 2. Proof of Humans (人間のあかし)

ひとりよがり Complacency
(pp. 58–60)

戦後すなわち敗戦後とぞこだわればたちまちわれの語尾あらくなる

if i insist
postwar means
postdefeat
ends of my words
become harsh

日本人らしさの規定そこよりのナショナリズムに疎外されおり

the nationalism
informed by
the definition of
japaneseness
alienates me

ひとりよがりの平和うたがうこともなく四十二年は日本人のもの

without doubting
their self-righteous peace
the past forty-two years
are owned by
the japanese people
Selected Poems from Nagune Taryong: Eternal Traveler 83

きんしゅう
錦繍の野は日本のいろ平和のいろ平和のいろは排外のかおり

the colorful fields resemble

the color of japan
the color of peace
this color of peace smells
the fragrance of exclusion
84 Lee Jungja

権力 Hegemony
(pp. 61–63)

友のゆび子のゆび吾がゆび罪もたぬゆびがなにゆえ虐げられぬ

the fingers of my friends

the fingers of my children
the fingers of my own
why must the innocent fingers
be abused

じゃくじゃく
寂 々 と指の痛みのとめどなし耐えがたきまでに真実を問う

all by my lonesome
the pain of my fingers
is endless
i ask the truth
to the unbearable point

すみ
鉛筆をにぎれる指を墨黒く塗らるる母は耐えがたかりき

my children’s fingers
which meant to be holding a pencil are
soaked in black ink
it is unbearable
as a mother

美しき日本の野にものぐらく権力があり　ある日寂しむ

in the beautiful japanese fields

a hidden power
lurks darkly
one day
i am lonely
Selected Poems from Nagune Taryong: Eternal Traveler 85

偽善者 Hypocrite
(pp. 68–69)

いろ
〈偽善者〉と告げくる手紙読む窓にあかねの彩のうつろいており

i read a letter that comes to say

“you are a hypocrite”
by the window
the color of madder red
is transforming

〈テンノウ〉の歌詠む指紋拒否者などナルシスト、
マゾヒスト、シマグニの奴隷

even you have refused to be fingerprinted

you still write the “emperor’s” poems2
therefore, a narcissist, masochist
and
a slave of the island country

2 
For detailed discussion of the relationship between tanka and the Japanese emperor
(tenno) system, see Mitsuko Uchino’s works: Tanka to tennōsei [Tanka and the Japanese em-
peror system] (Nagoya: Fuubaisha, 1988); Gendai tanka to tennōsei [Modern tanka and the
Japanese ­emperor system] (Nagoya: Fuubaisha, 2001); and Tennō no tankawa naniwo kataru-
noka: Gendai tanka to tennōsei [What do Japanese emperors’ tanka tell: Modern tanka and the
Japanese emperor system] (Tokyo: Ochanomizu Shobou, 2013).
86 Lee Jungja

拒否の群れ Refusing Herd
(pp. 70–73)

うず
コスモスの埋むる野辺を見しことが唯一なりき祖国というは

as for the fatherland

the only thing i saw was
the wild fields
densely covered by
cosmos

日本人らしさをときに呪文としわれは無口にも饒舌にもなる

making it the mantra occasionally

to behave
like the japanese people
i can be both
muted and talkative

す か
この国のほかに住み処はもてざりし或る日まぶたの重さまで問う

i cannot have anywhere else to live

outside of this country
one day
i even question
the weight of my eyelids

おうなつ なみだ たの
「押捺を拒否します」くり返すときこぼれ落つる 泪 よ祖国になに恃むべき

“i refuse to be fingerprinted”
when i repeat
oh, tears, which fall down my cheek
what should i rely on
my fatherland for
Selected Poems from Nagune Taryong: Eternal Traveler 87

時代のなか生き継ぐ指の傷深くさらして拒否の群れつづくなり

in the era
by exposing the deep scars
on our surviving fingers
a refusing flock follows
one after another
88 Lee Jungja

人間のあかし Proof of Humans
(pp. 74–76)

ふるさとに還れぬものの骨の音　骨の孤独と人の孤独と

the sound of the bones of a person

who cannot return
to the homeland
the loneliness of the bones and
the solitude of the person

いのちかけて今さら守る何ありや骨に沁み入る日本の風

is there anything worthwhile

to protect
while risking my life?
the japanese winds
sink deep into my bones

エ グッ カ
『愛国歌』を聴きつつ正座するわれは膝になみだを落としていたり

sitting straight with my legs bent

and listening to
“the patriotic song”3
i noticed my tears
were dropping onto my knees

3 
Egukga, meaning the national anthem of South Korea.
Selected Poems from Nagune Taryong: Eternal Traveler 89

不透明にかさねられたる日本の論理あるいは我らをおとしめ

japan’s logic
layered without transparency
otherwise
undermines us
with disdain

たどたどと人間のあかし問い継ぎて思考の果てに拒む〈法〉あり

clumsily
continuing to ask for
proof of humanity
at the end of my thoughts
there is a “law,” which rejects
90 Lee Jungja

挫折 Setback
(pp. 77–79)

理解されぬ思いと知りて書く手紙このわびしさはたとえがたかり

hard to describe
this dreariness
of writing a letter
knowing that my feelings
are not understood

と さぼう と
MもKも訪わぬ茶房を今日も訪い刑事四人がクリスマスケーキ買う

neither M nor K
visit my tearoom
yet the four detectives
visit again today
and buy a christmas cake

びこう
コーヒーをたておえしとき平安はもっとも鼻腔をひたしくるなり

a waft of peace
is seeping deep into
my nose mostly
right after fresh coffee
has been made
Selected Poems from Nagune Taryong: Eternal Traveler 91

橋のかなた Far Beyond a Bridge

(pp. 80–83)

寂しさに身動きならず橋のかなた活動家となりし君が振る旗

loneliness
petrifies me
i see the flag waved by you
who have become an activist
far beyond the bridge

かがやきを増しきて論理説く君をやや卑屈となり見送るわれか

slightly becoming servile

i send you off
who preach logic
while shining
brighter and brighter

もと
組織もたぬことさまざまに寂しめど桟橋の下の潮鳴りの音

without belonging to any organizations

i am lonely in many ways
yet
i hear the sound of the tide
under the pier
92 Lee Jungja

タイムリミット Time Limit
(pp. 86–88)

おうなつ
押捺を乞う声おもく耳に鳴る父はおそらくわれよりも寂し

a voice
which begs for a fingerprint
resonates heavily in my ears
my father is perhaps
lonelier than i am

滅びるのか滅ぼされるのか日常にかく人間の残酷を見き

i wonder
if we will perish or
will be perished
in the quotidian
i have seen this human cruelty

燃ゆるとは怒れることにほかならぬ湯のなかわれは四肢伸ばしおり

being passionate
is no different from
getting angry
i am stretching my limbs
in the bath

ま
神のみが知る真実と虚偽の間を生かされておりわれと我らは

i and we
are let to live
between truth and falseness
only god knows
the distinction
Selected Poems from Nagune Taryong: Eternal Traveler 93

スクラム Scrum
(pp. 89–91)

よ
会報の届くそのまま焼くわれは長く挫折の手のひらに依る

as soon as the newsletter arrives

i burn it immediately
i hinge on my palms
by a sense of failure
for a long time

スクラムを組めずひとりの指守るこの指いかほどの価値もつものよ

because i cannot form a scrum

i protect my finger alone
i wonder
how much value
this finger has
94 Lee Jungja

吹雪ける町 Town of Snowstorm
(pp. 94–95)

ぬか
〈捕えられてよいか〉声高き父のまえ額を垂れつつ答えがたかり

“is it ok to be arrested?!”
in front of my father
who raises his voice
it is difficult to reply
while my forehead is hanging low

な な そじ
捕えられても今さら失うものはなき七十路の父の嘆くよりほか

even if i am arrested
i have nothing to lose
anymore
except lament of
my father in his seventies

みぞれ
捕えられても生き方に変わるものはなき 霙 まじりの雨に鳴る窓

despite being arrested

i see no change
in my way of life
the rain mixed with sleet
causes the windowpane to rumble

ふ ぶ あ
出頭命令迫る吹雪ける町ここにたしかに生れしことの不思議に

the subpoena is approaching

under the snowstorm
the wonder of it
i certainly was born
here in this town
Selected Poems from Nagune Taryong: Eternal Traveler 95

人さし指の自由 Freedom of the Index Finger

(pp. 96–99)

かぞ
十四の春より数えがたきまま塗る墨かげりふかき真実

since the spring of

age fourteen
the truth has been difficult to count
to be painted darkly
as black ink eclipses

おうなつ あらが
語尾すこし強め押捺乞う声の 抗 いがたきまでに老いしが

stressing the end of the sentence slightly

the voice begging
for my fingerprint
i become too old
to resist

夏ふたつ越えて敗れ去るわれは満面笑みのまえに黙しつつ

after two summers

have passed
i end up leaving defeated
in silence
faced by a full smile

人さし指の自由人間であることの自由につねに墨塗られつつ

freedom of
the index finger
freedom as a human being
are always marred
by ink
96 Lee Jungja

びこう
口角のふるえ隠せば鼻孔よりにじむ悔いともナミダとも思う

when i conceal
the trembling corners of my mouth
i wonder what spreads
from my nostril
is regret and/or tears

つづまりはわれを裏切るわれの手が夕ベ夕べに放つ匂いに

in the end
my hand
betrays me
due to an odor emitted
every evening

ただ人でありたきことの貫けぬ梅雨の晴れ間を湧く雲の朝

my wish to be
just an ordinary person
cannot be fulfilled
the morning clouds spring through
at a sunny moment of the rainy season

ぬか と わ
今われに言葉は尽きて額伏せて押す人さし指の永遠にかえらぬ

running out of words now

i put my forehead downward
my index finger
inked and pressed down
will never return forever
Selected Poems from Nagune Taryong: Eternal Traveler 97

「和製」の民 People “Made-in-Japan”
(pp. 100–104)

「押しました」葉書数枚書きながら書けぬ一枚は師のやさしさに

“i submitted my fingerprint”
while i was writing a few postcards
there is one card
i cannot write
due to my teacher’s kindness

ムグンファ

誰のせいにもあらぬ自らに敗れたる無窮花咲きのこりいてほの白き

nobody’s fault
i was defeated
by myself
korean hibiscus remains blooming and
glowing white dimly

闘いのもなかの群れの傷のまえわれの卑劣はためされている

in the middle of
the fighting crowd
in front of wounds
my turpitude
is being tested

国の意思は民の意思ともおもうとき枕を叩きうずくまりゆく

when i think
the will of the nation is also
the will of the people
i hit a pillow
crouching down
98 Lee Jungja

こののちをいかなるさまに燃ゆるべき吾もわれらも「和製」の民よ

after this
in what way
should i be passionate
we are all people
“made-in-japan”
Selected Poems from Nagune Taryong: Eternal Traveler 99

無念 Resentment
(pp. 105–109)

すきやきの残りに作るビビムバブをキムチの色に染めている子の

my child is
cooking bibimbap
in leftover sukiyaki
by dying it
the color of kimchi

十六となる子世のものをまだ見ぬ子何に意味もつ指のその紋

a child turning sixteen is

a child who is not full-fledged yet
what meaning do
the prints of the finger
have

ひ
耳小さくうなじに曳きて光る汗うつむく今し子が指紋押す

the glimmer of sweat

drips from his small ear
to his nape
the child looks down and
the fingerprint is pressed now

と
水流をかさね不透明となる歴史この不思議さは人を解かざる

history
which becomes opaque
by piling up
the layers of the current
this mystery un-relieves people
100 Lee Jungja

梅雨はげし遅れ小さく花咲かす白きトラジのけぶれる真昼

midday
amid the tempestuous rainy season
in the haze of
belatedly bloomed
small white korean bellflowers

らち
日本生まれの日本育ちの母と子の外人手帳は意志になき埒

alien registration cards of

japanese-born and
japanese-raised
mother and child are
against their intentions

ご い
〈生まれたらそこがふるさと〉うつくしき語彙にくるしみ閉じゆく絵本

“if i am born here,

this is my home country”
i am closing the picture book
while
suffering from this beautiful phrase
Selected Poems from Nagune Taryong: Eternal Traveler 101

時の旅人 Time Traveler
(pp. 110–113)

さぼう
ひとりこもる部屋を持ちたし机など置きたし茶房の隅に読みつぐ

i wish for a room with

a desk and such
to retreat into
i continue reading
in the corner of my tearoom

ほうこう
秋さかり昭和さかりを彷徨す地球にふるさと持てぬものたち

the peak of autumn

the height of the showa era
those who cannot have a hometown
on this earth
wander around

人の子人の母にて時の旅人や　辿るふるさと持てぬわたくし

as someone’s child
someone’s mother and
a time traveler
i cannot have a hometown
to trace
102 Lee Jungja

と わ
Chapter 3. Eternal Traveler 永遠のナグネ

騒乱の町 Town of Uprising
(pp. 116–118)

う なみだ
シュプレヒコールくり返す頬のおさなさよ政治に倦めどなお 泪 ぐむ

repeated slogans
yelled by childlike cheeks
make me cry
although
i get tired of politics

血垂らして街路にうずくまるみれば思い尽くしてわが膝を抱く

when i see them

dripping with blood and squatting down
on the avenue
i hug my knees
with all my heart
Selected Poems from Nagune Taryong: Eternal Traveler 103

海の墓 Grave of the Sea

(pp. 119–121)

あざやかにきみ解く謎は韓国の陰謀結論づけてただ笑む

you judge and just smile

by concluding a mystery
you brilliantly solve
is a conspiracy theory
of south korea
104 Lee Jungja

ソ ジュンシク
五月のひかり：徐俊植の釈放 Light of May: The Release of So Junsik4
(pp. 126–128)

解かれたる人の意外にうすき肩海越えて差す五月のひかり

the released person has

unexpectedly
thin shoulders
the light of may points
beyond the sea

時代の子チョーセンの子陥穽より解かれしを聞けば泣けるだけ泣く

child of the era

child of gook
i just cry and cry
when i hear
he was released from the pitfall

ふか で
夢に想う祖国花野はまぶしきに旅の子ら愛の深傷を負えり

the fields of flowers

i think of homeland in my dream
are glaring
the children of journey
bear the deep wounds of love

4 
So Jungsik was a Japanese-born Zainichi Korean who was arrested in South Korea after
being accused of being a North Korean spy.
Selected Poems from Nagune Taryong: Eternal Traveler 105

昼ぼたる Daytime Firefly
(pp. 129–131)

ソウル五輪に関わりあらぬ日常に父母の十円募金のかさよ

the seoul olympics

have nothing to do with
everyday life
donations of my parents’ ten cents
are bulky

讃美してやがてかなしくなるまでに五輪は遠しとおし父母には

the olympics are far

beyond the parents’ reach
to the extent that
they eventually become sad
after praising

かぞ
食いはぐれしものが募金のかさ数うここに死にゆくといつより決めて

those who can hardly feed themselves count

their pennies to donate
they have decided to
be dying here
since some time or another

ここに死ぬと決めて写真を撮る母はうすき髪結い正装をする

deciding to die here

my mother
ties back her thin hair
puts on a formal dress
and is photographed
106 Lee Jungja

渡れぬ河 The River That Cannot Be Crossed

(pp. 132–136)

なみだ

泪 もろくなりしを告げあう受話器には混じるソウルよりの中継

telling each other

we become flimsily moved to tears
through the phone handsets
that are entangled with the
broadcast from seoul

大方は聞きとりがたきハングルに肩しずめつつ呼吸していぬ

because i can barely understand korean

i have realized that
i dropped my shoulders
and
failed to breathe

そうしん
ロス五輪ソウル五輪の差異もたぬ痩身にして子の色白き

the los angeles olympics or

the seoul olympics makes
no difference
to a slim child
with fair skin

体感のまえに時空の果てしなく首都はぬれおり糸引く雨や

endless time and space

before bodily sensation
long threads of rain
the capital city
is soaked
Selected Poems from Nagune Taryong: Eternal Traveler 107

射程 Shooting Range
(pp. 144–147)

やっかい
天皇制ファシズムという厄介さ二十四時間を侵されており

troublesome
called as imperial fascism
we are
being invaded
for twenty-four hours

ばっこ さう た
ショーワ、しょうわ、昭和の跋扈か発酵か目尻の左右に溜まれるナミダ

shōwa, shouwa
rampancy or fermentation
of the shōwa era
tears gathered
in the corners of both my eyes
108 Lee Jungja

きつね火 Will-o’-the-wisp
(pp. 152–153)

ゆ
天皇逝き李王妃が逝き逝く春の月は謎よりふかき色みす

the shōwa emperor has passed away

queen lee has passed away
a passing spring moon
exposes deeper color than
a mystery

ミン ビ コジョン イウ ン パン ジ ャビ

閔姫、高宗、李垠、方子姫はかなきは天球までを揺れるきつね火

queen min, king kojong

prince lee un, princess pangja
transience
is like a wavering will-o’-the-wisp moving
to celestial spheres
Selected Poems from Nagune Taryong: Eternal Traveler 109

喪章の都市 City of Mourning Sign

(pp. 154–157)

ハンド・イン・ハンド歌う北京の学生に重なる祖国の若き群れたち

the young herd of

my homeland
overlaps
the students in beijing
who sing “hand-in-hand”

あわれ東洋中国祖国　片陰にトラジの蕾はふくらみやまぬ

pity poor
orient china homeland
underneath the shade
buds of bellflowers
do not stop growing

祖国というどうしようもないものをキャタピラの影ふいにおそろし

impossible thing
called
the fatherland
caterpillar’s shadow
fear unexpectedly emerged

こんなふうに身近に感じてしまう中国なにか錯覚しているわたし

i feel close to china

like this
somehow
i am having
an illusion
110 Lee Jungja

異邦人 Aliens
(pp. 159–161)

囚われのひとりに投げるわたくしの意思表示さえ異邦者のもの

even the expression of

my intention
thrown to
one of the imprisoned
is that of an alien

ま
統一よ成れわたくしのいのちある間にあるだけの愛からまわりする

reach unification
while i am still alive
the whole of my love
just goes
round and round
Selected Poems from Nagune Taryong: Eternal Traveler 111

秋景色 Autumn Scenery
(pp. 162–165)

たなぞこを重ね木犀の花に寄る〈亡びぬ愛などあるものでしょうか〉

pressing palms together

i beseech fragrant flowers of
the sweet osmanthus
“can there be such
a love that does not perish?”

いだ びりょう
抱かれてなお漂えりかたわらに鼻梁たかき君はたれの恋人

even though i am embraced

i am still drifting
beside you
the high bridge of your nose
whose lover are you?

野のにおい花のにおいに充ちながらふたりいる時眉さみしかり

being fulfilled
with the fragrance
of fields and flowers
when we are together
eyebrows are lonely

れもん がんしゅう

檸檬匂う宵耐えがたき 含羞 よはじめて長き手紙を書きぬ

the evening
with lemon fragrance
unbearable embarrassment
i wrote a long letter
for the first time
112 Lee Jungja

おそらくはわたくしの負け秋景色傷つくことなら慣れているはず

probably i lose
the autumn scenery
i am supposed
to be used
to getting hurt
Selected Poems from Nagune Taryong: Eternal Traveler 113

輪舞 Round Dance
(pp. 180–183)

遠い遠いまだなお遠い分断の地図に輪舞の幻を見る

farther and farther

yet farther away
i see the illusion
of the round dance
on the map of the division

抱擁のあらわになだれ合うさまよ未知のドイツに重なる故国

the scenery of the people

rushing forward and embracing openly
unknown germany
mirrors
my homeland

「統一」の文字乱舞する終日を音なき雨が町濡らしおり

throughout the whole day

the letters of “unification”
are dancing freely
silent rain
is soaking the town

ね ウリ マ ル
花火の音消す歓声が焦がれ待つ耳に語尾つよき韓国語となる

the sound of fireworks

erased by the cheers
long and wait
our language korean
sounds strong at the end of words
114 Lee Jungja

うつむ ねた

俯 きて少し妬みてニュース見るブランデンブルグに吹く風や風

facing downward
with a little envy
i watch the news
wind in brandenburg
the wind blows and blows
Selected Poems from Nagune Taryong: Eternal Traveler 115

やさしき法律 Gentle Laws
(pp. 184–187)

民ら病む病むに気付かぬこの国の春のひかりは充ちて花咲き

the people are sick

this country is unaware of
the sickness
the light of spring fills
and flowers bloom

れんぎょう

祖国まぼろしいつの日もわれは迷いびと連 翹 の黄に野はそよぐとも

homeland illusion
at any day
i am a wanderer
even though the yellow of forsythia
sways the fields

かいな

人を人とし思うやさしき法律を腕をひらき夢にみるかな

opening my arms
i dream of
the gentle laws
that conceive of people
as people
116 Lee Jungja

チョゴリの子 Children in Korean Costumes

(pp. 188–190)

隣人と思えばくずれおちる髪襲われているチョゴリの子らが

when i think
as neighbors
collapsing hair
children in chogori korean blouses
are under attack

裂かれたるチマの悲鳴を聴く夜はからからと鳴るふたつの鎖骨

at night
when i hear the screams of
the torn chima korean skirt
two collarbones clattering together
crack crack

子を生みき祖国知らざる子を生みき母はひそかに天に罪問う

i birthed a child
who does not know the homeland
i birthed a child
this mother covertly asks heaven
about her sins
Selected Poems from Nagune Taryong: Eternal Traveler 117

ウリナラや身の丈ほどに燃ゆれども届かぬ父も吾も旅の子

urinara5 our country

although fire flickers
as tall as we are
neither father nor i can reach
both are the children of the journey

5 
Urinara means “our country” in Korean.
118 Lee Jungja

タリョン
ナグネ打鈴 Nagune Taryong
(pp. 191–198)

ユ ヒ ねいろ
聴き分けている「由煕」の声われの声見うしないたる者の音色と

i am distinguishing
“yuhi’s” voice6
my voice
as the sounds of the people
who have gotten lost

ユヒ と わ
「由煕」は永遠のナグネ敗れてわたくしはひとり見ているこの世のひまわり

“yuhi”
is the eternal traveler
defeated alone
i am watching
the sunflowers of this world

かえ
父の花　子の花　母の花が咲く土に還れぬナグネの花は

father flower
child flower
mother flower bloom
the flowers of nagune traveler
cannot return to the soil

6 
Yuhi is the protagonist of the novel titled Yuhi, which received the prestigious Akutagawa
Award for literature in 1989. See Lamentation as History: Narratives by Koreans in Japan, 1965–
2000 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005) for more information.
Selected Poems from Nagune Taryong: Eternal Traveler 119

かえ うず シンセタリ ョン タリョン
還れざる花は乳房に埋めおく身勢打鈴はナグネ打鈴よ

into the breast

i bury and leave the flowers
which cannot return
lamentation of life is
a sojourner’s lamentation
FIVE

Lee-kun’s Blues

WON SOO-IL
Translated with an introduction by Nathaniel Heneghan

“Lee-kun’s Blues” (“Ri-kun no yūutsu”) was published in 1987 as part of

Won Soo-il’s debut short story collection Ikaino Story—The Women from Che-
ju (Ikaino monogatari—Chejudo kara kita onnatachi). Won has since produced
two immensely entertaining and idiosyncratic novels, AV Odyssey (1997)
and All Night Blues (2004), as well as a compilation of anecdotes about his
mother’s struggles to raise a family as a Korean immigrant in Osaka, Ikaino
Tallyon (2016). Not particularly well-known or prolific, Won thus exists
as a minor author of “minor literature.” Perhaps more so than any other
Zainichi Korean author, however, Won’s works exhibit a single-minded
commitment to the documentation of the cultural space of Ikaino, Osaka’s
Korean ethnic enclave, and its formative position in the Zainichi collective
imagination. This is most evident in “Lee-kun’s Blues,” wherein the titular
protagonist posits Ikaino as the true “hometown” of the young generation
of Zainichi Koreans for whom Cheju Island exists not “as a place to call
‘home’; it was only a place to visit.” Ikaino, in the mind of Lee, constitutes
a unique syncretic space that is neither Korea nor Japan, but is made of
cultural fragments of both, emblematic of the increasing hybridization and
decenteredness of Zainichi Korean identity in general.
Readers familiar with the Zainichi canon will note more than a passing
resemblance to Kim Sa-ryang’s important prewar work “Hikari no naka ni”
(Into the light, 1939). Both stories feature young Korean teachers—Kim’s at
a primary school and Won’s at one of the ubiquitous cram schools—who
conceal their ethnic identity by working under a tsūmei (Japanese assumed
name) but whose ambivalence about this act is amplified by an encounter
with a fellow Korean student. Knowing Won’s keen awareness of his posi-
tion in the Zainichi literary tradition, this allusion is clearly intentional. As
a fictional work, Won’s story is remarkable in that it is both reflective and
prescient, linking the protagonist’s crisis with the struggles of the prewar
122 Won Soo-il

generation while hinting at a “third path” away from the determinism of

homeland and identity politics.
Kawamura Minato reads Won Soo-il’s work as an expression of “cre-
olization” (kureōruka) for the free intermingling of Japanese and Korean
language as well as the Kansai and Cheju dialects that permeates its text.
Sadly, this element is invariably lost (or at least muted) in translation, de-
spite every reasonable attempt to preserve it, short of compromising the
text’s readability. “Lee-kun’s Blues” was also adapted into a feature-length
drama in 1990 for NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation) and retitled Lee-
kun’s Tomorrow (Ri-kun no ashita), presumably because the yūutsu of the
original title, which can be more literally translated as “gloom” or “de-
pression,” was deemed too morose for a general audience. The remake
contained important alterations and additions, including the perhaps inevi-
table conversion of Lee-kun’s love interest to a Japanese woman. Won has
been open about the crippling writer’s block that accounts for his relatively
modest literary output over the years; nevertheless, this should not obscure
his position as a critical bridge between the older generation of writers such
as Kim Sok-pom and Ri Kaisei and the “new Zainichi” authors of the 2000s
like Kaneshiro Kazuki and Gen Getsu.

Lee-kun’s Blues
On the Takarazuka Line, where one can still find traces of Japan’s earliest
settlers, there is a station called Hattori. This is where the Kinoshita family
relocated after making a small fortune on their women’s clothing business,
leaving their old house in Ikaino behind.
Yonshi, the head of the Kinoshita household, in his days of being dirt
poor, used to dream of making a little money and going back to Cheju Is-
land. Although Japan was in name a foreign land, once he had succeeded
in business and held some property, that dream began to seem illusory.
For Yonshi, Cheju was no longer a place to call “home”; it was only a place
to visit.
It’s been firmly established since time immemorial that, given money
and time, a man will next seek out women. In Yonshi’s case, he used the
clever pretense of scouting locations for a branch factory in Cheju. While
Yonshi sampled the modern and refined young women of his hometown,
his son Masaumi grew up in the Hattori station vicinity.
Pu Yonyuni, her personality as rugged as the volcanic rocks of Cheju,
knew full well that her husband Yonshi used the striking quality of his
member to attract women. And yet she lacked the figure herself to create a
sexy flirtatiousness that would evoke either passion or interest. Still, there
remained an inner dissatisfaction in him that was hard to appease.
Lee-kun’s Blues 123

From a young age, the pudgy Masaumi received constant chiding from
Yonyuni. When he ate too much, his mother would say, “My God, what
a glutton!” When he made a trivial mistake, she would say, “What an idi-
ot.” But Masaumi’s biggest misfortune was his resemblance to his father.
“You’re just like a crooked stamp of your father,” his mother would say to
him, apropos of nothing.
Masaumi’s natural diffidence coupled with the distress brought on by
his mother’s hysteria generated a lack of guts that only grew as his body
did. Already with an immense body and a timid disposition in first grade,
the mumbling Masaumi was given the nickname “Dumb White Pig,” ow-
ing in part to his pale skin. Even as a ninth grader, this nickname still clung
to him like dog shit.

Realizing somewhat belatedly that Masaumi’s grades would not be good

enough to get into a decent public high school, Yonshi searched frantically
for a cram school in their area. Locating a “Yearning for Learning” center
near the Tenjiku River cemetery, Yonshi turned to Yonyuni. “Take Masaumi
and register him in this class,” he ordered.
“You might as well throw money into the ocean,” she said.
But Yonyuni’s protestations were not enough to change Yonshi’s mind.
Resigned to the task, she dragged the reluctant Masaumi to the Yearning
for Learning registration desk. There were two reasons for Masaumi’s re-
luctance. The first was that wherever Yonyuni was, she always talked as if
she were still in Ikaino. The second was that he knew that this cram school
was full of classmates who called him “Dumb White Pig.” If possible, he’d
much rather go to the cram school in front of the train station. When he
expressed this wish to Yonshi, he smacked him on the head and yelled,
“If it’s in front of the station, you’ll just sneak off to the arcade! That’s no
place for studying!”
Despite their differences, his parents seemed to agree on this count.
“That’s right. We’re already throwing money away on cram school. I
don’t want to throw money away on video games too,” Yonyuni added.

Yonyuni strode into the Yearning for Learning offices the same way she
strode into the Korean marketplace. To her disappointment, the front desk
was completely unmanned. Arguably too small to call an office, the con-
fines were deserted, the desk scattered with miscellaneous documents.
Looking beyond the front desk, she spotted cigarette smoke floating in
from the back.
“You wait here,” Yonyuni said to Masaumi and charged into the back
unceremoniously.
124 Won Soo-il

On the corner of a desk piled with textbooks, workbooks, loose work-

sheets, and other odds and ends, Yonyuni found a half-consumed cigarette
smoking in an ashtray. With an air of self-righteous indignation, Yonyuni
went to put it out when she heard a voice from behind her.
“May I help you?”
She turned around to find a female employee standing in front of her
with a puzzled expression.
“What do you mean, ‘May I help you?’ Take a look at this!”
The employee looked at the still burning cigarette Yonyuni held between
her fingers.
“It’s Mr. Yoshimoto again.”
“This is ridiculous.”
“I do apologize,” the employee bowed in remorse.
“It’s not your fault,” Yonyuni said. “If you’re gonna blame anyone,
blame—” Yonyuni was cut off before she could complete the sentence.
“That would be me,” said Mr. Yoshimoto, suddenly appearing.

With just one glance, Mr. Yoshimoto could instantly tell that Yonyuni was
from Cheju. This natural talent came with his being born and raised in
Ikaino. In the past, Mr. Yoshimoto thought that he would teach under his
given name, Lee. But despite the legacy left behind by the pioneers that
built this town, it was still a foreign land.
“‘Mr. Lee’ is fine, but it can be somewhat confining. It’s better to go with
‘Yoshimoto’ and live free of worry. If you play along, the Japanese can be
surprisingly tolerant.”
Partially through the persuasion of Mr. Yanai, who was assigned to
the Yearning for Learning Academy before Lee, he decided to go by Mr.
Yoshimoto.
This Mr. Yanai, who Lee-kun had admired so much during his student
days, at one time published an extremely unique paper, “The Paradox of
Divided Nations,” in the K University journal. Lee recalled being moved
by the lucidity of Yanai’s argument. Judging by the content of the essay,
Lee speculated that Yanai—who was enrolled in the law department—was
studying political science, but he was actually way off. Yanai’s true ambi-
tion was to become a lawyer.
“We’re constantly constricted by laws and yet we’re forced to find our
way in Japanese society through the legal acquisition of official qualifica-
tions. This is yet another example of paradox,” he’d say.
Being raised in Ikaino, Lee couldn’t deny the appeal of a utilitarian sen-
sibility. But it was Yanai who helped him grasp his own position within the
sphere of reason. Lee decided to pursue a career as a real estate appraiser,
his job as a cram school teacher being only a temporary measure. Still, he
Lee-kun’s Blues 125

found the cram school trade to be far too constraining. It was one thing for
him to suppress his freewheeling Ikaino attitude, but the stress of not being
able to use the Korean he worked so hard to learn in college was nearly
unbearable. However, the truly unbearable events were still to come.

“That lady really caught me off guard yesterday, “ the female office worker
said, glancing up at Lee.
“Yeah, that must have been something of a culture shock for you.”
“It really was.”
“Then again, if you start going out with me, you’ll be in for even more
of a culture shock.”
“Mr. Yanai says you have female trouble, so I think I’ll pass.”
“Ah, gimme a break.”
Lee-kun sighed and, resting his head (affectionately dubbed “rooster
head” for its distinctive hair style) on one elbow, sank deep into thought.
If one took the features of James Dean and remade them with a seasoning
of garlic and red-pepper paste, you’d have a pretty good sense of Lee’s ap-
pearance. This is why, for Lee, any run-in with a thug with a perm would
have to result in a fierce stare down. Lee would, of course, eventually back
down, feigning nonchalance. No matter how confident he was in his own
toughness, he couldn’t afford to mess with professional gangsters.
The phone rang. Kita-chan answered it in a pleasant voice, then called
Lee over with a meaningful look in her eyes.
“It’s for you, Mr. Yoshimoto.”
Lee sprang to the receiver.
“OK, got it. Be there in a minute.”
He hung up the phone, receiving a cold glare from Kita-chan.
“I knew you had female trouble,” she said.
“What are you talking about?” Lee protested out of habit, but in the back
of his mind he thought, “She couldn’t be more right.”

The current source of Lee’s female trouble was Im Honmi, a shopgirl at S

Department Store from Lee’s native Ikaino. Honmi had alternated between
North and South Korean–affiliated high schools before ultimately ending
up at S Department Store. The startling thing was that her good looks and
flawless fair skin could have easily led to a career as a fashion model. And
her voluptuous hips were enough to attract the gaze of even the most de-
vout Buddhist disciple.
Unfortunately, Lee had not yet had the pleasure of wrapping his arms
around those voluptuous hips. To Im Honmi, Lee-kun was like an expen-
sive bottle of spirits, kept behind the bar. She always called up Lee imme-
diately after one of her dates. Her partners on these dates were usually the
126 Won Soo-il

spoiled sons of local business owners (pachinko parlors, cafés, bars, BBQ
joints, love hotels) who seemed like they had money, but who could not
compare to Lee in terms of either looks or intelligence.
“Kanho, you’re the best man I know.”
“Yeah, no kidding,” was Lee’s unhesitant response to this telling phrase
from Honmi, though the blatant posturing of his act struck him as some-
what terrifying. Such was the extent of his self-consciousness surrounding
the whole macho routine. And yet he had not gotten so much as a kiss out
of it. To top it off, Honmi was Mr. Yanai’s niece. In other words, Lee was un-
der the close scrutiny of the protector of “The Paradox of Divided Nations.”
At one point, Mr. Yanai spoke to Lee about the situation with his niece.
“If you plan on marrying her, you’re free to kiss her or do whatever you
want,” he said to Lee who had an incredulous look on his face.
“Sonbei, you mean to say I need a legal basis for even one kiss?”
“As long as nations exist, you need a legal basis for everything,” was
Mr. Yanai’s reply.

Lee breathed a heavy sigh, as the sensuous figure of Im Honmi floated into
his head in the midst of class preparations.
“Mr. Yoshimoto. Kinoshita Masaumi—the boy who came yesterday—
has been assigned to Class A.”
“OK, thanks,” responded Lee brightly.
It’s only natural that he be assigned to the lowest Class A, Lee thought,
since Masaumi’s placement test showed him scoring a two out of five in
all five subjects. He recalled Masaumi’s cram school registration yesterday
with a complacent smile. Kita-chan began by explaining in a polite man-
ner that the standard for Yearning for Learning was at least a three in all
subjects, tacitly suggesting they withdraw his application.
Yonyuni responded by protesting in a loud voice more suited for the
Korean market in Tsuruhashi. “Isn’t that what cram school is for—to help
kids who have bad grades? That’s why I brought him here in the first place!
I didn’t want to bring him ’cause I thought it would be like throwing money
in the ocean, but his teacher told him that at this rate he won’t be able to get
into high school. So his father looked all over for the best cram school and
decided on this place. What do you think’ll happen if we go home empty-
handed? Both the boy and I are gonna get knocked senseless, that’s what!
Then it will be on your head.”
“I can’t take responsibility for that.”
“Well, if you can’t take responsibility you better just let him in.”
“I just thought that without the basic skills, he’s going to have a hard
time following the class.”
“He goes to school. You have nothing to worry about.”
Lee-kun’s Blues 127

“I don’t know . . .”
Seeing Kita-chan rendered speechless, Lee decided to intervene. Feeling
a common Ikaino kinship with Yonyuni, who had no compunction about
browbeating her counterpart until she got her way, he was on the verge of
calling her onmoni until he caught himself.
“Okāsan, for the time being all he has to do is take the entrance exam.”
But this approach also proved counterproductive.
“You say, ‘for the time being,’ but you’ll just be testing how smart he is,
right? I know this boy better than anyone and I can tell you how smart he
is. So for now you can hold your nagging.”
Lee was about to say, “Chansori animunida—it isn’t nagging”—but
through sheer power of reason he managed to restrain himself.
In the end, as a prerequisite, they agreed to admit him into the school,
treating the entrance exam as a mere formality.
Looks like it’s going to get interesting around here, Lee-kun thought
with another sheepish grin. Of course he had no way of knowing just how
much of a mess it would be.

The darkness that descended like a raven on the Tenjiku River cemetery
combined with the dark crimson of the western sky to create a surrealist
impression. Feeling poetic, Lee-kun moved toward the window. Reflected
in the fluorescent light of the classroom window were the faces of cram
school students working on a study question alongside the face of Rooster
Head. Lee-kun gazed at his own visage with the pretentious air of Jean-Paul
Belmondo. “Not bad at all,” he thought narcissistically.
The vague outline of a passenger jet emerged out of the twilight dark-
ness, bending its nose to descend into the crimson western sky. The crystal
glimmer of the pilot’s light somehow transformed the crude commercial
airliner into an exotic extraterrestrial object. That something so mundane
could change into something supernatural was a testament to the magic
of light.
“Mr. Yoshimoto, I see you looking out at that airplane there. Have you
ever been on one?” Kato Yumi, seated near the window, posed this ques-
tion with an air of mischief.
With a face seemingly too mature for an eighth-grade girl, Yumi stared
intently at Lee. Something hot ran through the core of Lee-kun’s body.
Feeling rattled, Lee returned her gaze, knowing that it would be the end
of him if he wavered here.
“I took one in high school,” he said.
“Domestic or international?”
“International,” he said, realizing only afterward that he had just fallen
into Yumi’s trap.
128 Won Soo-il

“So, what country did you go to?”

“What country? You know, Hawaii, London, Paris. Places like that.”
“Rooster Head is lying!”
At the sound of Mizoguchi Hitoshi’s voice from the back, the classroom
suddenly erupted in chaos. At this rate, there’s no way I’ll regain control,
Lee thought. All I can do is wait it out until they expend all their energy.
Kato Yumi gazed at Lee again with a satisfied smile of victory. “I guess I
have female trouble after all, goddammit,” Lee thought to himself before
initiating a crackdown on the state of anarchy.
The first step was the blood sacrifice of the instigator, Mizoguchi Hitoshi.
Lee-kun took a rolled-up copy of the workbook and smacked him on the
head. “Hey, I wasn’t the only one!” came the invariable protestation from
the instigator, the agony of defeat at being the only one punished.
Lee glared at him. “You’re the one who started this whole thing,” he
shot back. But of course Mizoguchi was called the instigator for a reason.
He wasn’t about to be shut down that easily.
“It’s because Rooster Head was talking to girls again,” came the
counterattack.
“What are you talking about? I was just answering a question.”
“You’re supposed to answer without lying though.”
“Who was lying?”
“You’ve never been on a plane, but you still say you went to London
and Paris.”
“It was just a joke.”
“Yeah, right.”
“That’s enough!”
At Lee’s fierce intimidation, the once-active flock fell into silence.
“I’m going to read out the answers now, so listen carefully.”
Lee read the explanations in an aggravated tone, his head swimming. Of
course, as the instigator pointed out, Lee had never been to any such place
as Hawaii. But he had been on an international flight before—to Cheju
Island. He wondered what would have happened if he’d told Yumi, “I
went to Cheju Island in Korea,” instead. The potential consequences were
obvious. “Rooster Head is Korean!” would go the malicious gossip. This
would render his donning of the mask of “Mr. Yoshimoto” completely su-
perfluous. How much better it would be if he had gone by Mr. Lee from the
start . . . Then again, as long as he was Mr. Yoshimoto, the possibility of the
taunt “Korean Rooster Head” remained moot. This is, above all else, why
he had no choice but to act out the part of either court jester or autocrat.

Lee let out a depressed sigh. As if on cue, the students declared in uni-
son, “Teacher, class is over!” The quartz clock that hung above the
Lee-kun’s Blues 129

blackboard—wedged in between a timeline of Japanese history—indicated

7:40. Students began throwing their books into their backpacks, preparing
to rush out of the classroom. The speed of their actions was impressive. In
moments like these, the authority of the teacher was completely useless.
Lee brushed back his rooster hair and, glaring at the students, delivered
his address.
“Hey, everyone, listen up. This classroom is like a kingdom. And who
decides what time it is in the kingdom? The god of that kingdom. Class
isn’t over until God says it’s over! You got that?”
“Ha-ha, the chicken thinks he’s a god,” laughed Mizoguchi, holding his
belly. The others joined in the laughter. Lee was half-laughing too, of course.
“Teacher, if you end class now, I’ll let you take me out on a date.”
With Kato Yumi’s follow-up attack, the group erupted in even greater
laughter.
“You better not, Yumi. That rooster beak is sharp, you know.”
Mizoguchi’s biting remark added even more fuel to the fire. The desks
rattled with laughter as students got up to leave the classroom. At this point
it was either eat or be eaten. Lee-kun rose for a counterattack.
“So you’re jealous, huh, Mizoguchi?”
The presumably startled instigator merely looked back coolly. “The
rooster is the one who’s jealous,” he shot back.
With that, the more experienced Lee was dealt a crushing defeat. “What
the hell am I doing?” thought Lee, lamenting his own immaturity.

The congestion in the hallway between classes was worse than the train
platform at rush hour. Bodies dashing out of the classroom collided with
the bodies rushing in to secure their favorite seats, while future mastur-
bators in training, their exuberant howls echoing through the hallway,
bumped up against girls standing stock-still engrossed in their fashion
magazines, interrupting the flow of traffic. Then there were the third-rate
hooligans who followed one of their friends, hurrying into the restroom
like a bolting rabbit, to switch the lights on, off, on, off, as if trying to turn
the place into an impromptu disco. There was even a stereotypical nerd
propped up against the wall, oblivious to the world around him, hard at
work on his English vocabulary—all of this reflecting the complex fabric
of human relations.
Kato Yumi, gazing at Lee as he erased the blackboard, murmured in a
soothing tone, “Teacher, you’re really amazing.”
This did not escape the attention of the Maki Junko contingent, already
lined up in their favorite seats for the next Class A session. This is going to
be bad, thought Lee. Sure enough, the Junko contingent grinned in amuse-
ment. Gimme a break, grumbled Lee to himself.
130 Won Soo-il

He turned to Yumi with a half scowl. “Hurry up and go home, will

you?” he said.
“Home is boring,” she said with a sidelong glance.
Obeying the old proverb, “Wise men steer clear of danger,” the chalk-
covered Lee-kun gathered his textbook and notepad and attempted to
swiftly make his way out of the room. On the verge of exiting, he heard
festival-like chanting coming from outside the door.
“Heave-ho, heave-ho. White Pig, heave-ho. Heave-ho, heave-ho. Big
Dummy, heave-ho.”
To this accompaniment, a mortified Kinoshita Masaumi appeared be-
fore Lee. The sense of disorientation of a new student combined with the
diffidence and squirming self-consciousness unbefitting a boy of his size
was bound to become the subject of endless mockery.
Upset at the sight of a fellow Zainichi being the butt of a joke, Lee lashed
out. “What the hell is going on here? Hurry up and get in the classroom!”
Although it seemed that the fire of the group’s festival had been snuffed
out, it was immediately rekindled at the sight of Kato Yumi.
“Behold! The recipient of the Dumb White Pig’s unrequited love hath
arrived!” declared Sugishita Hideki. If Maki Junko were the emperor, he
was the second in command.
“Yumi-chan, Yumi-chan,” his cronies called after her repeatedly. Noto-
rious troublemaker Yokoi Taichi, effecting an effeminate voice, joined in
calling, “Yumi-chan, Yumi-chan.” The ridiculousness of the scene forced a
strained laugh from Lee in spite of himself.
Kinoshita Masaumi, the subject of all this ridicule, turned bright red like
a boiled lobster while Kato Yumi, the recipient of Masaumi’s so-called un-
requited love, could only look away in sadness. There are so many doomed
loves in this world. Without knowing the details, Lee had the ominous
feeling that this was one of them. He looked at Masaumi, reflecting on his
own painful experiences.
Pushed forward by Sugishita Hideki’s cronies, Masaumi inched closer
to Kato Yumi. Looking like he might burst into tears at any moment, the
sight of the boy struggling to stand his ground was both touching and
painful.
Lee grabbed Masaumi by the arm, holding him back. “Take a seat,” he
ordered.
“Before I sit down, I have something to say to Yumi,” said Yokoi Taichi,
impersonating Masaumi in his effeminate voice.
“Why don’t you go talk to the headstones at the Tenjiku River cemetery,”
Lee said to him, smacking him lightly on the head.
This transformed Yokoi into a petulant child. “The rooster hit me!” he
said, bursting into mock tears.
Lee-kun’s Blues 131

“Bull-y-ing! Bull-y-ing!” The group chanted in unison at Sugishita’s

direction.
“This is ridiculous.” Lee urged Yumi forward in his own attempt to leave
the room, making it look as if the two were leaving together.
Once again Yokoi didn’t miss a beat. “Please don’t do anything to Yumi-
chan, Mr. Rooster. It’ll hurt the Dumb White Pig’s feelings.”
This yielded another eruption of laughter.
Lee-kun felt a pang in his heart. What kind of teacher allows himself to
be manipulated by his students like this?
“Here’s the thing. You can drive your students, but you can never let
them drive you. You have to pull them into your ring and make them play
by your rules.”
Lee recalled these words of wisdom, which Mr. Yanai imparted to him at
some point in time before they faded into the recesses of his consciousness.

Kinoshita Masaumi sat diagonally in front of the empress Maki Junko’s

contingent and directly in front of the second-in-command Sugishita Hide-
ki’s cronies. He attempted to contract his body to fit the standard-sized
desk and chair but couldn’t help squirming uncomfortably. The surround-
ing group eyed Masaumi with devious looks.
Finishing roll call, Lee gestured to an empty seat in the front row by the
window. “Kinoshita, why don’t you sit here?”
“But, Mr. Rooster, even a pig should have freedom of choice.”
At the incitement of Sugishita, Lee had unwittingly put the students in
the driver’s seat once again. But somehow he managed to restrain himself.
“Why isn’t Kinoshita angry about this?” Lee wondered irritably. Remind-
ing himself that he couldn’t assume the role of Kinoshita’s protector, he
suppressed his irritation. “Turn to page fifty-three of your history book,”
he said.
“What, we’re starting class already? C’mon, teacher, tell us a funny
story,” said Maki Junko in a desperate voice unbefitting an empress. Lee
attempted to avoid this push-and-pull battle by launching into homework
answers, but of course things would not go so easily. Undeterred, Maki
Junko followed with a different approach.
“Teacher, I have a question.”
As a teacher, Lee was obligated to listen, no matter how stupid the ques-
tion. “OK, what is it?” he said, going through the motions.
Maki, glancing furtively at Masaumi, said, “Where is the singer Cho
Yong-pil from?”
Lee, tired of telling lies, brushed back his rooster hair and tried to con-
ceal his anxiety, but one glance at Masaumi hanging his head in shame, his
bright red face reaching a boiling point, rendered him speechless.
132 Won Soo-il

“Cho Yong-pil is from the same country as Kinoshita,” interjected

Sugishita.
With that, Sugishita’s cronies and Maki Junko’s contingent shouted in
unison, “Ko-re-a!”
Tears began to form in Kinoshita’s eyes. He gripped both sides of the
desk, his immense constricted body quivering uncontrollably. Unable to
bear it any longer, Lee grabbed a brand new piece of chalk and wrote
“Counting Song of People’s Rights” on the board.
Number 1:
All people are equal
Everyone has the same rights
That’s what makes us people.
Number 2:
In this free world
There are still some people who remain ignorant
What a pity this is.
A wave of silence washed over the dumbfounded students, but after a
few seconds the chatter returned. “What the hell does that mean?” they
said. The perpetually insensitive Maki Junko, using it as an excuse to
run wild, urged Lee to start singing. A feeling of shame gradually over-
whelmed Lee.
“I’ll sing for you later,” he said. “Maki, try replacing ‘people’ with ‘races’
in the first line, tell me what you get.”
As directed, Maki read, “‘Number 1: All races are created equal.’” Lee
stopped her.
“I don’t have to explain this to you, right? There are no superior or in-
ferior races,” Lee said.
“My dad says that the Japanese Yamato race is the best.”
With Sugishita Hideki’s words, Lee felt the ghost of Japanese imperial-
ism pass through him.
Lee amended the lyrics in his head. “Number 2: In this international
world / There are still some people who remain ignorant / What a pity
this is,” he thought to himself.

Some time after class ended, the bell sounded from a nearby elementary
school. The sound, embodying a harmonious combination of rage, regret,
and sorrow, echoed through the walls of the classroom. The classroom
window, illuminated by neon lights, reflected a cheerless scene of empty
desks scattered with paper scraps, eraser shavings.
Lee-kun pushed his chair into his desk and stood at the window. Aside
from the pitch-blackness of the Tenjiku River cemetery, the nighttime
Lee-kun’s Blues 133

cityscape of this foreign land that stretched before him exuded a vague
feeling of neither acceptance nor rejection. Gazing at the sky west by north-
west of the international airport, Lee fixated on a point just south of a glim-
mering star and became immersed in thoughts of Cheju. As if working a
jigsaw puzzle, Lee attempted to consolidate these memories into a unified
concept he could call “homeland.”
But if the blood that ran through his veins dictated that he acknowl-
edge Cheju as his homeland, his natural homeland was none other than
Ikaino. And this Ikaino figured as an extension of the same foreign land
that exuded the vague feeling of neither acceptance nor rejection. Come to
think of it, the water from the Un Canal that traversed Ikaino also flowed
in from a foreign land.
Though he was raised in Ikaino, the TV shows, radio programs, movies,
comic books, and other cultural materials were all of foreign origin. Even
the scene of the Korean market symbolic of Cheju that was such a part of
his mental fabric had become intermingled with the Japanese folksong
“My Hometown.” (“A mountain where the rabbits are delicious / A river
full of carp.”)

Following in the footsteps of the departed students, Lee descended the

building’s staircase only to run into Masaumi’s mother, Yonyuni, at the
entrance. The sight of her filled him with the familiarity of having returned
to Ikaino, soothing his frayed nerves. Yonyuni, oblivious to Lee’s delicate
sentiment, immediately fired away.
“I knew we never should’ve put him in cram school.”
Lee, as if hit by a punch, unconsciously retreated a few steps.
“What’s the problem, okāsan?” he asked, though using the term okāsan to
refer to Yonyuni, a woman who seemed to personify kimchi, was so strange
as to disrupt his very sense of language.
Yonyuni glared back at Lee’s dazed expression. “Urichibe Masaumi
hasn’t come home yet,” she said.1
Lee-kun glanced at his watch reflexively. The hands that appeared be-
neath the dim streetlights indicated 11:30. If class ended before the bell
from the elementary school rang, it meant that about two hours had passed.
“Do you have any idea where he went?”
“If I did, I would’ve gone there a long time ago.”
“I see,” nodded Lee, feeling like a fool. Then, in a half-hearted attempt
to redeem his honor, said, “I’ll drive my car around and look for him.”

1 
Urichibe means “our.”
134 Won Soo-il

“I should hope so,” said Yonyuni, her glare as hard as stone. So much for
pleasantries, thought Lee, gazing over Yonyuni’s head at the cars passing
by on the main drag.
“What are you doing? Let’s get going! Where’s your car?” Yonyuni
dashed off, with Lee following close behind. I can’t keep doing this, he
thought with a good-natured groan.
Lee stepped into his proudly purchased brand-new sedan and, glancing
at Yonyuni in the passenger seat, revved the engine and sped off.
Yonyuni snapped back in her seat. “Whoa, slow down, will you?”
she said.
“Mianhamunida, omoni.” Unconsciously, Lee apologized to her in Korean.
“Wait, are you from the homeland?” Yonyuni’s tone instantly softened.
“That’s right.”
“Where’s your kohyang?”2
“Cheju Island.”
“Really? You’re from Cheju?” Yonyuni clapped her hands together. “This
car runs great!” she said, overjoyed.
Lee-kun explained in brief the events leading up to Masaumi’s disap-
pearance, yielding a groan from Yonyuni.
“My boy is such an embarrassment,” she grumbled.

Lee circled the streets of this unfamiliar land that mixed buildings that
looked like relics from an earlier agricultural age with modern condos.
A glow from the American-influenced twenty-four-hour supermarket
bathed the darkness while Lee plunged into a narrow alley that bordered
the ­eerily silent Tenjiku River cemetery. The headlights of Lee’s car gradu-
ally exposed the cemetery headstones that had been illuminated only by
the naked twenty-watt bulbs of the skinny poles attached to the riverside
guardrail. Lee shivered with the eerie feeling of having entered the nether
world, but his companion Yonyuni showed no signs of being affected.
“She’s a tough one,” he thought, popping a Seven Star cigarette into his
mouth as a means of distraction. The flame that appeared with the dry
flick of his cheap hundred-yen lighter flickered before quickly burning out.
Focusing all of his strength into his thumb, Lee attempted to summon the
flame from the lighter again.
“Is this really a time to be smoking? Look over there!” Startled by Yo-
nyuni’s voice, Lee slammed on the brakes. The car’s headlights pierced
the darkness, revealing a motionless figure with head hung low, blurry
like some distant nebula light years away. Before Lee could utter a sound
of recognition, Yonyuni said, “That’s my Masaumi.”

2 
Kohyang means “hometown.”
Lee-kun’s Blues 135

Losing her footing on the gravel, Yonyuni looked as if she were about to
fall flat on her face before Lee grabbed her by the arm.
“Komapsumnida,”3 she said.
Yonyuni gathered herself and barged forward, her body absorbing the
beams of the headlights. She headed toward the base of the ring of light
where Masaumi stood. Lee recognized her resourceful gait, the same as
all Korean mothers in Ikaino. In Lee’s mind the Tenjiku River that flowed
by their side was suddenly transformed into the Un Canal that traversed
Ikaino, giving him an eerie feeling. But Lee’s deep reverie only lasted a few
seconds. Yonyuni’s diminutive frame appeared to burrow into Masaumi’s
chin and a dull thud resounded, overwhelming the sound of the engine’s
idling. Her shoulders exuding rage, Yonyuni gazed up at Masaumi as he
clutched his cheek. Lee ruffled his hair and dove confusedly between the
mother and son.
“Outta the way, nichan.” Yonyuni addressed him roughly, holding her
gaze on Masaumi.
Lee responded in a restrained voice. “We’re all in the same boat here.”

A warm breeze passed through the Tenjiku River cemetery just as Ma-
saumi’s wails became audible.
“And you call yourself a man?”
At Yonyuni’s shout, Masaumi let out a hiccup and began sobbing.
“My god, why did I have to give birth to such a sissy? Why are you so
embarrassed of being Korean?”
To Yonyuni, who thought it natural that a child as vigorous as Hong
Gildong be born from her sturdy loins, the fact that she instead had a son
who ran off to the cemetery where he stood motionless like a dummy fig-
ured as one of the seven wonders of the world.
“I don’t wanna go to cram school,” cried Masaumi with another hiccup.
Realizing this was the first time he heard Masaumi speak, Lee-kun was
instilled with a new sense of shock.
“If you wanna quit, quit! But I can’t be responsible for what your fa-
ther says.”
“I don’t care what he says!”
“You tell him yourself then.”
“I will!”
With that, Masaumi suddenly quit his sobbing and breathed a sigh
of relief.

3 
Komapsumnida means “thank you.”
136 Won Soo-il

“Kinoshita, you can quit cram school, but I’m not sure it will really solve
your problem,” advised Lee.
“Sensei, you have no idea how I feel.”
“What are you talking about? Your teacher is one of us.”
Masaumi stared in wonder at Lee, deeply shocked by this unexpected
revelation.
“You used to live in Ikaino, right? That’s where I grew up.”
As if suddenly grasping the secret behind a magician’s sleight of hand,
Masaumi next turned his gaze to Yonyuni.
“Don’t you want to work hard at your studies so you can go to college
like your teacher?” Yonyuni’s voice assumed a soothing tone, like the calm
of the sea after a storm.
Masaumi just stood there blankly. “But . . . I’m stupid,” he said.
At this self-deprecating remark, Yonyuni’s voice became a tidal wave
again. “Oh, my god. Your father might be a dog, but you’re even lower
than a dog!”
“Don’t say that, omoni.”
While attempting to protect Masaumi, Lee also found himself infect-
ed with a certain rage. Were Masaumi his own little brother, he probably
would have given him a good thrashing a long time ago. He played out
this scene in his mind, thinking, “How can you be such a loser?”

Perhaps because the engine had been running for so long, the headlights
started to dim. For a moment, Lee considered killing the engine. But if he
killed the engine, they would lose all the light that came with it and would
once again be plunged into darkness. Forget it, he thought to himself, and
turned his gaze back to Masaumi who stood just outside the field of the
dimming headlights.
“You can yell at me all you want. I’m gonna go to a place that’s not
Korea or Japan.”
“Where the hell is that?” Yonyuni’s cross-examination attempted to at-
tach meaning to Masaumi’s words. For Yonyuni who had always lived in
the concrete physical world, this abstract space—“not Korea or Japan”—
that Masaumi spoke of in a frantic yet vague tone could only exist as an
actual place, perhaps somewhere in the middle of the ocean.
Lee could hear the rough breathing of Masaumi who was enclosed in the
darkness of this strange landscape and stood otherwise motionless as if he
had become a headstone himself. The tense silence expanded like a super-
nova, threatening to swallow up Lee in the process. Images of the creation
of the universe flashed through his mind like electric sparks. The sound
of a motorcycle gang racing down the nearby highway pierced their ears
and shook the ground before fading into the distance. As the ear-splitting
Lee-kun’s Blues 137

noise gave way to silence, the sound of Masaumi’s sobs once again became
audible.
“If you’re gonna cry, cry at home.”
“I’m not going home.”
“Where are you going then?”
“Somewhere that’s not Korea or Japan.”
“Where the hell is that?”
With the thought of putting an end to this eternal refrain, Lee ap-
proached Masaumi in a semimenacing manner. The black quivering mass
slipped out of Lee’s grasp and ran headlong into the guardrail, attempting
to fall sideways into the river below.
“What the hell are you doing?” screamed Lee, grabbing on to Masaumi’s
corpulent body.
Yonyuni rushed to his aid, grasping her son firmly by the belt.
“Calm down, Kinoshita!”
“Is this what you mean by not Korea or Japan? The bottom of the river?”
The strength of Yonyuni’s voice had a power that vastly dominated Lee’s.
“She’s from Cheju, all right,” he thought, with a vague sense of admiration.
“That’s right. I’m going to the bottom of the river. I’m sure you’ll be
happy when I fall down and die.”
“You’re not gonna die in this river—there’s not enough water. All you’ll
get is a bump on the head. If you really wanna die, you’ll have to go to
another river like Kanzaki or Yodo or Aji.”
“I don’t wanna go that far.”
“Let’s go home then.”
“Aren’t you gonna tell dad that I tried to jump in the river?”
“Why would I do that?”
“I dunno.”
“I’m no spy, so quit your worrying.”
“OK.”
Despite this odd resolution, Lee figured that all’s well that ends well. He
placed a hand on Masaumi’s shoulder and said, “Hang in there, buddy.”
“OK.” Masaumi nodded calmly, as if suddenly snapping out of a trance.
Lee-kun felt something hot in the core of his body. His car, having been
idling for so long, appeared to rally, letting out a loud roar. The headlights
suddenly grew brighter, illuminating Masaumi’s body to reveal a faint
smile on his face.
In parting, Yonyuni grasped Lee’s hand in hers. “Nichan, Masaumi will
be going back to cram school tomorrow, so please look after him for me.”
“I’m not go—, “ Masaumi began to say, but swallowed his words at a
glare from Yonyuni.
“You can count on me.”
138 Won Soo-il

Lee-kun brushed his hand through his hair and patted his chest as he saw
off the mother-son pair who seemed for all the world like a comedic duo
you might see onstage at Kadoza or Umeda Kagetsu. The pair cut through the
layered darkness of this foreign land before finally disappearing from view.

Lee sped off toward Ikaino in excellent spirits, but when he—the same
Lee who only moments ago uttered the inspiring line, “Hang in there,
buddy”—began to look back on past events, he let out a depressed sigh.
“What a mess,” he thought with a strained smile, then switched on the
FM radio.
SIX

Selected Poems from I Am Twelve

OKA MASAFUMI
Translated with an introduction by Youngmi Lim

The poems of Oka Masafumi (1962–1974) were published posthumously

by his parents, Ko Sa-myeong (Kō Shimei) and Oka Yuriko. One summer
evening on his way home from school, Oka Masafumi threw himself from
a high-rise apartment complex in his neighborhood. He was just twelve
years and nine months old when he killed himself, leaving behind only a
notebook of poems. At the time of Masafumi’s death, Ko had just launched
his professional writing career with the award-winning publication of his
autobiography What “To Live” Means (生きることの意味). As Ko recalled,
“Masafumi’s death was about half a year after I published What “To Live”
Means. I had been looking into the bitterness of life, delving into some
thoughts about what makes life worthy of pursuing in spite of that bit-
terness, which I finally put together in a book titled What “To Live” Means.
If this is what irony in life means, what could be a more cruel irony than
this?”1
Masafumi’s parents met through their involvement in the Japanese
Communist Party and faced the challenges involved in a cross-national
relationship. Ko, inspired to become a writer at the time of his marriage
to Yuriko, grew up in Japan but was of colonial Korean descent. Yuriko
graduated from college in an era when only a handful of women did so
and became a full-time teacher. At the beginning of their marriage, they
were mostly dependent on Yuriko’s salary.
Masafumi was born seven years after his parents’ marriage. Initially, the
couple was hesitant to raise a child while still trying to come to terms with

I thank James M. Raeside, Rie Sauté, and anonymous reviewers for their helpful sugges-
tions, and John Lie for making this project and related workshops possible.
1 
Ko Sa-myeong, “A Postscript,” in Oka Masafumi, I Am Twelve, new ed., edited by Ko Sa-
myeong and Oka Yuriko (Tokyo: Chikuma Shobō, 1985), 177–195.
140 Oka Masafumi

a cross-national marriage between a former colonizer and a former colo-

nized. Ko and Yuriko decided against a legal marriage so that Masafumi
could have Japanese nationality at birth. In 1962, when Masafumi was born,
Zainichi Korean legal status was precarious—it was only in 1965 (for those
who declared South Korean nationality) and 1981 (for those who were
stateless Koreans or declared North Korean nationality) that Zainichi Ko-
reans were granted permanent residency.2 Japanese law at the time recog-
nized only paternal transmission of Japanese nationality (the 1984 amend-
ment, acknowledging maternal transmission of nationality, took effect in
1985). Illegitimate birth was the only way Japanese mothers with foreign
spouses could pass on Japanese nationality, as the principle of nationality
transmission was exceptionally recognized by maternal lineage.
I am not sure if it is fair to classify Masafumi’s poems as Zainichi Korean
literature. What I might be doing is just one-sidedly consuming his poetry
from a rather essentialist frame of mind—anyone with Korean lineage in
Japan, regardless of one’s self-identification, is labeled a Zainichi Korean.
With this reservation, however, Masafumi’s poems could well illustrate
uncertainty about being a Zainichi Korean and growing up in the 1960s
and ’70s, many years before an identity claim such as being both Japanese
and Korean received any recognition.
What follows is a translation of selected poems. I try not to overem-
phasize poems delving into life and death. The combination of Chinese
characters, hiragana, and katakana is exactly the way it was written by
Masafumi. Unconventional use of katakana could possibly be an emphasis
as well as a convenient separation of nouns without using kanji. The last
poem is titled “I Am Not Dying.” There were sixty-six poems, of which I
translated thirty-nine. I did not shuffle the chronological order of the poems
as they appeared in the collection. Let me begin with the very first poem,
which shows the excitement of having one’s own room.

2 
The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK, North Korea) is not recognized by
the Japanese state. From the Japanese administrative viewpoint, North Korean allegiance is
de facto statelessness.
Selected Poems from I Am Twelve 141

Selected Poems from I Am Twelve (Bokuwa jūnisai)

ぼくのおしろ My Castle

ぼくのおしろは何よりも My castle is a more

とてもりっぱなおしろ Splendid castle than anything
ギターがころがって The guitar just lies there
ラジオはベッドの上 The radio is on the bed
やぶけたジーンズ My torn jeans
イスの上 On the chair
ポスターはかべから From the wall my poster
わらいかけている Is smiling at me
クリスマスにもらった The Othello game
オセロゲーム I was given at Christmas:
今では色もはげてきました Their colors are fading now
これがぼくの These are the attendants of my castle
おしろの家来です (pp. 15–16)

となりの犬 My Neighbor’s Dog

となりの犬がほえました The next-door neighbor’s dog just barked

あそびたいといって I want to play
ほえました It barked
ぼくはこの犬が大スキです I love this dog
くさりをはずしてくれって Much better than a dog
ほえる犬よりかは (p. 17) Whose bark says
Undo my chain, please
142 Oka Masafumi

せい春のたび立ち Youthful Departures

ほらせい春のたび立ち！ Behold, I set out for youth!

まっかな太陽 Bright red sun
のぼる太陽 Rising sun
でっかい太陽 Huge sun
ほらせい春のたび立ち！ Behold, I set out for youth!
でっかいあお空 Huge blue sky
高いあお空 High blue sky
まっさおな空 Pure blue sky
ほらせい春のたび立ち！ Behold, I set out for youth!
かなしい気がする I feel a bit sad
うれしい気がする I feel a bit happy
不安な気がする I feel a bit anxious
ほらせい春のたび立ち！(pp. 20–21) Behold, I set out for youth!

みちでバッタリ A Chance Meeting on a Path

みちでバッタリ We met by chance

出会ったヨ on a path!
なにげなく Just like that,
出会ったヨ We met!
そして両方とも And passed each other by
知らんかおで Pretending not to see!
とおりすぎたヨ But for me
でもぼくにとって This turned everything
これは世の中が Upside-down!
ひっくりかえる Since then
ことだヨ I’ve walked along this path
あれから Many, many times
なんべんも But I never met you
この道を歩いたヨ Even once!
でももう一ども
会わなかったよ (pp. 22–23)
Selected Poems from I Am Twelve 143

おこられました I Was Yelled At

おこられました I was yelled at

なぐられました I was struck
でもぼくはまだ一度も But still not once
おこられてうらみはもちません Have I held a grudge
それは反せいしているのでしょう Perhaps it’s because I see my fault
そんけいしているのでしょう Perhaps it’s because I respect
今もぼくはすがすがしい (p. 24) It holds me up, refreshed, even now

バイオリン The Violin

バイオリンの音色が The tone of a violin

なりひびいています Echoes around
世界一きれいな音です The most beautiful sound in the world
それに合わせて In time with it
花がおどります Flowers dance
風がうたいます The wind sings
本当にいい音色です It really is a nice sound
でもぼくは But I
バイオリンはひけません Cannot play the violin
でも心でひいているんです (p. 25) Except in my heart
144 Oka Masafumi

空のすべり台　 A Slide in the Sky

つらいくさとりがおわり After the hard work of weeding is done

ズキンとするこしをあげて Straightening my aching back
みれば I look up
空に七色のすべり台が To find a slide of rainbow colors
あった In the sky
じっとすべり台を As I stare at the slide
みていると I am pulled steadily upward
スーとひきこまれる I climb up
くものかいだんを A staircase of clouds
のぼり I whizz down
七色のすべり台を On the slide of rainbow colors
すべる Sliding down
ほしのかぜをひきさき Endlessly . . .
はてしなく Tearing apart the wind of stars
すべっていく…… After hard labor
ろうどうあと I often imagine such things as that
そんなことをかんがえたりする
(pp. 30–31)

ごめんなさい I Am Sorry

一つぶのなみだは One teardrop is worth

一てきの雨にあたいする One raindrop
思いちがいのなみだは Tears coming from misunderstanding
雨上がりの葉からほとばしる Are worth one raindrop
一てきの雨にあたいする Shooting from a leaf
ごめんなさいというほほえみは Right after a rainfall
雨上がりのにじにあたいする (p. 38) A smile that says, “I’m sorry”
Is worth a rainbow right after rainfall
Selected Poems from I Am Twelve 145

太ようのつかい The Messenger of the Sun

毎日出る太ようにむかって I am advancing toward

ぼくは前しんする The sun that comes out every day
地平せんのかなたは I don’t have the slightest idea
いったい何時間でいけるのか How many hours it will take
けんとうもつかない To get to the end, the far side of the horizon
太ようのおどり子たちには When can I meet
いつあえるのだろうか The dancers of the sun
太ようのつかいが Although right here is
ここにいるというのに The messenger of the sun
海のむこうの太ようを In order to seize hold of
つかみとるために The sun beyond the ocean
ぼくはまたあなのあいたくつを I am worrying again
あやぶんでいる (pp. 40–41) About the hole in my shoe
146 Oka Masafumi

そうぞう Imagination

かあさんがあんでくれた The blue sweater

青セーターは Mom knitted for me
ピチッときまる Is a perfect fit
これに If, with this,
白のマフラーをまくと I wear a white scarf
まるでアラン・ドロンみたい I will look just like Alain Delon

アメリカ帰りの The belt

おばさんがくれたバンドは My aunt brought me from America
ピチッときまる is a perfect fit
これに If I wear
やぶけたジーンズをはくと Torn jeans with this
まるでブロンソンみたい I will look just like Bronson

げんかんよこの I always imagine this

自分をみ As I stand inside the front door of our house
いつもそうぞうする (pp. 46–47) And look at myself
Selected Poems from I Am Twelve 147

ひとりもの A Loner

おれはどうせひとりもの Anyhow I’m a loner

べつにこどくなんかじゃねえ Not especially lonely though, right
でもおれはたびをする But I go on trips
おれはどうせひとりもの Anyhow I’m a loner
なにかをもとめたいから I do NOT go on trips
たびにでるんじゃねえ Because I am seeking something
ただ　ただ　エート Yet, yet, well, um,
おれはどうせひとりもの Anyhow I’m a loner
だからやさしさも　あいも So I don’t need
なんにもいらねえ Kindness or love, all right
ただ自分自身に I do NOT need anything
ほえつづけ　かたりかけ…… I just keep howling and talking
なにを To myself . . .
かんがえてりゃいいんだ！(pp. 48–49) What the heck
Should I think about?!

じゆう Freedom

はてしなく広がる大地 The earth, boundless and wide

よるはほしをかがやかし Causing the stars to shine at night
ひるは太ようをかがやかす Causing the sun to shine in the day
すみきった空には In the pure clear sky
青いトリがはばたいて Blue birds flutter
ぼくのかたにとまる Landing on my shoulder
オオ！　自由だ！ Ah! Freedom!

なんていい名なんだ！ What a great name!

じ・ゆ・う！ F-R-E-E-D-O-M!
ぼくの目には The earth, the sky, and the bird
大地と空とトリがはっきりとうつっている Are clearly reflected
(pp. 50–51) In my eyes
148 Oka Masafumi

ゆうれいかな？ Is It a Ghost?

なぜなんだろう Why, I wonder

あいつの前って Is there a ghost
ゆうれいがいるのかナ？ Before him?
悪口をいわせる Making him speak ill of me
ゆうれいが That guy must really have
まったくあいつは Supernatural powers
ちょうのう力者

またたくまにぼくの目は Instantly, my eyes

光をうしなう Lose their sparkle
たのしさをわすれる Forget all fun
まったくあいつは That guy must really have
チョーノー力者 (pp. 52–53) SUPERNATURAL powers

りょこう前 Before a Trip

そうかいにはしる電車 The train is moving with cheerful speed

青々した山、海 Bluest blue mountains, the ocean
すみきった空 The pure clear sky
りょこう前のそうぞう (p. 56) What I imagine before a trip
Selected Poems from I Am Twelve 149

ちっこい家 A Teeny House

ぼくは I prefer
でっかあ～い家より a teeny house
ちっこ～い家のほうが To a humongous house
スキだ Sliding screens, glass windows
しょうじやガラス Tatami floor
たたみなどに Things like those
なんとなく Contain
人間のアイが Human LOVE as well as
人じょうが Human feeling
こもっている There is none of
でっかい家の the icy coldness
こおりのような Of a humongous house . . .
つめたさがない…… (pp. 60–61)

[Parents’ footnote: A poem written after Masafumi’s trip alone to his uncle’s home in
Kitakyūshū]
150 Oka Masafumi

ゴットン・ゴロン Rumbling and Rolling

すがすがしさに The morning

まけてしまったアサ That has given itself to freshness
もう村の小工場の音が The noise of a small factory in the village
春のおどり子たちと Can already be heard
一しょにきこえる Together with the spring dancers
さびしげな音だ A lonely sounding noise
ゴットン・ゴットン Rumbling, Rumbling
のんびりした音だ A laid-back noise
ゴロン・ゴロン Rolling, Rolling
赤レンガにかこまれた Inside the factory
工場の中は Surrounded by red bricks
くさくてまっくろけっけ…… Everything is smelly
その中ではたらいて And pitch black . . .
まっ黒になってる人たち The people working inside,
でもなぜか Have turned pitch black
目だけが光って…… But for some reason
いままでつめたかった Only their eyes shine . . .
レンガの Drafts coming through cracks in the brick wall
すき間からくる風が Which had been cold
このごろ Are very warm
とてもあたたかい These days
ゴットン・ゴロン Rumbling and rolling
ゴットン・ゴロン (pp. 62–63) Rumbling and rolling

[Parents’ footnote: A poem written after Masafumi’s trip alone to his uncle’s home in
Kitakyūshū]
Selected Poems from I Am Twelve 151

Ｔシャツ A T-Shirt

「そろそろ用意しようか」 “Why don’t we get it out [for the season]?”

といった That
半そでのＴシャツがもう Short-sleeve T-shirt is already
手もとにある Here in my hands
きょねん Last year
長そでみたいだったのが It was like a long-sleeve one
今ではフツウ Now it is normal
このＴシャツは This T-shirt is
メキャベツより Fresher
しんせんだ！ Than Brussels sprouts!
海のにおいがしたり It smells of the ocean
みずうみのにおいがしたり And smells of a lake
川のにおいがしたり And smells of a river
なまりのにおいがしたり And smells of lead,
まったく What a Busy T-shirt
いそがしいＴシャツだ It is
(pp. 73–74) Indeed
152 Oka Masafumi

春雨 Spring Rain

春雨 Spring rain
なんて気もちよいんだろう How nice it feels
春雨 Spring rain
なんてさびしげな音なんだろう What a lonesome sound
ザーッザーッ Zaaat Zaaat?
こんな音じゃない Not like that sound at all
シトシト　サァーサァー Shitoshito saaa saaa
まるで女のナミダみたいで It is like a woman’s tears
なんだかとっても For some reason
さびしくなって It makes me very lonely
カサをささないで I want to try
はしってみたい Running
大声を出して Without an umbrella
ののしってみたい Shouting out loud
太ようを I want to try
よびもどしてみたい Cursing
春雨…… I want to try bringing back
ぼくの今の気持と同じだ (pp. 79–80) The sun
Spring rain . . .
Is exactly how I feel now

フーセン A Balloon

フーセンが A balloon is
だんだん Deflating
しぼんでいく (p. 82) Little by little
Selected Poems from I Am Twelve 153

つばき A Camellia Flower

つばき A camellia flower

おちてしまうとみんなは Once it falls to the ground,
「ワアきたない」という Everyone says, “Ew, how dirty,”
はじめの The beauty of the beginning
美しさもわすれてしまって (p. 83) Is completely forgotten

風 The Wind

風はいちばんのけいけん者 The wind is the most experienced

風はいろんな物を見て The wind has seen many things
そして聞いている And heard many things
風が先生だったら How nice it would be
どんなにいいだろう If the wind were my teacher
カーテンが風をつつむ The curtain wraps up the wind
経験をつつんでいるのと同じだ (p. 88) Wrapping up the wind is the same
As wrapping up experience

ためいき A Sigh

ためいきばかりついている I, who do nothing but sigh,

自分がおかしい Am strange
ためいき　たいくつ Sighs, boredom
おもしろくない It is not fun
雨の日の午後 A rainy afternoon
体に When
カビがはえるときって Does mold grow
どういうとき？ On your body?
こういうとき…… (p. 89) At times like these . . .
154 Oka Masafumi

小まどから From a Little Window

小まどから From a little window

アイツは　いつも He is always
オレをみつめる Staring at me
なんだかとっても Somehow
オレを気にしている He is bothered by me
なにかもとめる His eyes say that he
目をしている Wants something
目がまるで It is just as if his eyes
花びんになったみたいだ Have turned into a vase
よし花びんに花をいれよう All right then, let’s put some flowers
そして花をさかせてみよう in that vase
それを And let the flowers bloom
お前がもとめるのなら (pp. 92–93) If that is what
You desire

自分 The Self

たくさん人がいると When there are so many people

自分がきちがいになる The self will become a mad person
そして人は And one
自分だけがきちがいと Will think
思っている Only oneself is mad
つまり Which means
みんなが自分のことを All people think
きちがいと That they themselves
思っているのだ (p. 94) Are mad
Selected Poems from I Am Twelve 155

へや My Room

たびから帰り Returning from a trip

自分のヘヤを Staring at
みつめてみると My room
どこもちがっていないのに Nothing is different
なんか But somehow
ちがう風におもわれる (p. 95) Somewhat different, it seems

人間 A Human

人間ってみんな百面相だ (p. 96) Any human has hundreds of faces

ひとり Being Alone

ひとり Being alone

ただくずれさるのを Just waiting for
まつだけ (p. 97) Myself to collapse and disappear
156 Oka Masafumi

じぶん Myself

じぶんじしんの Another’s brain

のうより Is easier to understand
他人ののうの方が Than my own
わかりやすい No one
みんな Can be trusted
しんじられない That’s because
それは The self
じぶんが Cannot be trusted
しんじられないから (p. 98)

海 The Seaside

なつ　シネマでみた Summer: I saw in a cinema

ラブ・ストーリーが A love story
わすれられなく I cannot forget
海へ行ってガールハント So here I am
そうそう At the seaside
シネマの中のバックも chasing girls
海だった Oh, yes
でもあれ One scene of the movie
セットじゃねえの Was also at the seaside
バカにこことくらべて But wait
きれいだぜ Wasn’t that just a stage set
そんなことより It’s so silly to compare it with here
ガールハント (pp. 99–100) It’s so beautiful here
And, more importantly,
Chasing girls
Selected Poems from I Am Twelve 157

ぼくの心 My Heart

からしをぬったよ I rubbed some mustard

体に On my body
そうしたら Then
ふつうになったんだ It became normal
よっぽどあまかったネ My heart, of course,
ぼくの心って (p. 105) Must have been way too sweet and trusting

おっくうな日 Lazy Day

雨の日 A rainy day

月よう　土ようのアサ Monday, Saturday morning
とってもおっくうな日 A very lazy day
こうゆう日は On a day like this
風のあたるところで The best thing
アイスティなんぞを To do is
のんだりしながら To study
ロシア語の Russian,
べんきょうするのが While drinking
一ばんだ (p. 106) Something like iced tea
In some breezy spot
158 Oka Masafumi

リンゴ An Apple

あそこのリンゴ The apple over there

あと数分で It will drop
おちるでしょう In a few minutes
じっとみてます I am watching still
じっとみてます I am watching still

リンゴは That apple

もうえだと Might already
くっついていないかも No longer be attached
しれないのに To the branch

おちません It won’t drop

おちません It won’t drop

なんだかみていると As I keep watching

まぶしくなります Somehow, I feel it gets brighter
リンゴが日光に Is that because
反射するからですか？ The apple reflects
それとも The sunshine?
Or
あのしんぼうづよさが
まぶしいのですか？ Is it that patience
じっとみてます That is so bright?
じっとみてます (pp. 107–108) I’m watching still
I’m watching still
Selected Poems from I Am Twelve 159

きみ Darling

君はいつも You always

音楽がスキだったね Loved music
キミのすきな人は Your favorites were
バッハ　ヘンデル Bach, Handel,
シューベルト　メンデルスゾーン Schubert, Mendelssohn,
ビートルズ　カーペンダーズ The Beatles, The Carpenters,
そしてぼく And me

きみは You
みどりのワンピースが Looked so nice
とても似合っていたね In that green dress
とても回りのビルと You made a complete contrast with
たいしょう的だったよ The surrounding buildings

きみはぼくが You opened

かってあげたかさを The umbrella I bought for you
天気の日もさしていたネ Even on sunny days

きみは「さよなら」と You wrote just one word

一言かいた “Bye”
おき手紙をおいて And left a note
いってしまったね And just went away

でもぼくは But, listen, I

なかなかったよ Did not cry
だって After all,
世界なんてせまいもの (pp. 111–113) The world is so small
160 Oka Masafumi

ねむれないよる The Nights I Cannot Fall Asleep

ねむれないよる The nights I cannot fall asleep

コーヒーをのんで I imagine drinking coffee
よけい Which makes me even less
ねむれなくなったりして (p. 114) Sleepy

ねむれない夜 The Nights I Cannot Fall Asleep

ねむいと思ったとき When you feel sleepy

ねむんないのも It might be
ひとつのかんがえかも An idea
しれないよ Not to sleep at all
ずうっと If you don’t sleep at all
ねむってないと You will become
目がさえるもんさ Wide awake

けむたいよ How smoky

いまのけむり Is this smoke
そのけむりを Many people
手ではらいのけようと Try to drive the smoke away
するやつが多い With their hands
そのまま Is there anyone
目にしみていいから Who would let the smoke sting their eyes
手ではらいのけないやつが And not try to drive it away
いるか (pp. 121–122) With their hands?
Selected Poems from I Am Twelve 161

無題 Untitled

にんげん Rough-hewn people

あらけずりのほうが Are more likely
そんをする To lose out
すべすべ It’s better
してた方がよい To be smooth
でもそれじゃ But that
この世の中 Will not make the world
ぜんぜん A better place
よくならない At all

この世の中に Is there such a thing

自由なんて As freedom
あるだろうか In this world?
ひとつも There is none
ありはしない At all

てめえだけで Think it through

かんがえろ On your own
それが That’s
じゆうなんだよ Freedom, I’m telling you

かえしてよ Give it back to me,

大人たち Grownups!
なにをだって What, you ask?
きまってるだろ What else
自分を But myself
かえして Give myself back
おねがいだよ I beg you!

きれいごとでは There are things

すまされない That cannot be
こともある Simply glossed over.
まるくおさまらない There are things
ことがある That cannot be brushed away
162 Oka Masafumi

そういう時
もうだめだと思ったら On those occasions
自分じしんに If you think you no longer can stand it
まけることになる Then you end up
Losing to yourself
心のしゅうぜんに
いちばんいいのは The best way
自分じしんを To settle your mind
ちょうこくすることだ Is to keep
あらけずりに sculpting your own self
あらけずりに…… (pp. 123–126) Roughly
Roughly . . .

無題 Untitled

けりがついたら When this gets done

どっかへ I will go
さんぽをしよう For a stroll
またくずれるかも To somewhere
しれないけど (pp. 127) Although I might
Collapse again
Selected Poems from I Am Twelve 163

ぼくはうちゅう人だ I Am a Creature from Outer Space

ぼくは I am
うちゅう人だ A creature from outer space
また There is
土のそこから A voice calling me
じかんの From the depths of the soil
ながれにそって Again
ぼくを As I drift along the current of
よぶこえがする (p. 128) Time

ぼくはしなない I Am Not Dying

ぼくは I might
しぬかもしれない Die
でもぼくはしねない But I cannot die
いやしなないんだ Or I just don’t die
ぼくだけは I am the only one
ぜったいにしなない Who will never die
なぜならば BECAUSE
ぼくは I am
・ ・ ・ ・ ・ ・ ・ ・ ・
じぶんじしんだから (p. 129) MYSELF
SEVEN

Specimens of Families

YŪ MIRI
Translated with an introduction by Abbie (Miyabi) Yamamoto

Yū Miri (b. 1968) is one of the most prolific and commercially successful
writers in contemporary Japan, and has authored novels, plays, and essays.
She debuted as a playwright in 1988 and received the prestigious Kishida
Drama Prize in 1992 with Uo no matsuri (Festival for the fish). In 1997,
she received the significant Akutagawa Prize with Kazoku shinema (Family
cinema) and has continued to win many prizes and awards for both her
scripts and prose.
Much of her writing is often perceived to be autobiographical or at least
factually based. This perception is supported by the similarities between
her essays (presumed to be factual) and novels. That she was sued for
invading the privacy of a woman who claimed to be the model of the pro-
tagonist of her first novel, Ishi ni oyogu sakana (The fish that swims in the
stone; 1994), only further justifies this view. These presumptions, however,
have been challenged by some critics who, among other things, point to
Yū’s comments where she revealed that her essays are a place for her to
develop ideas for fiction rather than to record factual events.1
Thematically, Yū’s writings often revolve around families and, in partic-
ular, dysfunctional family relations. She is unusual among Zainichi Korean
writers who publish under an obviously Korean name in that she has not
published many works focused on explicitly Zainichi Korean issues, such
as citizenship, history, the Korean peninsula, and border-crossing. Since she
gave birth in 2000, however, these themes have grown in centrality within
her corpus of work.
Her literary style is sharp, elegant, and realistic. She is a writer who is
able to inscribe her narratives with the subtle details that infuse them with

1 
For more on this view, see Nagaoka Morito, Yū Miri “Yū Miri” to iu monogatari [The story
called “Yū Miri” by Yū Miri] (Tokyo: Bensei Shuppan, 2009).
166 Yū Miri

a compelling sense of reality. Her similes, which are highly original and
evocative, are of particular note.
The following essays are unusual within her corpus for their explicit and
central treatment of more “typical” Zainichi Korean issues and the frequent
usage of Korean terms. However, in that they appear to be autobiographi-
cal, they are consistent with her overall style. In these early works, one
sees that her Korean heritage colors her past, but is not explanatory or
determinative of her present life.
These short essays were originally published in the weekly magazine
Shūkan Asahi (Asahi weekly). They were part of a series called Kazoku no
hyōhon (Specimens of families) that ran from July 1993 to December 1994.
The first two sections (untranslated here) tell stories of the conflicts within
families, while the third section (translated here) focuses on her family of
origin, and portrays many issues and behaviors associated with individu-
als in the Zainichi Korean community. Glosses of Korean terms have been
given as in the original essays.

Shinoyama Kishin and My Father

“Hey, Dad? Do you know the photographer Shinoyama Kishin?”
“I do.”
“He says he wants to take photos of us.”
I talked into the receiver loudly, enunciating each word distinctly.
I called my father because Mr. Shinoyama said he wanted to take our
photo for a portrait series he runs in the men’s magazine Brutus. My father
works at a pachinko parlor. Whenever I call him the noise rushes into my
ears like water, so I take a deep breath as if I were standing on the edge of
a diving board.
“What kind of photos?” he asked.
“Photos of us side-by-side in a pachinko parlor.”
“And the outfit?”
I wasn’t sure I heard him correctly.
“What am I supposed to wear?” He didn’t want to be photographed in
his pachinko parlor uniform.
“Oh, uh, he said that you could just wear your nice dress suit.”
Like a popular celebrity might speak when talking to his agent, my
father said, “OK. Well, let me know when the schedule’s finalized. Talk
to you later!” and hung up, leaving a lively and cheerful voice I’ve never
heard before ringing in my eardrums.
That day, my father came late; he didn’t show up even after the sched-
uled time of ten thirty. Thinking that he might still be asleep, I called him
at home wiping my clammy forehead, but he wasn’t there.
Specimens of Families 167

Then he appeared without a word of apology, and confidently walked

right up to Mr. Shinoyama: “I wonder if this is okay? I brought another
one too.” He showed Mr. Shinoyama his brand-new suit. He had been to
the barbershop.
When Mr. Shinoyama said, “That’s great,” my father then pulled his
gold-rimmed glasses up onto his forehead, and asked, “And the glasses?”
peering into Mr. Shinoyama’s face.
“Better to wear them,” Mr. Shinoyama replied, to which my father nod-
ded approvingly, as if to say, of course. Those glasses were his most prized
possession.
When Mr. Shinoyama said, “Dad, your tools,” my father smoothly glid-
ed by the photography equipment and received his tools like a baton (one
a small silver hammer, and the other a stick with a pachinko ball on its tip)
from (probably) a subordinate and came back with a big smile on his face,
as if to say, I am so glad I’ve been a pachinko handler all this time.
My father tightly held his tools and took a stance like a boxer. “Your dad
is so theatrical and funny,” said Mr. Shinoyama, but my lips were frozen in
a stiff half-smile like a basting yarn. I couldn’t decide if I wanted to burst
into laughter or into tears.
“Your hands! Higher up!” Mr. Shinoyama shouted to compete with the
surrounding noise.
I turned around again, even while thinking I really shouldn’t. My father
was holding the tool up high like a drumstick. Aghhhh . . . Inside, I let out
a voice like a balloon with a hole in it.
The photo shoot ended well, but . . .
My father announced in a serious tone, “There’s a Chinese restaurant
I know of just around here so let me show you the way by car.” Fifteen
minutes later, my father’s car in the front didn’t look like it was stopping
anytime soon. The three cars just kept running quietly on residential streets.
Half an hour later, we finally arrived at the restaurant. On the table of the
private room of the top floor of the restaurant, there were napkins, plates,
and glasses for each of us already laid out.
My father said, “I did some photographing when I was young too, but
nowadays the photographs you get from expensive cameras and dispos-
able instant cameras are the same.” Mr. Shinoyama didn’t change his ex-
pression a bit and said, “Leica and the rest, they’re all the same nowadays.
That’s why I show off with these big-deal-looking ones like I used today.”
My father kept carrying on and started lamenting the computerization
of pachinko platforms saying that when machines evolve, humans lose the
chance to show off their skills.
Then Mr. Shinoyama said, “You know, I just bought a massage chair the
other day. It’s fabulous. I don’t need a masseuse anymore.”
168 Yū Miri

“Sensei, which manufacturer’s was that?”

“Oh, it’s called ‘National Rubby-Dubby.’”
“How much is that Rubby-Dubby?”
“The Rubby-Dubby is five hundred thousand yen. But I bought it for
two fifty.”
“OK, Miri, you go see the president of National tomorrow. And if you
say, ‘I don’t know what kind of commercials you are putting on air, but it
is much more effective to have Shinoyama Sensei go around telling people
that National Rubby-Dubby is the best. My father also bought one because
of that,’ then Shinoyama Sensei would get some advertisement royalties.”
Everyone burst out laughing at my father’s words, but he was dead seri-
ous. Without touching any of the food or drinks, he just talked and talked
about how he wanted to become the president, how he had been a virgin
until twenty-seven, but then one day he decided to live it up and hunted
down numerous women, and on and on . . .
A bottle of Shaoxing wine was finished, and then two. It was now time
for Mr. Shinoyama to be back in the studio, but his face was flushed. My
father started telling old tales of the time my mother left him fifteen years
ago, “My Wife, Oh, She Left Me, Oh.” “You must have gambled too much
in horse racing,” said Mr. Shinoyama. An agonized smile spread over my
father’s gloomy face and he said, “I’ve never drowned in gambling.”
When we were done with the meal, my father took out a bunch of ten
thousand yen bills from his inside pocket and handed one to each person
saying, “This is to cover your transportation costs.” Everyone said, “Huh?”
and fumbled with the bill, but Mr. Shinoyama just smiled and said, “Oh
my, I get the same ten thousand yen as everyone else?” and simply put it
in his pocket. My father said, “Oh, it’s only a joke” and chuckled. Feeling
grateful to Mr. Shinoyama for going with the flow, I chuckled along with
my father like a warbling pigeon.

Lychees
In eighth grade, I started running away from home a lot. The first time I
went to Enoshima. It was in the middle of the winter and I remember it
was so cold that when I sighed my breath felt warm. The police would
have caught me if I wandered about at night, so I slept in the elevator of
an empty vacation condo with the sign “Vacancies Available” hanging
outside.
The custodian found me. His wife didn’t ask me anything and just gave
me rice balls and tea. Then she took out some lychees from the freezer and
peeled them for me. While letting the lychee melt in my mouth I told them
my father’s home phone number (my parents were separated).
Specimens of Families 169

Ten years later I went to see this custodian couple. I had found out
that they were managing a campsite in Kujūkuri. They were living in a
small trailer and said, “It feels like we’re traveling—it’s fun,” and smiled
at each other.
“You know, my husband used to work at a company. One day, when we
were taking a walk on his day off, we saw that white condo. Then, he said,
Wouldn’t you like to live in a place like that?” They took turns talking, like
they were on a seesaw. “We asked a real estate agent we knew to introduce
us to the owner of the condo and,” “then, he quit the company!” They said
another reason was because she did not get along with their son’s wife.
“We don’t like fighting.” “Right, me and him, neither of us like fighting. We
moved from the condo to here also,” “because there were so many vacation
condos being built. Then we got stuck in between the condo owner and the
residents who said that the condos destroyed the surrounding scenery.”
“So we decided to become the custodians here.”
I looked around the trailer, which looked smaller than my studio in the
city. “Everything’s within arm’s reach. It’s quite comfortable.” The warm
summer rain started coming down. They looked at the rain hitting the small
window of their trailer and said, “Oh, there are going to be cancellations.”
“Yup, I bet there will be,” like they were going around in a circle.
“We have a dream.” “This time we want to live in the mountains, instead
of by the ocean.” “I wonder if we should do some live-in work in some inn
in the mountains . . .” Their faces were calm and displayed a faint smile
of deep repose. I wondered if a couple over sixty could live in a cabin in
the mountains. The wife stood up and took out a frozen lychee from the
freezer. When I ate the lychee, my memories from ten years ago spread in
my mouth and I blushed. The couple opened the door and kept waving
their hands at me with the trailer door open, even though that let in the
violent horizontal rain.
Maybe this elderly couple were the real runaways, I thought.
If I could abandon my house and become free, then . . .

WeMayNotBeThatBad
Teenage girls pass through my little sister’s apartment. These girls are run-
ning away from troubles they only hint at and come to my sister’s apart-
ment. They wait there sleeping in a small six-mat room, bumping into each
other’s legs and arms, until the punishing summer rays weaken, without
even a fan.
When I opened the door to my sister’s room, the two girls who were
lying around suddenly stiffened. U, with a round face and a bobbed girl’s
cut, had her lips tightly closed like a boy. L, with a bobbed cut and a bare
170 Yū Miri

nape, lacked eyebrows and eyelashes. Whatever I asked, U refused to open

her mouth and just stared at me as if to say, “If you come any closer, I’m
going to bite you,” and L just cocked her head to the left and gazed outside
the window.
A few days later, my sister called. “U is an only child from a rich family.
Her father is a dentist and her mother is a hygienist. She has been refusing
to go to school since third grade. She refused to talk so she was taken to a
psychiatrist, to a school for kids like her, to the head of some weird new
religion, and stuff like that. She said that at each of these places, every-
one would smile when they saw her. U said that really scared her.” I was
stunned when I heard this because I, too, had tried to smile hard when I
saw her. Anyone would be afraid of a stranger coming up to her with a
forced smile plastered onto her face.
“What’s strange is U’s dad. The other day, I visited U’s home. Whenever
I spoke to U, her father, who was sitting right next to her, would answer
instead, speaking at the speed of a machine gun. I asked U if it was always
like that. She said that her dad always spoke instead of her at home so she
could never get a word in edgewise.” I sandwiched the phone receiver
between my shoulder and ear and wiped the sweat off my hands with the
hem of my T-shirt. “How about the other girl?”
“That’s my classmate from elementary school. L’s also an only child,
but with her, the problem’s her mother. She was a tiger mom and the head
of the PTA. When L’s hair started falling out in second grade, her mom
attributed it to bullying and made a fuss.” “Was she being bullied?” “Not
at all. The doctor apparently said that it must have been caused by psy-
chological reasons. L’s hair fell out to the very last strand and then even
her eyebrows and eyelashes fell out. So she wears a bobbed-cut wig, and
before she goes out, her mother pencils in the eyebrows and attaches fake
eyelashes.”
“If it’s a psychological issue, don’t you think it can be cured?” “I don’t
think she’s going to get better as long as she lives with her mother.” My
sister’s voice was not one tone: it was a mix of sympathy for the girls
and a mischievousness shadowed with a hint of superiority as if to say,
“ItMayBeThatOurFamilyIsNotThatBad.”

Komo
I saw my komo, whom I had not seen in a long time. Komo means your fa-
ther’s sister in Korean. I ran into my komo in front of the house. I stiffened,
thinking that she would lecture me about something or other, but instead,
she just stared at me and would not open her mouth. I could no longer bear
her stare and said, “Komo, it’s been awhile! You’ve gotten greyer.” One
Specimens of Families 171

displeased line appeared on her forehead and she politely acknowledged

me with a slight bow. Then she went back up to the second floor.
A while back, Komo and my mother were like cats and dogs. Komo lived
on the second floor with a Japanese guy, but would often come to the first
floor. The first floor only had two six-mat rooms. Every morning, she would
shake awake my father who slept hugging my mother and say, “Hey. Wake
up! Come on. Hey!” One day, my mother got so angry that she closed off the
stairs leading to the second floor with some plywood, a hammer, and nails.
Often, sewage water would shower down from the second floor along
with Komo’s exclamation of “Aigo—.” It was the toilet water overflowing.
My mother would then fling rough-sounding Korean curses upstairs that
sounded like corrugated roof tiles rubbing together.
Komo would sometimes ask us, “Hey, you guys, who do you like bet-
ter? Your aboji (father) or omoni (mother)?” Both of us always answered,
“I like dad better,” because that way, she would give us her thousand yen
she kept stashed in her drawers.
Komo plowed the ground of a park with a spade and hoe and planted
vegetables for making kimchi. She also kept over a dozen chickens in our
small yard and slaughtered them any time there was an occasion to cel-
ebrate. People in the neighborhood association complained, borrowing
strength from the staff members of the sanitation department they brought
along. Komo and the guy on the second floor huffed, “Are you telling us
to starve?!!”
The guy on the second floor was an engineer at a large electric company.
He had a son with his ex-wife, but she had left him and disappeared with
their son. While he was looking for their whereabouts, he met Komo and
began living with her.
The man’s only hobby was to photograph stone images of the Bud-
dha. He once took me to a mountain far away when I was still young. We
followed him almost in tears because of the cuts we got on our arms and
cheeks from the sharp bamboo leaves. Once there, he pushed his shutter
button over and over again in front of the headless stone Buddhas, falling
apart after years in the wind and rain.
Once when I was riding the bus, I saw an old lady near my stop start
fighting with the bus driver because she wanted to bring her two-wheeled
cart onto the bus. I was with my classmate, S. “It’s a beggar. Eeeewwww!”
Hearing S jeer at the old lady somewhere in the distance, my gaze fluttered
off outside the window, acknowledging Komo. I made a fist in the pocket
of my uniform and slowly melted into S’s laughter.
When I returned home later that night, my sister said, “Komo knew you
were there.” Apparently, Komo had let out a depressed sigh: “That girl’s a
lost cause. She’s just like her mother.”
172 Yū Miri

The Bicycle
I gave my younger sister the bicycle I had just bought. That was three
winters ago.
I was addressing envelopes for invitations to a play when my sister
called to chat. I was lying limply, utterly exhausted, ready to conk out.
“Oh, it’s you. Yeah?” I answered in a cold, hoarse voice. “Help me address
these envelopes.” “I’ll come over with K. You know, she has good hand-
writing.” “Isn’t K studying for entrance exams?” K, who had been living
at my sister’s for six months, was studying for the college entrance exam
full-time. She was supposedly determined to enter a medical program to
become a psychiatrist.
K and my sister met in elementary school, but at first they did not get
along. K, who was one of the two co-class presidents, ordered her minions
to put my sister’s indoor shoes and gym clothes in the incinerator. Then she
laughed at my sister, saying, “what a flake” when she was being scolded
by the teacher, who asked, “You forgot something again!?”
When they were in fifth grade, K’s mother committed suicide, leaping
off the veranda of their apartment. Apparently it was because she was
worn out from caring for K’s younger brother, who had a mental disability.
Around that time, my family fell apart. My mother and I had left home,
so my sister had to assume responsibility for all the cooking and cleaning.
K and my sister quickly became close.
My sister did not tell my mother the date of her graduation, but my
mother thought to herself, “I should at least attend the graduation ceremo-
ny . . .” and called the school and went. My mother recounts that my sister
and K stayed apart from the herd of parents and children taking pictures
with their graduation diplomas in hand. At the corner of the school yard
by the jungle gym, they were holding hands and leaning onto each other
like wilted flowers.
K became worn out by taking care of her brother, who would smash the
windows and run outside shrieking, so she ran away to my sister’s apart-
ment. After that, she never returned home. Her father decided to admit her
brother to an institution.
After I finished addressing the invitations, I decided to walk my sister
and K back to her apartment in the next town over so I went to the bi-
cycle lot—on the newly bought bicycle. “Where did you get that?” “This?
I bought it.” “Why do you need a bicycle? You live so close to the train
station.” My sister threw a sideway glance at K. “It would be convenient
for shopping and stuff if we had a bicycle, wouldn’t it, K?”
They were waiting for my next words.
Specimens of Families 173

“Fine. I will give it to you,” I said in a grumpy voice. My sister sat on

the saddle and K grabbed onto her waist. The bicycle sailed between the
houses. Ice-cold air wrapped around the two bodies.
I shrank away in the cold, but at the same time, I felt like the pain coated
onto my head and throat from smoking too much was brushed away.
The following spring, K got into her top-choice medical program.

Answering Machine
My hanme (grandmother) left me a message on my answering machine.
“Miri, it’s your hanme. I want to talk to you. Let’s have some dinner
together; I’ll treat you. When you get back, give me a call. Your hanme’s
in Shibuya. The number is 008214. I’ll be waiting. It’s Hanme.” I thought,
What phone number has six digits? But I tried it anyway. As I expected, an
emotionless female voice flatly said, “The number you called is no longer
in use.” My mother told me Hanme was in South Korea. I wondered if she
had gone senile. But whatever it was, I was sure she was short of money.
When my mother was five, Hanme left her family for a man. Fifteen
years later, people were not even sure whether she was dead or alive.
Around the time my father and mother married, Hanme appeared. She
said the guy abandoned her. For a while, she stayed in the house all the
while complaining of how small and dirty it was, but one day she suddenly
disappeared—with the diamond ring and platinum necklace my mother
kept in the drawer of her mirror stand. Hanme pawned those for money
and had a breast-enlargement operation. She was fifty.
A few years later, she tumbled back to our house looking like a rain-
soaked cat.
I once took a bath with her. Her breasts were scarred. I asked my mother
about it in the kitchen.
“What happened to Hanme’s breasts?”
“They got burned. She spilled tempura oil on herself by mistake. Dad
tried to take her clothes off and cool it with water, but she was so embar-
rassed that she wouldn’t take off her clothes.” My mom’s hands, cutting
kimchi, were bright red.
Hanme heard of Hanbe’s death in Japan. Hanbe (grandfather) had re-
turned to his hometown in Korea when he found out he had terminal
cancer, but Hanme did not follow him—she did not like the countryside.
About five years ago, Hanme came to my sister’s apartment. She moved
in her furniture bit by bit, and finally settled in.
“I’m going to take this watch to the shop for you because it’s broken,”
she said and pawned the watch that my sister received as a birthday gift
174 Yū Miri

from our father. Once, she filled an empty XO bottle with cheap brandy
and sold it to my mother for a high price. “That’s not what a mother
does,” my mother cried as she poured the liquor into the sink, but she too
left her family for a man. My mother’s sister also married and divorced
three times.
My sanchuns (uncles) say, “That woman can just die in the streets.” My
mother’s real estate business and my imo’s (maternal aunt’s) high-interest
lending shop both went bankrupt when the economic bubble burst.
Hanme must have no one to depend on. I wonder where she is now.
She should be turning eighty soon. I rewound the tape and played back
Hanme’s voice on the answering machine again and again, while remem-
bering what my sister and I promised each other.
Let’s never have children.

The Boy Who Could Not Cross Over to America

I was in elementary school when my imo came back to Japan with her two
children. My cousin R was three years old and E had just turned one. It was
no wonder that Imo, who had spent her youth in Japan and had studied
hair styling in France after graduating high school, could not stand living
in the Korean countryside.
“I had nothing to talk about when I was with Mr. Lee (her husband).”
I taught kick-the-can and the Japanese nursery song “Kagome Kagome”
to R, who could not speak Japanese. R forgot Korean in half a year and the
first words baby E spoke were Japanese.
Imo worked at a Korean hostess club and saved up enough money to
start a small beauty parlor.
Mr. Lee came to Japan for them, but Imo said to my mother, “Tell him
I’m definitely not going back,” and refused to see him.
Mr. Lee decided he would come back for them after achieving academic
success that Imo would approve of, so he studied ferociously and entered
Seoul National University. He even went abroad to Harvard. The signature
on his monthly letter to her changed to Mr. Ree. Imo pushed beyond her
means to put R and E in an American school. Imo also became involved
with a married Japanese man who then started staying over on the second
floor of the beauty parlor. The photograph on the shoe rack, of Mr. Ree
holding the newborn E, glared down at the man’s shoes at the doorway
like an owl.
Nights that the man did not visit her, Imo told the boys stories about
Mr. Ree. “The only person whom I’ve ever fallen in love with is your
­aboji, Mr. Ree.”
Specimens of Families 175

A letter saying that he “wanted to live with the children” arrived from
Mr. Ree, who had now received his doctoral degree in electrical engi-
neering. My cousins went to America and transferred to a high school in
Massachusetts.
E was supposed to stay in America until graduating high school, but
came back to Japan in just half a year. He had developed a bald spot on his
head. According to the phone call from R, who stayed in America, the cause
was E not getting along with his half-siblings. (Mr. Ree had an American
wife and two children.)
E started rebelling against Imo. When Imo said something to him, he
would hole up behind a barricade he made of a desk and drawers, shriek
like he had punched his own stomach, and yell, “I don’t want to hear a
thing you say!”
Less than a week before E was to compete in a varsity meet, he got into
trouble. He was a sprinter.
He broke into the next-door neighbor’s house from the second-floor
window while they were out and stole their wallet. The neighbors found
him when they returned home, at which point E jumped out of the window
and broke his leg.
I heard that even when the police came, E kept his head low and stayed
wound-up as if he was waiting for the gunshot at the starting line.

Families That Naturalized

My freelance writer friend tells me that approximately five thousand
Zainichi Koreans naturalize each year.2
Sanchun was a long-distance trucker. I used to like riding in his heavy
truck when I was young. When he lifted me up to the driver’s seat from
his shoulders, I felt my heart flutter like I was about to get on an amuse-
ment park ride. Sanchun married the daughter of a freight company presi-
dent. At that point, he naturalized and started to dislike my calling him
“Sanchun.”
One summer break, my mother and I went to stay over at Sanchun’s
house in Hachiōji. The large yard had a pond and when Sanchun clapped
his hands from the bridge over the pond, koi that were worth a couple of
hundred thousand yen each came up to the surface. My mother kept gasp-
ing and saying, “How lovely.”
At dinner time, when I said, “It’s kalchi!” pointing at the cutlass fish on
the table, Sanchun put his finger on his lips and shushed me. “Say ‘cutlass

2 
“Naturalize” here means the process of becoming a Japanese national.
176 Yū Miri

fish.’ You have no idea who is listening where.” He frowned at me, but
then proceeded to cover the kalchi with a thick layer of kochijan (Korean hot
soy paste). The day after we went back home, Sanchun called my mother.
“Hey, did you use Korean outside the house? People in the neighborhood
are looking at me funny since you guys left.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Ask the kids too.”
“The kids can’t speak any Korean,” my mother said matter-of-factly. Ap-
parently, he then replied in an uptight voice that it must have been because
she came dressed looking like a hostess.
After that, we stopped visiting Sanchun at his house.
Sanchun’s company went bankrupt when the bubble economy burst.
Sanchun sold the house and moved to a four-and-a-half-mat apartment
with his wife and began a ramen stand with her to clear his debt of almost
100 million yen.
Another story of a family that naturalized: the missionary school that I
went to was a so-called princess school and had many girls from blue-blood
homes. In my class, there was a girl who was the daughter of one of my
mother’s acquaintances. The entire extended family had naturalized, and
they all used their Japanese names.
Her family ran a love hotel close to Yamashita Park. She was always
falling asleep during class. My mother told me that my classmate was in
charge of “changing the sheets” with her elementary schooler brother so
that her parents could save on hiring employees. She also worked shifts at
the front desk, so she could never get enough continuous hours of sleep.
When I was clearing out my desk and locker after being expelled from the
school, this girl—whom I had never talked to—suddenly burst into tears.
When I came back home, I found that she had sent me a bouquet of
flowers. A piece of paper fell out onto the carpet.
Poppies bloom red
Lilies bloom white
Miri, you should bloom in your own beautiful color.

The New House

My sister and I have beepers. Our father gave them to us. My father calls
the beeper any time of the day—whether it is the middle of the night or
barely dawn.
“When I call him back he’s so annoying—prodding into what I’m doing
where, saying I must be using the beeper he gave me to get in touch with
guys . . .” My sister sounded fed up.
Specimens of Families 177

We started ignoring the beeper even when our father’s phone number
appeared on it.
Once the beeper beeped and I called my father after ignoring it for many
months.
“I’m going to build a house for all of us to live in. I want you to look at
the blueprint I decided on with the architect today.” He sounded serious.
“Sorry, Dad, I’m busy right now. Can you maybe fax it?” But he insisted
that things would be unclear unless we talked in person.
I went to the pachinko parlor my father worked at. In such a rush that
he didn’t want to waste time going somewhere else to talk, he drew an
invisible line on the glass case where the prizes were kept and explained,
“The room for you and Eri (my sister) is on the second floor. Here. It’s eight-
mats. The six-mat room next-door is for Haruki and Haruo (my brothers).”
“But I’m not going to live there. Eri and Haruo also . . .”
“There is a kitchen and bathroom on the second floor too so that you
can bring over friends.”
“I don’t need a kitchen. When I eat, I’ll eat with you downstairs, Dad.”
I was getting anxious trying to figure out how to explain to him that I
couldn’t live with him without hurting his feelings.
But my father’s eyes lit up at my careless words, “I’ll eat with you.”
“OK. So, I should make a study for you instead of a kitchen. I’ll get the
contractor to build a big bookshelf on the wall.”
“Dad, because of my work—”
“You will need a bed, right?”
“No, I don’t. Dad, look . . .”
Suddenly I wondered if he was planning to build a room for my mother.
I knew that my father and mother had met up a month earlier. She had
told me.
“Look, Mister, let’s not build a cheap house like that and instead, let’s
build a top-quality office building five stories high. The first floor can be
my real-estate agency office; the nonresidential floors we can rent out.”
“Do you want to start over with all of us?”
“What are you smoking?” she replied. “I carefully locked away the di-
vorce papers you sent me in a safety box ten years ago, but I’ve now made
up my mind to sign them!!”
He apparently flew into a fitful rage, but my mother has yet to receive
the papers.
“It will be done by the end of May so you and your sister should come
help out with the packing.”
I replied ambiguously and my father squeezed my hand tightly, en-
couraged by my ambiguous response. I wondered if my father seriously
178 Yū Miri

thought that he could really revive a family that has fallen (the only way it
can be described) by building a house.
Imagining my large eight-mat room empty except for a humongous
bookshelf, I shuddered and started walking toward the train station.
A few months later, the house was built.
My father bought a ruby ring costing the healthy sum of five hundred
thousand yen at a neighborhood pawnshop and drove his car to Kamakura
where my mother lived. When she came out to the doorway, he said to her,
“Let’s start over. I want you to take this as an engagement ring,” but she did
not accept it. I heard this from my brother and called Kamakura shocked.
She giggled at the other end of the line, saying, “Well, you know, that ring
that he bought, it was so tacky.”
From now on my sister and I promised each other we will ignore the
beepers even when they go off. We were sure that we would be forced to
live in this newly built house if we were to set even one foot inside. Then
my sister called: “Brother says that all of us and Dad have to go to the city
ward office to change the address on our alien registration forms.”
“What? Why do we all have to go together? That can’t be true. Besides,
I’m busy tomorrow.”
My sister’s voice became prickly as she said, “I said the same thing, but
then Brother started throwing a fit. If you aren’t going, you tell him your-
self.” So we decided on a time and place to meet and hung up.
My father forced us to change our addresses on the alien registration
form to the address of his new house and then said, “I’ll take you to Yoko-
hama Station,” and pushed us all into the car as we were trying to catch
the train back to our homes.
I suddenly noticed a Weekly Asahi sticking out of the dashboard. My
father cannot read or write Japanese so he has my brother read my publi-
cations to him.
“The family stories you write are humdrum. They also lack the exact
part people want to know about: how the families can improve—there’s
no point to the stories if you don’t tell them that.”
“But if she wrote out all of that, it’d be boring,” my brother suddenly
interrupted from the passenger seat.
Whenever my father saw one of my plays, he would go home mumbling,
“Your play lacks a ‘revolution.’ People won’t be moved by things that are
hopeless.”
I wondered if for my father building a house no one would live in was
proof of a “revolution.”
While I was thinking about things like that, the car coasted into an un-
familiar neighborhood.
We had arrived not at the station, but at the new house.
Specimens of Families 179

The Aunt Who Went to Paris

I left the café and walked with my back to the station, but then stopped
because I realized it was raining. I had not noticed my hair and shoulders
dampening in part because it was a misty rain, but also because I had been
so tired from all the troubles that kept cropping up.
I raised my hand to stop a taxi. The moment the door was about to shut,
I heard a voice squeal, “Miriii. Miriii. Oh, oh! Miriii.” A woman riding a
bicycle with TOKYU HANDS vinyl bags on the handlebar and bike rack
was calling out—it was my imo.
“How are you, Miri?”
“I’m about to go to Kagurazaka for work. How about you, Imo?”
“I’m going to open a Korean barbeque shop in Yoyogi Uehara. Don’t
tell your mom. She’s just going to tell me I can’t possibly do it if she finds
out.” Imo laughed metallically.
When she was twenty, she went to Paris without a penny to her name to
study hair design quite seriously for a couple of years. This is why I had a
very hard time associating her with a Korean barbeque eatery. She used to
prance about Motomachi in Yokohama in blue jeans with a charcoal grey
turtleneck, holding a baguette wrapped in a red paper bag. She looked
stylish and cool even to a child’s eye.
I later heard that she said to my mother and father many times, “I’m not
getting married or having kids. Please let me adopt Miri.”
I remember going to Isetan with her about twenty years ago and eating
chocolate parfait together.
“When I impulsively buy expensive clothes, I think ‘oops!’ but when
you buy a chocolate parfait, you really can’t mess it up,” she said with a
completely straight face as she lapped up the whipped cream on the parfait,
and I burst out laughing.
When Imo married and had children, I felt betrayed. We had made a
pinky promise to live in Paris, just the two of us.
“We’re opening in a week so come on over!”
I remembered Imo’s cooking, which was way beyond what could be con-
sidered unskilled—raw slices of daikon radishes and cut carrots, a chilled
soup (?) made by mixing black sesame and milk in the juicer.
“After the advance payments on this place, I’m completely out of
money. I still had to buy a lot of things. So I just charged it all on the
credit card. I still have to get all this stuff for the store before the card
maxes out.”
Imo then hastily rattled on about how she sold her popular beauty parlor
to help with the debt her lover’s company incurred, but that he had a stroke
and could no longer leave his wife’s house, and so on.
180 Yū Miri

The driver let out an annoyed cough so I said to Imo, “I’m going,” and
closed the window.
Imo crossed in front of the taxi. The wind blew off the hood of her
mouse-grey colored raincoat and exposed her grey hair. She is three years
younger than my mother, so that makes her forty-five . . .
I averted my eyes from her bike as we passed her and just stared at the
wipers that continuously flicked the raindrops away.

Why I Stopped Seeing My Sister

This series is modeled on actual families, but so far I have not received
any complaints. Just once, when I wrote something based on my sister’s
friend, I received an angry call from my sister. “I won’t be able to see K
anymore!!” However, because I kept introducing characters based on my
sister and the people around her in my essays and novels, she finally
stopped seeing me.
Then, I heard a rumor that my sister, an actress, was appearing nude in
movies, so I called my mother’s in Kamakura.
“Is Eri home?”
“Oh yeah, she said she was going on location for a week,” my brother
was talking to me while munching on potato chips or something.
“Are you getting paid properly?” He is the only salesman for my moth-
er’s real estate firm, Heisei Enterprises. He’s twenty-one.
“I think this month I’m going to. Why are you asking? You’re going to
give me money? The rumor is that this year you’re going to give out the
New Year’s money presents.”
I hadn’t talked to my younger brother in six months. When you hit your
mid-twenties you barely see your family. Adding up the times I’ve seen
my family this year alone, I’ve seen my mother once, my father twice, my
first younger brother once, my second younger brother zero times, and my
sister two or three times. That’s it.
My mother sometimes faxes me property brochures for stand-alone
homes in the city: “A 9-minute walk to Shibuya Station. Unbeatable loca-
tion.” “A 15-minute walk to Sangenjaya Station. Previously owned house.
Full of natural light.” At first, I was just throwing them out thinking it
was some kind of a mistake, but once, when I looked at the top edge,
it said “heisei_enterprises.” Was she trying to do business with her own
daughter? But does she really think that I can afford a property close to
100 million yen?
One day, a woman who had business dealings with my mother called
and invited her over for a visit. When my mother visited the mansion this
woman lived in, the woman began talking about her only son who had just
Specimens of Families 181

committed suicide in the spring and begged her, crying, to have his story
be written up in Specimens of Families.
I said to my mother, “I’m sorry but this is ending after the coming install-
ment. If it starts up again, then I will go hear her story.”
That’s right; this serial is ending today with its seventy-first installment.
It’s hard even for me to believe that this serial—originally intended as
thirteen installments (with two interruptions)—lasted until today.
When I spoke with Mr. Inoue Hisashi, he had clipped out a few of the
installments from Specimens of Families and had them in his organizer.3 This
made me very happy. Mr. Inoue kindly said, “Fifty or a hundred years from
now, this will become a valuable historical resource. It will illustrate how
Japanese families were at the beginning of the Heisei era.”
A few literary editors have said, “It’s almost wasteful that you submit
a four-page essay every week based on material you can turn into short
stories.”
Families, these mysterious microcosms—I will keep collecting their
specimens on trains and in bars.

3 
Inoue Hisashi is a venerated writer and playwright.
APPENDIX

Zainichi Recognition:
Kin Kakuei in the 1960s

JOHN LIE

In virtually every considered reflection on Zainichi literature, the year

zero is the end of colonial rule. First-generation ethnic Koreans, especially
those who arrived in the Japanese archipelago as children, began to pub-
lish energetically during the colonial period. Again, it would be mislead-
ing to insist on the fundamental discontinuity before and after 1945, but
post-Liberation Zainichi writings had several notable characteristics. Most
importantly, they were part and parcel of the heroic and epic aesthetics of
socialist realism.1 Almost all ethnic Koreans who remained in Japan became
aligned with North Korea, whether because of its political legitimacy as an
anticolonial force or its substantive efforts to provide ethnic education and
livelihood assistance. As I noted in the introduction to this volume, ethnic
Korean writings in Japanese for the first two decades after 1945 featured
socialist-realist works of heroic struggles, frequently in Manchuria and
elsewhere in continental Asia. These works have been largely forgotten,
and are rarely now included in the canon of Zainichi literature. It is worth
stressing that a considerable body of ethnic Koreans writings in Korean—
both before and after Liberation—has been largely neglected and unfortu-
nately lies outside the purview of this volume.
What remains from the early post–World War II decades are Zainichi
writers who sought to portray the conflicts, both geopolitical and interper-
sonal, of postcolonial subjects. The division of Korea, embedded in turn

1 
The immediate post-1945 years recapitulated the dominance of proletarian literature
in the 1920s and 1930s. In both time periods, we can observe the primacy of politics and
the model of socialist literature based on the Soviet example. On the Russian model, see,
e.g., Edward J. Brown, Russian Literature since Revolution, rev. ed. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1982), and Katerina Clark, The Soviet Novel, 3rd ed. (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 2000). In this regard, there is something of a family resemblance between
North Korean literature and Zainichi literature in the 1950s and 1960s.
184 John Lie

in the Cold War, provided a tension-filled context of Zainichi lives, tossed

and turned among intra-Korean and superpower conflicts. Kim Talsu’s
Genkainada (Genkai Strait), published in 1954, is representative. The trope
of the ocean separating the Korean peninsula and the Japanese archipela-
go symbolizes the tensions and contradictions of Zainichi lives. In Kim’s
case, it plays out both internally—the inevitable force of assimilation to
Japan—and externally—the doomed romance with a Japanese woman.
Kim Sokpom’s magnum opus Kazantō (Volcano Island) was published
over a period of fourteen years in seven volumes. Its continuity to the
socialist-realist mode—the novel revolves around the 1948 uprising on
Cheju Island—makes it almost a work of North Korean literature, albeit
written in Japanese and with a considerable dose of Japanese literary influ-
ences, including the inevitable stress on the interiority of the protagonist.
Similarly, Ri Kaisei’s (Lee Hoesung’s) epic Mihatenu yume (The unrealized
dream), published between 1975 and 1979, twins individual struggles with
political conflicts on the road to Korean unification. As tempting as it is to
pigeonhole the two Kims and Ri in the crucible of socialist realism, it would
wreak considerable havoc on their oeuvre. Each wrote, more or less, about
the experience of Zainichi lives in Japan and their inevitable vicissitudes
and transformations. Put differently, it would be deeply problematic to
exclude them from any consideration of Zainichi literature.
Nevertheless, my contention is that Zainichi literature was born belated-
ly in the late 1960s in Kin Kakuei’s series of stories. To appreciate fully the
conceptual space that Kin opened—where Zainichi literature flourished—it
would be worthwhile to take a theoretical detour. That is, we need to think
through what it means to be writing as a conscious ethnic minority in the
language of the majority and the erstwhile colonial power.

Theoretical Detour
In Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s influential book on Franz Kafka,
they develop the concept of minor literature and declaim its revolutionary
potential. Drawing on several pages from Kafka’s diary entry of December
25, 1911, on the literature of small nations, the French theorists highlight
three characteristics. Rather than being a product of a minority language,
“minor literature” is “rather what a minority does with a major language.”2
For Deleuze and Guattari, minor literature is not the literature of a minor-
ity in a minority tongue or a nascent national language. They paraphrase
Kafka in order to underscore the particular paradox that leads to its genesis:

2 
Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Kafka: Pour une littérature mineure (Paris: Les éditions
de minuit, 1975), 29.
Zainichi Recognition: Kin Kakuei in the 1960s  185

“the impossibility of not writing, the impossibility of writing in German,

the impossibility of writing otherwise.”3 If the particular conundrum of
being a minority propels minority writers to express themselves, they must
nonetheless do so in the language of the majority. Yet for a minority, the
majority language is a “paper language”; its artificiality contradicts the
Romantic idea of language as the soul of the people. Devoid of an organic
link with language, a minority crafts minor literature with the tool of the
majority. Thus, the group that develops minor literature is deterritorialized:
living and working in mainstream society but marginalized and uprooted
from it.
Beyond deterritorialization, there are two other critical features of minor
literature: its political nature and the conflation of the individual and the
collective. For Deleuze and Guattari, the social context of minority exis-
tence shapes its literature. The politicization of minor literature is man-
dated by the reality that a minority inhabits a “tiny space.” Whereas the
wide expanse of majority existence enables individual concerns merely
to reverberate with other individual affairs, the narrow horizon of minor-
ity life forces individual matters to connect with politics. A minority, for
Deleuze and Guattari, literally occupies a small space or a narrow social
circle; thus, even a domestic squabble or a tawdry affair, precisely because
it concerns everyone in a “tiny space,” becomes a matter of politics.
If the tiny space mandates the politicization of minor literature, the pau-
city of talent renders every individual utterance to assume the form of
collective enunciation. In other words, the individual-collective conflation
implies the thoroughgoing essentialism of the minority population and
minor literature. In contrast, exponents of major literature float above the
gravity of the collective, free to speak for themselves without the burden
of politics or the onus of representing the collectivity. In the case of minor
literature, the talented few perforce transact “the affairs of the people,”
especially so in forging an “active solidarity” of the group.4 The small size
of the population (and therefore of the talented) conflates the individual
and the collective just as much as the tiny space politicizes every utterance.
Finally, Deleuze and Guattari locate the potential for rupture and revo-
lution in minor literature. Because every expression is at once politicized
and represents the collective, minor literature discloses the “revolution-
ary condition within major (or established) literature.”5 The revolutionary
potential of minor literature corresponds to the sociology of the minority
population: marginalized and oppressed. The social reality of minority

3 
Deleuze and Guattari, Kafka, 29.
4 
Deleuze and Guattari, Kafka, 30.
5 
Deleuze and Guattari, Kafka, 33.
186 John Lie

life generates minor literature that is deterritorialized, politicized, and

essentialized.

Territorialization, Politicization, and Essentialization

Deleuze and Guattari are right to rescue Kafka’s oeuvre from the clutch of
those who wish to consign it to the realm of the Oedipal or the metaphysi-
cal. We should neither lay his work on the Procrustean bed of psychoana-
lysts nor propel it into the clouds through religious or philosophical hot air.
In imbuing his work with social and political concerns, the French theorists
seek to restore Kafka to the all-too-human world to which he, like the rest
of us, belonged. Nevertheless, their concept of minor literature makes little
sense of Kafka or Kafka’s oeuvre. What does it mean for minor literature to
be deterritorialized? What makes something major or minor? Territorial-
ized or deterritorialized? If there is anything in world history that deserves
the moniker of major literature, then surely it would be Latin works in the
Roman Empire. Yet Latin literature was hardly territorialized, except in
the rather loose but grand correlation between a vast region and a cosmo-
politan language. Should Juvenal and Martial—both born in what is today
Spain—be considered exponents of minor literature (as they composed in
the cosmopolitan, “artificial” language of Latin)?
Territorialization or deterritorialization is a historical process; there is
nothing stable about language and identity. In the context of shifting na-
tional boundaries and dynamic population movements, the sense of what
is major and what is minor language or ethnicity remained far from fixed
even in the twentieth century. In the 1911 diary entry that Deleuze and
Guattari use, Kafka himself pointed to Jewish literature in Warsaw and
contemporary Czech literature, not the German of Prague, as examples of
minor literature. In other words, minor literature for Kafka is a literature of
“small” nations written in a nonmajor language. Kafka’s primary point is
that size is not a particularly salient variable in the valorization of literature:
“a literature that is not in fact broad in scope can develop and produce the
manifold benefits of literary activity,” which includes “the unity of national
consciousness.”6 Although he acknowledges that “small” literature may
lack great, dominant figures, a Goethe—a writer of unquestioned great-
ness and influence—may in fact limit his successors by the sheer “power
of his works.”7 Indeed, for Kafka, literature is neither major nor minor,
neither territorialized nor deterritorialized, but merely and essentially lit-
erature.8 In this spirit, surely no one would suggest that Joseph Conrad in

6 
Franz Kafka, Tagebücher (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch, 1994), 1:243–244.
7 
Kafka, Tagebücher, 1:247.
8 
See Stanley Corngold, “Kafka and the Dialect of Minor Literature,” College Literature 21
Zainichi Recognition: Kin Kakuei in the 1960s  187

England or Vladimir Nabokov in the United States sought to develop a

minor literature.
Deleuze and Guattari would be right to insist that Kafka had various
political commitments. Yet whatever Kafka’s personal inclinations and
ideologies—he has been enlisted for causes ranging from Bolshevism to
Zionism—it seems dubious to regard him as an essentially political writer.
Their understanding of politics as subversion or revolution may work for
Karl Kraus but not Kafka. This is especially so if the cause of politicization
was in fact the narrow confine of minority existence. Is it the case that his
struggles with his father, for example, led to the politicization of his con-
sciousness along the lines of Mao Zedong claiming that his belief in class
struggle was born of his conflict with his father? And that Oedipal conflict
in turn touched the small Jewish community in Prague? Yet that would be
tantamount to mistaking Kafka’s urban existence, however inflected by the
Jewish community of Prague, with that of the proverbial village. Kafka’s
adult life instantiates the wide horizon of urban cosmopolitanism rather
than the narrow existence of ethnic particularism.9 Although Kafka’s writ-
ings often provoke claustrophobic reactions in readers—recall the confine-
ment of Gregor Samsa in his bedroom, reflecting in part Kafka’s sense of
entrapment in living in his parents’ apartment until he was thirty—his life
and work are hardly confined to a “tiny space.”10 Cosmopolitan geographi-
cal references—from the Great Wall of China to the African jungle—may
render Kafka’s work deterritorialized but they do not underscore Deleuze
and Guattari’s claim about the narrow social confines of minor literature.
In any case, the physical reality of “tiny space” pales in significance to the
profound expanse of imagination. As Kafka noted in the last of his Zürau
aphorisms: “It isn’t necessary that you leave home. Sit at your desk and
listen. Don’t even listen, just wait. Don’t wait, be still and alone. The whole
world will offer itself to you to be unmasked, it can do no other, it will
writhe before you in ecstasy.”11 And it would be the height of monomania to
see politics and politicization as the primary thematic of his oeuvre, which
is redolent with paradoxes and parables, nightmares and daydreams.
Finally, what does it mean to say that Kafka should somehow represent
the collective? What is the exact group to which he belongs or for which

(1994): 89–102. Cf. Scott Spector, Prague Territories: National Conflict and Cultural Innovation in
Franz Kafka’s Fin de Siècle (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 27ff.
9 
Reiner Stach, Kafka: Die Jahre der Entscheidungen (Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer, 2002),
51–53.
10 
Stach, Kafka, 20–23. See also Peter-André Alt, Franz Kafka: Der ewige Sohn (Munich: C. H.
Beck, 2005), 322–329.
11 
Franz Kafka, The Zürau Aphorisms, ed. Roberto Calasso, tr. Michael Hofmann (New
York: Schocken, 2006), 108.
188 John Lie

he writes? German-speaking Jews of Prague? Central European Jewry?

Deleuze and Guattari’s assertion elides disjunctures that would be gener-
ated from differences in gender or generation, educational or occupational
experiences, or the sheer vagaries of individual lives. Kafka’s characters are
typically shorn of ethnic or regional markers, and they can hardly be said
to represent a collective, except perhaps as a representative of humanity. To
consider a writer as idiosyncratic as Kafka as enunciating for the collective
would surely have struck his fellow Jews in Prague as perverse. As Kafka
noted in his diary on January 8, 1914: “What do I have in common with
Jews? I have hardly anything in common with myself.”12
Thus, as much as Deleuze and Guattari seek to restore Kafka from fanci-
ful critics, their attempt to circumscribe the domain of minority literature
misrecognizes his primary inspirations and aspirations. Misreadings, to be
sure, may provide insights, but they may also merely denote misrecogni-
tion. Deleuze and Guattari’s hermeneutic misprision is hardly unique and
is in fact symptomatic of the theoretical hubris that animates contemporary
literary theory. Consider another classic effort to make sense of nonmajor
literature: Fredric Jameson’s attempt to arraign the “third world.” In an
oft-quoted passage, he confidently claims: “Third-world texts, even those
which are seemingly private and invested with a properly libidinal dy-
namic—necessarily project a political dimension in the form of national
allegory: the story of the private individual destiny is always an allegory of the
embattled situation of the public third-world culture and society.”13 In boldly
characterizing the contours of third-world literature as the literature of na-
tional epic, Jameson not only misses the majority of actual existing literary
works written in the “third world”—from Flaubertian novels of adultery
to Dostoevskyan tales of passive-aggressiveness, much less Kafkaesque
tales and parables—but he also manages to collapse them into an unwieldy,
residual category that includes everything that is not Western (majority)
literature. His wild overgeneralization may make some sense of Lu Xun or
Sembène Ousmane, but what of Tanizaki Jun’ichirō or Naguib Mahfouz?
It seems the oddest sort of binary to assert a categorical distinction and
opposition between “major” and “minor” or the “West” and the “rest.”
Deleuze and Guattari or Jameson do not exhaust the gamut of literary
theory, but it would be difficult to gainsay their prominence and influence
let alone their representativeness. The obvious riposte would be to invoke
Edward Said’s Orientalism and its profound influence on literary studies.

12 
Kafka, Tagebücher, 2:225. Cf. Jean-Pierre Gaxie, Kafka, prince de l’identité (Paris: Joseph
K., 2005).
13 
Fredric Jameson, “Third World Literature in the Era of Multinational Capitalism,” So-
cial Text 15 (1986): 65–88, 69, emphasis in the original.
Zainichi Recognition: Kin Kakuei in the 1960s  189

Yet the project of decolonization or the critique of ethnocentrism has not

advanced much beyond theoretical theatrics and political pronouncements.
Consider perhaps the most impressive work on world literature published
in the past decade: Pascale Casanova asserts the autonomy of “literary
space” or “literary field” from political economy.14 Yet Casanova does not
deviate from the underlying master narrative of nationalism that begins
with early modern Europe. The book begins with a discussion of du Bel-
lay; and in so doing she is silent on the transnational reaches of major
literatures, whether medieval Latin or classical Chinese, or distinct liter-
ary forms and traditions that existed independently of the recognizably
European genre.15 The discussion of minor literature rehashes Deleuze and
Guattari’s analysis.16
In contrast to Deleuze and Guattari, Zainichi identity—as a form of mi-
nor literature and diasporic identification—arose precisely in abjuring the
political and the collective. The course of recognition arose from the state of
disrecognition, but it would be an act of misrecognition to see the pathway
as being pioneered by the sort of political-collective discourse suggested
by Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of minor literature.

Disrecognition
The Japanese colonization of Korea in 1910 and the resulting population
movement from the Korean peninsula to the Japanese archipelago spawned
the ethnic Korean minority presence on the main Japanese islands.17 Al-
though most ethnic Koreans returned to their putative homeland after the
end of World War II, some six hundred thousand remained in Japan. Led
by an ethnic organization with strong links to North Korea, ethnic Koreans
in Japan regarded themselves foremost as Koreans. The ideology of repa-
triation stunted the development of diasporic or minority identity among
them. Yet by the 1960s, linguistic and cultural integration into mainstream
Japanese life made repatriation profoundly problematic. Why then was the
assertion of ethnic or minority identity so belated among ethnic Koreans
in Japan?
Beyond the statistics and the structures of discrimination, ethnic Koreans
in Japan suffered from their fundamental illegitimacy: disrecognition, or

14 
Pascale Casanova, La république mondiale des lettres (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1999).
15 
Franco Moretti’s five-volume collection Il romanzo devotes but a smattering of articles
to non-European traditions and forms (Torino: Giulio Einaudi, 2001–2003). It also underem-
phasizes important precursors of the form, such as Genji monogatari, and nonnational genres.
16 
Casanova, La république, chap. 6.
17 
The next three sections draw on my Zainichi (Koreans in Japan): Diasporic Nationalism and
Postcolonial Identity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008), chap. 3.
190 John Lie

lack of recognition. Here I use the term recognition to refer to a complex of

attributes—the fact and the rights of existence, or possibly even esteem and
love—that endows people with a sense of rightful existence and legitimate
life. Disrecognition is precisely the absence of these attributes. In the pre-
war period, ethnic Koreans may have been deemed inferior but they were
recognized as a familiar group with their rightful, though inferior, place
in Japanese society. In the postwar period, though the legacy of colonial
hierarchy was slow to dissipate, ethnic Koreans lost their legitimate place
in a Japan that now regarded itself as a monoethnic society.18 That is, they
were often not even recognized in the sense of acknowledgement of even
their very existence. In spite of the invariable variability of individual ex-
perience, colonial hierarchy and its postcolonial legacy rendered them as
objects of dislike, disenfranchisement, and degradation: in short, disrespect
and disrecognition. They lacked what T. H. Marshall calls social citizen-
ship: “the right to share to the full in the social heritage and to live the life
of a civilized being according to the standards prevailing in the society.”19
They were discriminated against, but monoethnic ideology dismissed their
very presence. Ethnic Koreans were not welcome in Japan; they should not
have been there; and, in the dominant monoethnic ideology, they did not
exist in Japan.
The most emblematic expression of disrecognition is that the group
name doubled as the racial epithet. For Kim Talsu, born in 1919, and for
Lee Jungja, born in 1947, the earliest memory of discrimination is being
teased for being “Korean” (Chōsenjin).20 As early as 1930, Kim Talsu encoun-
tered a chorus of “Chōsenjin!” on his first day out in Japan.21 There was no
welcome, only disrecognition. The baffling situation is expressed well by
Fujiwara Tei, whose bestselling 1949 memoir depicted her family’s ardu-
ous return to Japan after the end of the war: “We were called Japanese. No
one got angry about it since it was obvious. Yet, when we called Koreans
‘Koreans,’ they got very angry.”22 What was puzzling to the colonizer was
profoundly obvious to the colonized: Chōsen signified undesirable attri-
butes and traits: the usual racist litany of dirty, smelly, lazy, and stupid. The

18 
John Lie, Multiethnic Japan (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), chaps.
4–5.
19 
T. H. Marshall, “Citizenship and Social Class,” in Citizenship and Social Class, ed. T. H.
Marshall and Tom Bottomore, 1–51 (London: Pluto, 1992), 8.
20 
Kim Talsu, “Waga bungaku e no michi,” in Shuki = Zainichi Chōsenjin, ed. Kim Talsu and
Kang Jeon, 15–27 (Tokyo: Ryūkei Shosha, 1981), 20–21; Lee Jungja, Furimukeba Nihon (Tokyo:
Kawade Shobō Shinsha, 1994), 39.
21 
Kim Talsu, Waga ariran no uta (Tokyo: Chūō Kōronsha, 1977), 44–45. See also Hirose
Yōichi, Kimu Tarusu to sono jidai (Kyoto: Kurein, 2016).
22 
Fujiwara Tei, Nagareru hoshi wa ikiteiru (Tokyo: Chūō Kōronsha, 2002), 60.
Zainichi Recognition: Kin Kakuei in the 1960s  191

Korean word, after all, is Chosōn, not Chōsen; only a Japanese person would
employ what for native Korean speakers is an odd-sounding word, a signi-
fier of colonial conquest. Furthermore, the utterance was an illocutionary
act that embodied the will to dominate and discriminate. The seemingly
innocuous nomenclature disclosed the history and sociology of Japanese
colonialism.
Name was one of the most salient issues in the making of Zainichi iden-
tity. As Denise Riley puts it: “the name hovers at some midpoint between
the tattoo and the state register.”23 For Zainichi youth, it is neither fixed nor
singular but the question weighs constantly and heavily nonetheless. No
wonder that the reigning temptation, as articulated in Lee Chong Hwa’s
discourse on muttering (tsubuyaki) is to “resist everything that names.”24
In Sagisawa Megumu’s story, “Meganegoshi no sora” (The sky through
the spectacles, 2001), Naran bemoans her “strange” Korean name yet later
experiences the pain of using a Japanese name as she hears ethnically in-
sensitive comments by her best friend. When a fellow student asks a senior
who goes by her “real name” why she has such a “strange name,” she
matter-of-factly answers that it is because she is Korean. “The simple fact
told as fact momentarily pierced Naran’s spirit.”25 It is this simplicity—that
ethnic Koreans might have ethnic Korean names—that long eluded the
Zainichi population in monoethnic Japan.
The sense of Japanese superiority and Korean inferiority that developed
during the colonial period persisted in the postwar period. Not only were
ethnic Koreans considered poor—and its associated attributes, such as dirty
and smelly—but they were also associated with criminality and treach-
ery. They therefore needed to be contained and excluded. Whereas the
adult world politely prevented ethnic Koreans from joining their games for
power and wealth, the childhood world frequently unleashed physical and
symbolic violence. Teasing and bullying were staples of recess activities at
school. School authorities often averted their gaze from naked displays of
exclusion and intolerance. A twelve-year-old Zainichi student committed
suicide after encountering exclusion. Whereas his classmates called him
“dirty” and “stupid” and admonished him to “die,” the school authorities
denied the existence of bullying or discrimination.26
Things Korean, whether food or language, were sources of shame.
Self-hatred, hatred of things Korean, and guilt for hating the self and the
23 
Denise Riley, Impersonal Passion: Language as Affect (Durham, NC: Duke University
Press, 2005), 117.
24 
Lee Chong Hwa, Tsubuyaki no seiji shisō (Tokyo: Seidosha, 1998), n.p.
25 
Sagisawa Megumu, “Meganegoshi no sora,” in Sagisawa Megumu, Byūtifuru nēmu
(Tokyo: Shinchōsha, 2004), 7–112, 62.
26 
Kim Chanjung, Kokoku kara no kyori (Tokyo: Tabata Shoten, 1983), 16–20.
192 John Lie

group stirred many Zainichi psyches, damned to ponder endlessly the ir-
resolvable question of identity. Not surprisingly, like the twelve-year-old
schoolboy, a popular solution was self-mortification. It is rare to encounter
a Zainichi growing up in the dark decades of disrecognition who did not
contemplate suicide at some point, and disheartening to realize the striking
series of Zainichi suicides, including Sagisawa Megumu, discussed earlier,
and Kin Kakuei, discussed later.
Disrecognition was the dominant Japanese attitude toward ethnic Kore-
ans in the first quarter-century of the postwar period. The third-generation
Zainichi Son Puja was born in a Burakumin village in Nara in 1941. Grow-
ing up, she was mercilessly teased for being Korean, so much so that she
“came to hate [my] mother” and told her: “Kill me. Why did you give birth
to me as a Korean? . . . I want to die.”27 She thought continuously of suicide
as a schoolgirl. By the time she married at twenty, she had changed her job
twenty-two times, often having to leave her job after her Korean ancestry
was divulged. Yet the tragedy was that Korean ancestry or ethnicity meant
little, if anything, to Zainichi children. As Arai Toyokichi described his
Zainichi life course: “I started writing short stories when I was a high-
school student / But I still cannot read han’gŭl [Korean script] / The first
time I held the Certificate of Alien Registration / It was like a spy movie
and I didn’t think I could show it to others . . . / I wanted to vote / But I
did not have suffrage / I couldn’t get used to the name Pak that I used only
at the local authorities . . .”28 Rejection and dejection, ethnic discrimination
but cultural assimilation, all weighed heavily among Zainichi youths who
came of age in the postwar period.
It is a common and sentimental position to believe that it is corrosive
to the soul to dominate or discriminate; if true, many a Japanese came to
personify social evil in the postwar period. What is certain, however, is that
the structure of disrecognition had corrosive effects on Zainichi psyche.
One of the enduring motifs of Zanichi literature is the violent father. Yang
Sŏgil’s 1998 novel Chi to hone (Blood and bone)—later made into an award-
winning 2003 film directed by Sai Yōichi—is a wrenching rendition of a
son’s memory of his alcoholic, violent, wife-beating and mistress-keeping
father. As Yang writes in his memoir: “Whenever I recall my father, I can-
not understand what he was thinking of as he led his life. He never once
loved his family. In particular he looked down on women and sought
to express his existence by wreaking violence.”29 Whatever the place of

27 
Son Puja, Aisurutoki kiseki wa tsukurareru (Tokyo: San’ichi Shobō, 2007), 47.
28 
Arai Toyokichi, “Taegu e,” in Zainichi Korian shi senshū, ed. Morita Susumu and Sagawa
Aki, 316 (Tokyo: Doyō Bijutsusha Shuppan Hanbai, 2005).
29 
Yang Sŏgil, Shura wo ikiru (Tokyo: Kōdansha, 1995), 10.
Zainichi Recognition: Kin Kakuei in the 1960s  193

colonialism-­induced poverty and ethnic discrimination in making sense

of the traumatized and traumatizing father figure, there is little doubt that
ethnic Koreans who lived in prewar Japan were marred by intraethnic
problems of conflict and crime, patriarchy and violence.
The involution of disrecognition did not merely affect the emasculated,
inebriated patriarch. Inferiority complex was pervasive, leading to a denial
of Korean ancestry—and even hatred toward parents as in the case of Son
Puja—and to the unwelcome embrace of Japanese identity. In the volatile
mixture of prevailing poverty, ethnic isolation, and traditional patriarchy,
postwar memories of the prewar Korean ghetto life are replete with inci-
dences of alcoholism, domestic violence, and other social dysfunctions.
They would also find contemporary counterparts in Zainichi literature:
sexual violence, family dissolution, gambling addiction, substance abuse,
alienation and anomie, murder and mayhem, and parricide and incest.
Instances of mental illness, from depression to suicide, afflicted Zainichi
lives. It is also not coincidental that the representative Zainichi writer Kin
Kakuei and the representative Zainichi intellectual Kang Sangjung both
suffered from stuttering. Indeed, the stutter, with considerable sexual over-
tones, becomes a burden that must be urgently overcome, even more so
than the division of the putative homeland, in Kin’s “Kogoeru kuchi.”
Suicidal narratives—and deeds—are ubiquitous in Zainichi fiction and
autobiography. Needless to say, it would be hopelessly reductive to blame
disrecognition for Zainichi mental illness—one would be foolhardy to dis-
miss nonsociological sources of psychological problems—but the ferocity
of disrecognition made the reduction at once plausible and meaningful to
Zainichi themselves.

Misrecognition
The Zainichi population faced the infeasibility of returning to Korea, the
implausibility of being Japanese, and the impossibility of being otherwise.
Zainichi were condemned—as the “second-generation” Zainichi writer
O Rimjun, born in 1926, put it—to struggle to “escape from being half
Japanese [and] to become Korean.”30 The possibility of a hybrid status—
both Korean and Japanese—was not seriously mooted as they urged the
embrace of Koreanness, albeit in Japan and not in Korea. Rather than as-
similation or repatriation, Zainichi faced the choice between Japanization
or Koreanization. The decision was either/or, but not both, in-between, or
beyond.

30 
O Rimjun, Zainichi Chōsenjin (Tokyo: Ushio Shuppansha, 1971), 195.
194 John Lie

Only a minority pursued the path of assimilation and naturalization.

Only 233 Koreans were naturalized in 1952, and throughout the 1960s
there were only several thousand cases per year. It would be tempting to
blame the xenophobic policies of the Japanese government. Between 1952
and 1985, the Japanese government projected an ethnoracially homoge-
neous vision of Japanese society: one race, one ethnicity, one nation. In
effect, only people who can claim blood descent—and preferably pure at
that—­deserved Japanese citizenship. In general, citizenship, race, ethnic-
ity, and nationality were all conflated: the obviousness of Japaneseness
underscored monoethnic ideology. Furthermore, the Immigration and
Naturalization Bureau was often culturally insensitive and bureaucratically
recalcitrant, and therefore appeared arbitrary and authoritarian, though the
same charges of being tedious and odious could be cast on most govern-
ment bureaucracies. Yet we should not cast all the blame on rebarbative
Japanese policies and practices. Having assimilated culturally, most ethnic
Koreans hesitated to take the next step.
Zainichi resistance reflects not only the instinctive anti-Japanese senti-
ments but also the nationalist mindset that precluded the possibility of
in-between identity. The category of Korean American or Korean Cana-
dian is widely accepted where the question of citizenship is decoupled
from that of ethnic identification. Given the essentialist mindset that as-
serted homogeneous Japan and Korea, the very possibility of an in-between
identity was dismissed. The world of either/or manifested itself in one of
Aesop’s tales—which were immensely popular in postwar Japan—that
sticks deepest in my memory from my school days in Japan in the 1960s.
The bat, which was neither of land nor of air, was banished from both sides.
The dreadful destiny of the lonely bat was a moral allegory for everyone,
Zainichi included. The possibility of recognition resided in being Japanese
or Korean. As Kim Kyongdok recalls, he spent his four years in college
pondering, Hamlet-like, “to be Korean or to be Japanese.”31 The question
was: are you Japanese or are you Korean? Which side are you on?
Colonial and historical memory made naturalization a gesture of na-
tional betrayal, an act of treason. As late as the mid-1980s, the Zainichi
intellectual Yoon Keun Cha declared: “In essence ‘naturalization’ is on the
same line as the past Japanization [kōminka] policy that ignored the his-
torical existence and subjectivity of ‘Zainichi’ and their dignity as human
beings.”32 That is, naturalization is a continuation of the colonial policy

31 
Kim Kyongdok, Zainichi Korian no aidentiti to hōteki ichi, new ed. (Tokyo: Akashi Shoten,
2005), 86.
32 
Yoon Keun Cha, Ishitsu to no kyōzon: Sengo Nihon no kyōiku, shisō, minzokuron (Tokyo:
Iwanami Shoten, 1987), 195.
Zainichi Recognition: Kin Kakuei in the 1960s  195

of assimilation, which in turn was a defining feature of Japanese colonial-

ism. Because naturalization required the adoption of Japanese-sounding
names (based on approved Chinese characters) until the 1990s, it reprised
the 1940 edict that outlawed non-Japanese names (sōshi kaimei) for Japa-
nese imperial subjects. Naturalization also mandated compliance with
the Japanese practice of household registration (koseki), which became
transposed to the traditional Korean landlord practice of lineage registry
(chokbo). In the name of the Confucian—and Korean—value of venerating
ancestors, naturalization implied a brutal uprooting of the family tree and
a sacrilegious affront to the ancestors. Never mind that lineage registry
was a province of the landed elite: the group that was underrepresented
in the Zainichi population, at least according to the received Zainichi
historiography.
More prosaically, Japan remained the ideological enemy that had never
atoned for its colonial-era brutalities—or continuing maltreatments and in-
justices—and therefore had not been exonerated. Colonialism is apparently
never having to say “sorry”: for a society in which “sorry” is ubiquitous,
the Japanese government has been remarkably intransigent in its refusal
to proffer formal apology for historical wrongs or contemporary mistakes.
Thus, going to the Japanese side is tantamount to a denial of Zainichi ex-
perience and ethnicity.
The expected costs of ethnic betrayal frequently outweighed the antici-
pated benefits of switching sides. Naturalization did not ensure the end of
disrecognition. Like Burakumin who were indisputably Japanese citizens
but continued to suffer discrimination, citizenship did not promise an im-
pregnable defense against prevailing discrimination. That is, naturalization
offered another form of passing, albeit with a government imprimatur.
Yet could the blemish be repaired by cosmetic, bureaucratic overlay? Far
from becoming truly Japanese, a naturalized Zainichi might still fear the
exposure of one’s rejected ancestry. The palimpsest of naturalization could
not ensure the permanent expunction of ethnic origins. Simultaneously, the
“convert”—the traitor—would lose Zainichi community support.
Naturalization thus threatened the very definition of Zainichi. Retain-
ing Korean nationality was the only legitimate way to be Zainichi. This
was literally true in the sense that the population figures of the Zainichi
depend on the census, which in turn only has categories for foreigners.
Because neither the Japanese government nor social scientists systemati-
cally collect data on ethnic diversity—according to monoethnic ideology,
what would be the point?—there are only Japanese nationals and Korean
nationals. To be a Japanese citizen means to assume Japanese ethnicity as
well. The logic of Japanese government demographers was shared by most
ethnic Koreans. Nationality was a sticking point (kodawari), the last redoubt
196 John Lie

of Koreanness. Naturalization was tantamount to exchanging the soul of

Koreanness for that of the ideological enemy.
The ideology of monoethnicity affected both ethnic Japanese and eth-
nic Koreans. The vocabulary of blood purity was frequently invoked by
Zainichi to shun intermarriage and to resist naturalization. In effect, the
belief in ethnic essence—presumably carried by “blood”—accompanied
the pursuit of purity. Yet the boundary line that separates the two groups
inevitably leaves impurities, not least from colonial-era intermarriages.
The corrosive consequence of the search for purity manifests itself most
dramatically in the narrowing circle of people with true ethnic essences.
Lee Hoesung’s 1975 novel Tsuihō to jiyū (Exile and freedom) exemplifies
the trap of essentialism. A naturalized protagonist is married to an ethnic
Japanese woman. Tokio constantly reflects upon and regrets his choice of
naturalization and remains ambivalent about miscegenation: his “mixed”
son. He contemplates regaining his Korean nationality and undergoing va-
sectomy. He wishes he could answer the query—why is he naturalized?—
by responding that he had hoped to convict the criminal Japanese nation
but in fact he did it for the sake of his brother’s employment: “If it suited
my brother, I would have been happy to become an Eskimo.”33 He cannot
quite believe in his Japanese wife’s lack of prejudice against Koreans and at-
tributes her concrete love (“I love you—Tokio—not because you are Korean
or Japanese”) to her idealism. Thoroughly assimilated, Tokio nonetheless
remains imprisoned in the essentialist cage; he believes he is in exile under-
ground. He hopes to end his “exile” as a “tunnel man” by reclaiming his
ethnicity and living above ground (chijō no ningen). The binary of Korean
and Japanese precludes a diasporic identity that Lee would explore in his
later novels (see the introduction).
Both Zainichi and Japanese reproduced and reinforced the ideological
chasm between them. Postwar Zainichi writers, such as Kim Talsu and Kim
Sokpom, used the Japanese language to stoke anti-Japanese passions. The
sympathetic Japanese critic, in turn, would write that: “Zainichi writers’
Japanese works . . . are not ‘Japanese literature.’ In this sense, one cannot
but find it insensitive to find the novels and criticisms of Kim Sokpom
or Lee Hoesung in the Japanese literature section in bookstores.”34 In the
early twenty-first century, it is common to find their work categorized un-
der “foreign literature.” Moreover, even those who explicitly expressed a
preference for the Japanese reading of their names, such as Kin Kakuei, are
instead referred to using the Japanese version of the Korean pronunciation

33 
Lee Hoesung, Tsuihō to jiyū (Tokyo: Shinchōsha, 1975), 34, 35, 115, 262.
34 
Isogai Jirō, Shigen no hikari (Tokyo: Sōjusha, 1979), 209–210.
Zainichi Recognition: Kin Kakuei in the 1960s  197

(i.e., Kim Hagyon).35 The wonder is why anyone would have thought that
this form of exclusion or essentialism is more sensitive than the symbolic
inclusion of Zainichi writers in the realm of Japanese literature. What seems
so elusive is the critique of ethnic essentialism or, simply put, the possibility
of being in between Korea and Japan: Zainichi identity.

The Cunning of Recognition

As early as the 1940s, a third of Koreans in Japan could not speak Korean
fluently. By then, the existence of the second generation had prompted
some ethnic Koreans to remain in Japan after the end of the war. It is not
surprising, therefore, that Zainichi politics in the immediate postwar years
frequently focused on domestic, Japanese issues, ranging from ethnic edu-
cation to working conditions. By the mid-1950s, however, the primacy of
the Cold War and geopolitics had decisively shifted the Zainichi focus away
from Japan to homeland. Systematically excluded from and disrecognized
by Japanese society, the Zainichi population in Japan sought repatriation.
Exilic identity misrecognized Zainichi experience already by the 1960s. In
the late 1950s, Pak Cheil had insisted that Zainichi returnees to the Ko-
reas would arrive as immigrants, and the concrete experience confirmed
the chasm between homeland and diaspora.36 Alienation was certainly the
modal response to the experience of actual return, whether to North or
South. At the same time, ethnic Korean organizations in Japan were losing
their influence over the Zainichi population. The ideology of repatriation
was certainly in decline by the late 1960s. By then, some Zainichi began to
discuss openly their future as permanent residents in Japan: as Zainichi,
rather than as Korean. The possibility of Zainichi identity presented a break
from the binary of being Korean or Japanese: the third way beyond re-
patriation and assimilation as a distinct category and a viable identity in
Japanese life.
The nascent identification as Zainichi can be seen in Zainichi literature.
The second-generation Zainichi writer Lee Hoesung, for instance, won
the prestigious Akutagawa Prize in 1971 for “Kinuta wo utsu onna” (A
woman striking a washing board), a depiction of his mother in prewar
Japan. Yet while the “boom” in Zainichi literature around 1970 recognized
the relative autonomy of Zainichi experience, the main stage remained
very much outside of Japan. Whether Kim Talsu’s Genkainada (Genkai
Strait, 1954), Kim Sokpom’s Kazantō (Volcano Island, 1983–1997), or Lee

35 
Kawamura Minato, “Hen’yō suru ‘Zainichi,’” in Nihon bungeishi, ed. Sadami Suzuki,
8:219–225 (Tokyo: Kawade Shobō Shinsha, 2005).
36 
Pak Cheil, Zainichi Chōsenjin ni kansuru sōgō chōsa kenkyū (Tokyo: Shinkigensha, 1957),
131–137.
198 John Lie

Hoesung’s Mihatenu yume (The unrealized dream, 1975–1979), the principal

publications of Zainichi literature locate the primary action on the Korean
peninsula. Although Lee’s Akutagawa Prize–winning story is often read as
the establishment of a distinctive Zainichi literature, there was a decisive
forerunner: Kin Kakuei’s “Kogoeru kuchi” (The frozen mouth, 1966).37 It
is a work on Zainichi life, by a Zainichi writer, that takes place squarely
in Japan. In a critical passage, the applied chemistry graduate student de-
scribes his commute to his university laboratory as the time to read books
on Korea. “Although I am Korean, I still can’t understand Korean,” says
the protagonist, who observes that he cannot “recover” (kaifuku) his Ko-
rean identity because he was born and reared in Japan, so he can at best
“awaken” (kakusei) or “acquire” (kakutoku) it.38 At the same time: “No mat-
ter how I look Japanese, and feel and live the same way as Japanese, I study
in order to realize that I am definitely not Japanese.” Neither Japanese nor
Korean, he believes that his effort to awaken his ethnic identity can at best
be “ideal” (kannen) and not “actual feeling” (jikkan). The actual feeling leads
away from the question of either/or to the answer of neither.
Pioneering events, opinions, and voices, such as Kin’s story, appeared in
the 1960s. Perhaps the most sensational and proleptic manifestation, albeit
expressed negatively, was the sensational criminal case in 1968 known as
the Kim Hiro or Sumatakyō Incident. Kim Hiro (Kin Kirō) shot two Japa-
nese gangsters and then held some eighteen people hostage for nearly four
days. When he was given a chance to air his “motives,” he spoke to the
national media about ethnic discrimination: surely Kim’s indictment of
Japanese disrecognition reached a larger audience than any prior—and
possibly later—Zainichi voice. Kim had dropped out of elementary school
after experiencing endless teasing by his classmates as “dirty” and “barbar-
ian”; he was even beaten by his teacher.39 Leading an unstable life of dead-
end jobs and recidivist crimes, he began to read voraciously, from Greek
philosophy to economics, in prison.40 Relentlessly pursued by yakuza for
unpaid loans, Kim decided not only to kill the collector but also a police
officer who had made openly racist statements. Retrospectively, at least,
Kim declaimed: “I wanted to appeal the ethnic problem. . . . This was my
destiny.”41 Remarkably, he succeeded in coaxing an apology for the racist
statement from a police chief on national television. Later, his mother testi-
fied at his trial: “I thought that someone had to do something about it. It just
37 
Yamasaki Masazumi, Sengo “Zainichi” bungakuron (Tokyo: Yōyōsha, 2003) 95–96.
38 
Quotations are from Kin Kakuei, “Kogoeru kuchi,” in Kogoeru kuchi (Tokyo: Kurein,
2004), 34.
39 
Kin Kirō, Kin Kirō mondai shiryōshū (Tokyo: Kin Kirō Kōhan Taisaku Iinkai, 1968), 1:6–7.
40 
Abe Motoharu, Kin Kirō no shinjitsu (Tokyo: Nihon Tosho Kankōkai, 2002), 18.
41 
Kin Kirō, Ware ikitari (Tokyo: Shinchōsha, 1989), 101.
Zainichi Recognition: Kin Kakuei in the 1960s  199

happened that my Hiro did it.”42 “It” was what I have called disrecognition:
the accumulated anger against disrespect and discrimination.
In Kin Kakuei’s 1969 story “Manazashi no kabe” (The wall of the gaze),
the Zainichi protagonist hits the wall of national difference as his Japanese
girlfriend leaves him and his professor suggests either leaving the country
or naturalizing. He comes to realize the pervasiveness of the “gaze.” In
reflecting on the Kim Hiro case, he feels that “the gaze sprung up across
Japan, and never before had it poured into one place, one person.”43 He
continues: “What was Kin Kirō [Kim Hiro] trying to shoot down? It must
be that gaze. If so, then Kin Kirō was pointing the rifle not only at Japanese
but also Koreans like me, who incorporate that gaze within.” The protago-
nist concludes that Kim’s action was “justified resistance” and compares
it favorably to the actions of those, such as himself, who are “afraid and
cowardly [and] flee from the gaze.” Kim’s mother and Kin’s character were
not the only people to believe that Kim was attempting to shoot at “the
gaze” itself. Kim’s defense attorneys stressed the evils of Japanese imperi-
alism and their legacy in the mass media, the police, and indeed Japanese
society tout court: “This case is an ‘ethnic problem’ created by the crime
against Korea by the Japanese state and society.”44
In fact, there was a harbinger of the Kim Hiro case: the Komatsugawa
Incident. The eighteen-year-old Ri Chin’u allegedly raped and killed two
women in 1958, and was convicted and executed four years later. Although
it is unclear whether he was in fact guilty of the crimes, it is clear that he
became the Zainichi Bigger Thomas. Arrested on the thirty-fifth anniver-
sary of the post-Kantō earthquake massacre, Ri faced a Japanese police,
judiciary, and mass media that had an entrenched preconception of Ko-
rean criminality. Like Kim, he grew up in an impoverished background
and suffered discrimination without community support. The prevailing
ethnic Korean opinion bemoaned his lack of ethnic education that had
presumably led to the crime.45 As in Kim Hiro’s case, the main ethnic or-
ganizations sought to distance themselves from the disgraced Korean. Pak
Sunam, whose correspondence with Ri became a minor literary sensation,
was expelled from Sōren in 1962 because she persisted in communicating
with him.46 He was an autodidact who repeatedly stole works of world
literature and declaimed himself, like Camus’s Meursault, to be a motive-

42 
Kawata Hiroshi, Uchi naru sokoku e (Tokyo: Hara Shobō, 2005), 4.
43 
Quotations are from Kin Kakuei, “Manazashi no kabe,” in Tsuchi no kanashimi (Tokyo:
Kurein, 2006), 289, 290.
44 
Kin Kirō Bengodan, Kin Kirō mondai shiryōsūū (Tokyo: Kin Kirō Kōhan Taisaku Iinkai,
1972), 8:289–301.
45 
Fujishima Udai, Nihon no minzoku undō (Tokyo: Kōbunsha, 1960), 32.
46 
Nozaki Rokusuke, Ri Chin’u nooto (Tokyo: San’ichi Shobō, 1994), 189–190.
200 John Lie

less murderer, leading the Japanese scholar of French literature to dub him
the Japanese Genet.47 Indeed, he became the proverbial floating signifier
to which writers and intellectuals inscribed their favored literary works
and motifs.
The Komatsugawa Incident and the ensuing trial occurred in the late
1950s and the correspondence between the alleged rapist-murderer and
Pak Sunam was first published in 1963 (Tsumi to shi to ai to [Crime and death
and love]). In spite of Ri’s conversion to Catholicism and his insistence
that neither “poverty” nor “ethnicity” explained his crime, the Koreanist
Hatada Isao’s ethnonational reductionism—“We can say that Ri’s crime is
the microcosm of Zainichi destiny”—encapsulated the prevailing, predom-
inant opinion.48 The suicide of Yamamura Masaaki is similarly reduced to
his exclusion from both Japanese and Koreans as a naturalized Zainichi,
but he explicitly indicts poverty and inequality, “inhuman education,” and
revolutionary Marxists’ “violent rule” in his suicide note.49 Nonetheless,
their impact as “ethnic lessons” on the Zainichi population would slowly
seep out in the course of the 1960s. As a Zainichi man wrote to an ethnic
Korean newspaper in 1972: “When the Ri Chin’u incident occurred, I was
shocked that my secret had been excavated. I instinctively thought that Ri
Chi’u killed a man because he is ‘Korean’ and he was executed because
he is ‘Korean.’”50 Although the Japanese public opinion was not ready
to read the Komatsugawa Incident as a consequence of disrecognition, it
belatedly became, like the Kim Hiro Incident, a negative expression of
Korean powerlessness.
Sensational violence came to exemplify the hopeless situation of
Zainichi—no exit—but it would also not be an exaggeration to say that
the two cases, a decade apart, shook some Japanese and many Zainichi
people into considering and acting on the problematic status of Zainichi
in Japanese society. What distinguished the two incidents was the consid-
erable level of Zainichi and ethnic Japanese mobilization that probably
staved off Kim’s death sentence. The impact on the Zainichi population
was profound. Suh Sung’s 1972 testimony during his spy trial highlighted
the two cases as “the concentrated expression of the contradiction of the
livelihood or reality of Zainichi society.”51 They articulated Zainichi iden-
tity: negatively as murderous rage against a society that did not recognize

47 
Suzuki Michihiko, Ekkyō no toki: 1960-nendai to Zainichi (Tokyo: Shūeisha, 2007), 58–59,
76.
48 
Pak Sunam, ed., Ri Chin’u zenshokanshū (Tokyo: Shinjinbutsuōraisha, 1979), 39, 105.
49 
Yamamura Masaaki, Inochi moetsukirutomo, new ed. (Tokyo: Daiwa Shuppan, 1975;
originally published 1971), 242–243.
50 
Quoted in Lee Sun Ae, Nisei no kigen to “sengo shisō” (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 2000), 45.
51 
Suh Sung, Gokuchū 19 nen (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1994), 56.
Zainichi Recognition: Kin Kakuei in the 1960s  201

them as legitimate. It is not an accident that the two Zainichi perpetrators

were bereft of language and community; neither spoke Korean nor had
any sustained ties to the ethnic population. Their situation recalls the fate
of German-speaking Jews who, in the words of Paul Celan, had to “go
through dreadful deafening, go through the thousand darknesses of death-
delivering speech.”52 Ri and Kim both sought to learn Korean in prison.
The wayward passions of the souls smoldering in disrecognition stirred
the Zainichi population and Japanese society at large, but their individual
criminal acts could not cross the threshold to ethnic acknowledgment and
recognition. The more positive articulation of these proleptic passions and
cunning anticipations of ethnic recognition had to wait until the 1970s.
Kim Hiro’s shooting and kidnapping, as well as the trial that followed,
were by no means the only newsworthy events at the time. In 1969, Zainichi
high school students protested their teacher’s use of discriminatory lan-
guage—the teacher had called a student yotamono (delinquent)—and in so
doing affirmed their Zainichi pride and decided to use Korean names.53
In the following year, the naturalized Waseda University student Yama-
mura Masaaki committed suicide, as I discussed earlier. Most significantly,
in 1970 Pak Chonsok sued Hitachi, which had dismissed him following
the disclosure of his ethnic background, and won the ensuing lawsuit in
1974. What is remarkable in retrospect is Sōren’s hostility to Pak’s struggle:
why would a Korean sojourner worry about employment discrimination
in Japan? Only those who intended to stay in Japan would care enough
to support Pak’s cause. A leader of a Zainichi youth group angered his el-
ders by expressing the opinion that “the place where we are living is here
in Japan . . . and we must emphasize Zainichi.”54 The youth organization
condemned his statement as assimilationist and demanded his resigna-
tion. Nonetheless, the Hitachi case opened a decade of legal struggles: the
Zainichi equivalent of the civil rights years in the United States. As we will
see, the Zainichi population and its supporters made a series of striking
court victories that restored the social, civil, and political citizenship rights
that they had lost in the immediate postwar years.
By the late 1960s, then, individual Zainichi were articulating their griev-
ances as Koreans in Japan. The critical insight, articulated presciently and
profoundly by Kin Kakuei, was that younger Zainichi by the 1960s had
“no ethnic consciousness, ethnic subjectivity to lose”; rather, both Korean

52 
Paul Celan, “Ansprache anlässlich der Entgegennahme des Literaturpreises der Freier
Hansestadt Bremen,” in Gesammelte Werke (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1983), 3:186.
53 
Kin Shōichi, “Senkō yo, shikkari sarase,” in Zainichi Chōsenjin no shomondai, ed. Kat-
sumi Satō, 33–39 (Tokyo: Dōseisha, 1971).
54 
Satō Katsumi, “Nozomareru jiritsushita kankei,” Kikan sanzenri 12 (1977): 48–53, 50.
202 John Lie

and Japanese influences and identities exist and are inextinguishable but
he cannot be reduced to either.55 Indeed, Zainichi occupy a special place—
“Being on both ends of the gaze, he can understand it”56—that makes pos-
sible “true emancipation.” As the Zainichi character in the story concludes:
“Born in Japan, educated in Japan, living in the Japanese environment, and
where I will continue to live, I cannot escape the Japan within myself. I can-
not escape my destiny as someone who is neither Korean nor Japanese, or
Korean and Japanese—Isn’t that all right?”57
These individual harbingers would find collective expressions in the
course of the 1970s. As assimilation advanced, ethnic identity was asserted.
The first generation’s concern for homeland politics became superseded by
the second and third generations’ interest in Japanese life. It is possible to
bypass disrecognition by disengagement, but recognition can be won only
through engagement. By the 1970s, moreover, there were visible discon-
tents with ethnic Korean organizations’ support of the dictatorial regime
in the South and Sōren’s unreflexive support of North Korea’s bureaucratic
centralism. In their stead, new social movements and intellectual currents
encouraged ethnic mobilization. In response, the ethnic organizations be-
gan to focus on the issues affecting the Zainichi population in Japan. But
these actions could not stem Zainichi desertion from the mainline ethnic or-
ganizations and the two Koreans. That is, Zainichi began to see themselves
as independent of and beyond the national division. By 1978, Pak Sunam,
who two decades earlier had sought to instill ethnonational consciousness
in Ri Chin’u, would write of the “doubleness of [Zainichi] existence”: “If
we are ‘not Japanese,’ ‘not Korean,’ we are ‘Japanese’ and ‘Korean.’”58 Be-
yond North and South, neither Korean nor Japanese: therein lies the germ
of Zainichi identity.

The Misrecognition of Deleuze and Guattari

Let us return to the concept of minor literature. To repeat, Deleuze and
Guattari stressed deterritorialization, politicization, and essentialization.
The potential for revolutionary rupture resides in minor literature precisely
because of the effort of the talented few to employ the major language for
the purposes of the (necessarily) politicized, collective enunciation of the
minority. As I have argued, they misread Kafka, and their framework does
not illuminate the genesis of Zainichi identity.

55 
Kin Kakuei, “Ippiki no hitsuji,” in Tsuchi no kanashimi (Tokyo: Kurein, 2006), 547–554,
553.
56 
Kin, “Manazashi,” 292–293.
57 
Kin, “Manazashi,” 293.
58 
Pak, Ri Chin’u zenshokanshū, 455.
Zainichi Recognition: Kin Kakuei in the 1960s  203

Deterritorialization. Kafka himself defined minor literature as a literature

of “minor” language and people. Misunderstanding may generate creative
insights, but Deleuze and Guattari’s claim that the instigator of minor lit-
erature has an “artificial” relationship to the language of the majority is
as misleading for Kafka as it is for Ri Chin’u, Kim Hiro, and Kin Kakuei.
For these Zainichi men, the Japanese language is all they had. Although
they may have been deterritorialized in the sense of being marginalized
from or oppressed by mainstream society, the same claim cannot be made
regarding the language.
In the case of Zainichi literature, Japanese had been the language of ex-
pression at least since the end of World War II. Until Kin Kakuei, however,
most Zainichi writers, whether Kim Talsu or Kim Sokpom, had a much
more complicated relationship with the language of the colonial masters
and sought to people their work with ethnic Koreans, going so far as to
ground them in the Korean peninsula. They were, then, consciously “de-
territorialized.” Yet their self-fashioning was essentially Korean, carrying
the nationalist tradition of realist literature. Ironically, it was a nondeter-
ritorialized writer who crafted something like “minor literature” that made
a fundamental rupture from the conservative organizations and literary
traditions. Kin Kakuei’s transformative literary work was in turn foreshad-
owed by the criminal acts of Ri Chin’u and Kim Hiro. These criminal acts
were proleptic articulations of the sort of rupture that Kin would articulate
in his literary works.
Politicization. Deleuze and Guattari’s claim about the essential politici-
zation of minor literature is right insofar as it describes the state of ethnic
Korean literature in Japan in the 1960s. The major ethnic Korean writers
were almost always politicized, almost always left, in the way that Deleuze
and Guattari would recognize. Kin Kakuei, however, sought to extricate his
writings from the politicized milieu of the ethnic Korean world (and Japan
at large). His radical departure irrupted as private meditations, albeit on
things that inevitably had larger societal repercussions.
Deleuze and Guattari stressed the “tiny space” that necessitated politici-
zation. Indeed, the Japanese literary world—bundan—was a crowded and
intimate social space that included ethnic Korean writers in the margins.
The same characterization can be applied to the ethnic Korean population
at large, many of whom continued to live in ethnic ghettoes well into the
1960s. Yet the writer to establish Zainichi literature hailed from outside
the narrow ambit of Japanese literary figures and the Zainichi world. Kin
was, in fact, relatively independent of the Japanese literary world and from
ethnic Korean organizations in Japan. The social condition of possibility of
Kin’s breakthrough was precisely to extricate himself from the tiny space
and the politicization that was rife within. In this regard, the two signature
204 John Lie

criminal acts of ethnic cunning occurred outside of the tiny space of minor-
ity existence. It is precisely in breaking out of the minor space that a new
literature and a new identity emerged.
Essentialization. Finally, Deleuze and Guattari stress the conflation of the
individual and the collective in minor literature. Yet Kin Kakuei conscious-
ly did not speak for the Korean population in Japan when he proposed
the radical and revolutionary insight of ethnic recognition. In eschewing
the ideology of repatriation touted by the major ethnic organizations and
the ideology of naturalization promoted by the Japanese government, Kin
sought to pave the third way: ethnic Korean identification within Japan.
The individual enunciation—though it reverberated and developed into a
collective one over the next several decades—emerged exactly as a highly
individualized voice, independent of other writers who claimed to speak
for the collective. The two criminal acts I discussed were by two Zainichi
men who were alienated from the ethnic community.
The French theorists’ claim regarding the paucity of talent seems mis-
leading in this regard. If anything, the ethnic Korean population produced
a great many writers, many of whom sought to be precisely the sort of
figure who would pen politicized literature that spoke for the collective:
to be the Korean Gorky or Lu Xun. The abundance of talent, in fact, led
to the conflation of the individual and the collective. Kin’s revolutionary
rupture was made possible by forsaking any effort to speak for the people.
Thus, Deleuze and Guattari’s description and explanation of minor lit-
erature are deeply flawed. Indeed, their misrecognition is symptomatic
of the hubris of theory, literary or social. Confident of their mastery and
foresight, their lofty speculations bear little resemblance to the world that
they claim to illuminate. It reminds one of the children described by Kafka:
“They were offered the choice between being kings and being royal envoys.
Like children, they all wanted to be envoys. This is why there are so many
envoys chasing through the world, shouting—for the want of kings—the
most idiotic messages to one another. They would willingly end their mis-
erable lives, but because of their oaths of duty, they don’t dare to.”59
Who will educate the envoys?

Zainichi Literature
Contemporary literary scholarship has taken a scholastic turn that privi-
leges theory and analysis. It is not my desire to bemoan the current state
of an academic discipline but to observe that in the oft-justified revolt
against philology, new criticism, and other previous scholarly styles and

59 
Kafka, Zürau, 48.
Zainichi Recognition: Kin Kakuei in the 1960s  205

modes there have been unfortunate consequences. The explicit critique of

Eurocentrism, as I suggested earlier, has become accepted in theory but
not in practice. More sinister is that the valorization of theory, of which
Said’s critique of Orientalism was a significant landmark, has paradoxi-
cally entrenched Eurocentric outlooks.60 Not surprisingly, French theorists
and their epigones tend to be more familiar with European literature and
there has arisen something of a structure of dependence—literary colo-
nialism—in which non-Western literatures perforce pay obeisance to the
very Eurocentric theory that simultaneously claims to deconstruct Euro-
centrism. More mundanely, the stress on theory has ostensibly transcended
the humdrum activities of translation and introduction. That is, little, if any,
scholarly rewards are meted out to scholars who engage in the elementary
tasks of introducing new works of literature, especially in the painstak-
ing form of rendering non-English-language works into English (or other
languages). Symptomatically, translation studies has emerged as a subfield
of literary studies but principally as a matter of theoretical lucubration.61
This volume, then, is in part a modest riposte to some of the trends in
literary studies—and hence the theoretical stress of this appendix—but
more importantly it is meant to present some of the stimulating Zainichi
writings in Japanese to Anglophone readers. Seemingly against my ar-
gument here, I have included ethnic Korean writings in Japanese before
Kin Kakuei. Needless to say, there is no point in denying the existence or
salience of ethnic Korean writings in Japanese before Kin or even 1945. If
nothing else, Kim Saryang is widely regarded as something of the founder
of Zainichi literature and his work has had a long afterlife. Whatever the
merit of this or any other genealogy, the purpose of this collection is to
introduce some of the vast outpouring of ethnic Koreans who wrote in
Japanese in the past century.

60 
There is a lively debate on the contemporary movement for world literature. See David
Damrosch, What Is World Literature? (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003), Chris-
topher Prendergast, ed., Debating World Literature (London: Verso, 2004), and Emily Apter,
Against World Literature (London: Verso, 2013). Cf. Fritz Stich, Goethe und die Weltliteratur
(Bern: Francke, 1957).
61 
See, e.g., Lawrence Venuti, ed., The Translation Studies Reader, 3rd ed. (London: Rout-
ledge, 2012), and Susan Bassnett, Translation (London: Routledge, 2013).
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY

INSTITUTE OF EAST ASIAN STUDIES

The Institute of East Asian Studies was established at the University of California,
Berkeley, in the fall of 1978 to promote research and teaching on the cultures and
societies of China, Japan, and Korea. The institute unites several research centers
and programs, including the Center for Buddhist Studies, the Center for Chinese
Studies, the Center for Japanese Studies, the Center for Korean Studies, and the
Group in Asian Studies.

Director: Kevin O’Brien

Associate Director: Martin Backstrom

CENTER FOR BUDDHIST STUDIES

Chair: Robert Sharf

CENTER FOR CHINESE STUDIES

Chair: You-tien Hsing

CENTER FOR JAPANESE STUDIES

Chair: Dana Buntrock

CENTER FOR KOREAN STUDIES

Chair: Laura C. Nelson

GROUP IN ASIAN STUDIES

Chair: Aihwa Ong
 The Spread of the Korean Language
The Spread of the
Korean Language
Through the Korean Diaspora and Beyond

You and Ha
INSTITUTE OF EAST ASIAN STUDIES

INSTITUTE OF EAST ASIAN STUDIES Edited by Clare You and Yangwon Ha

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA ● BERKELEY
TK 2

TRANSNATIONAL KOREA 2

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