The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Volume 5 | Issue 2 | Article ID 2343 | Feb 02, 2007

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Memories of a Zainichi Korean Childhood

Kang Sang Jung

Memories of a Zainichi Korean Childhood

By Kang Sangjung

Translated by Robin Fletcher

This ex t rac t f rom Kang Sang jung ’sautobiography Zainichi (Kodansha, 2004)describes the experiences of first-generationzainichi Koreans in the city of Kumamoto, asseen from the perspective of a second-generation child growing up in the Japan of the1950s. Now a professor at the University ofT o k y o , i n t h e G r a d u a t e S c h o o l o fInterdisciplinary Information Studies, where hespecialises in politics and the history of politicalthought, Kang Sangjung looks back at thepeople and places of his childhood. Thesepersonal memories provide a starting point forreflections on identity, ‘homeland’, and theplace of zainichi Koreans in Japanese societyand in the wider society of Northeast Asia.

Pigs, moonshine and warm-hearted people

I am supposed to have been born on 12 th

August 1950, the 25th year of the Showa Era.But in fact, it seems that this is not my realbirthday, since my parents apparentlyregistered my birth according to the old lunarcalendar. The sense of time indelibly imprintedon my parents’ minds was that of the lunarcalendar. Even today, the customs of the paststill live on in my mother’s notion of time. Byremembering people’s birth, growth and deathaccording to the old time of the lunar calendar,my parents perhaps found a way to affirm theirconnections to their homeland and theirancestors. In any case, I was born right in themiddle of the Korean War, in a Korean

settlement [1] close to the main station ofKumamoto City in Kyushu. My Korean name isKang Sangjung. My Japanese name is NaganoTetsuo. This second name is my ‘public name’[tsumei], and it is the name under which I liveduntil I came of age. It was not until I was in mytwenties that I changed from being ‘Tetsuo’ tobeing ‘Sangjung’. For me as a secondgeneration zainichi Korean, the change in someways marked a sharp dividing line through mylife. Yet even today, I sometimes feel an oddsort of nostalgia for ‘Tetsuo’. It is not simply afalse name and a false life to be rejected. It isalso an inescapable symbol which says muchabout the living reality of who I am. Living alife embracing that name is, I think, asignificant element of my experience of livingin Japan.

Local histories of Japan’s prefectures, citiesand villages—and of the police forces —will tellyou that in those days, during the Alliedoccupation of Japan, many members of theKorean community disrupted the Japaneseeconomy by black-market and criminalactivities. They were referred to as ‘thirdcountry people’ [sangokujin] [2], and were seenas destroying public order and morality. Therewas virtually no recognition of any positivecontribution of Koreans to the Japaneseeconomy, society or culture. This was true ofKumamoto, too. Actually, since Kumamoto hadbeen a stronghold of militarism since beforet h e w a r , p r e j u d i c e , s u s p i c i o n a n ddiscrimination against Koreans wereparticularly strong there.

Kumamoto had been home to the largest armydetachment in Kyushu, and so sustainedmassive damage from bombing raids during the

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war. By the end of the war, almost all the cityfrom the station to the Suizen Temple had beenreduced to a burnt -out wi lderness .Reconstruction did not get underway properlyuntil around the time of the Korean War, andeven when I was born the dark scars of war stilllay over the landscape.

Kumamoto in red

T h e p l a c e w h e r e I w a s b o r n — t h eneighbourhood of Haruhi-machi, nearKumamoto Station—was an area which seemednotably left behind by the reconstructionprocess. To the west side of the railway line liesHanoka Hill, famous as the place where 19th

century westernisers established the‘Kumamoto Band’.[4] The Korean settlementwas crowded together on the gentle incline ofthe neighbouring Banka Hill. In those days,over one hundred Korean families livedshoulder to shoulder there, all living in shabbymakeshift tenements.

The Korean people of the settlement supportedthemselves by keeping pigs and making‘moonshine’, illicit liquor [doboroku]. Scenesreminiscent of Gorky’s Lower Depths wereplayed out in the community day after day. Thecivil war in their mother country had torn awaythe hopes of the adults of the settlement, anddestroyed their dreams of ‘liberation’. They had

nowhere to go, and their lives oscillatedbetween sorrow and anger. The atmosphere inthe settlement was constantly seething like apressure-cooker.

Communal life there was coloured by roars oflaughter and anger, by lawlessness and misery.Everyone was in a state of despair. Yet stillthey clung to faint wisps of dreams, andstruggled desperately to find some means ofsubsisting in the harshness of daily work. Theonly means of survival left to them werebrewing moonshine and keeping pigs.

Occasionally, when I was four or five years old,I would witness raids by excise officers on theillegal brewing operations. For some reason, Ivividly remember one scene of a line of truckscoming up the hill towards the rickety hutswhich served as stills where the moonshine wasbrewed. The whole settlement was thrown intoturmoil, like a hive of angry bees. I can stillhear the cries of “aigo” [alas!] echoing acrossthe hillside. I shall never forget the sounds ofanger and grief in the voices of those peoplewhose meagre means of livelihood were aboutto be destroyed. In my childish mind, I formedthe sense that we were somehow living in anoutlaw world.

On that unforgettable day, my mother hurled astone at one of the excise trucks. I tswindscreen shattered, and the vehicle wasforced to come to a halt.

My mother, who was by nature the mostnervous and sensitive of people, seemed foronce to have been seized by a fierce anger.Seeing her rage at the officials who weredestroying people’s lives took my breath away,and for a moment I couldn't utter a sound.Having hurled the stone, my mother’s kneesgave way and she fell to the ground, beatingher chest with her fists and breaking into sobs.“Why are we forced to endure such sorrow?”That, I think, was the scream that lay beneathmy mother’s weeping.

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That day, my mother was taken away to thepolice station. I stayed close to my father, and,sensing from his anxiety that somethingterrible was befalling us, could not stop myselffrom crying. I cannot now remember exactlywhy—perhaps it was because the truck driverhad fortunately not been injured—but motherwas soon allowed to return home. The incidentshows the courageous side of my mother. Inthese lower depths, life was driven by constantdesperation, but for some reason the grown-ups always treated me with kindness and Ireceived much affection. At least as far as I amconcerned, that place conjures up only fondmemories.

It may have resembled the impoverishedmarginal communities depicted in Kumai Kei’sfilm Apart from life, but I had the good fortuneto experience the love and kindness of theadults, and so the impression I formed of thearchetypal zainichi landscape was of a kind andwarm community made up of unfortunatepeople.

How my parents became ‘first-generationzainichi’

Not far from the settlement, there was a smallconstruction company called Takadagumi. Myfather worked there as a watchman.Takadagumi had operated since the prewarperiod, using hired construction workers. Ourhome was a tiny free-standing house in themidst of the settlement, towards the bottom ofthe hill. There I was born, and there our familyof four lived – my mother and father, a brotherfour years my senior, and myself. My father hadcome to Japan in the early 1930s, at the time ofthe Manchurian Incident.[3] He was fifteen atthe time, and came to Japan by himself, withjust the clothes on his back. My father was theeldest son of a typical poor tenant farmingfamily from Namsan Village, Kyangwon Districtin the South Korean province of SouthernKyongsang. He arrived in the ‘colonial mothercountry’ in response to the pressures of

poverty. It was a classic exile’s story.

According to the prominent US historian ofmodern Korea, Bruce Cumings, during the1930s with the impact of the economicdepression and the forced industrialisation ofthe Korean peninsula, the majority of Korea’sfarm population left agriculture and moved tocities and industrial areas. As the boundaries ofthe Japanese empire grew dramaticallyfollowing its war with China, the flow of Koreanmigrants began to be directed overseas. By theyear before Japan’s defeat in the Asia-PacificWar, around twenty percent of Korea’s totalpopulation was living away from their place oforigin. Most of these were people of workingage, between twenty-five and forty years old, sothat in effect, forty percent of the adultpopulation was living away from theirbirthplace. Cumings suggests that there isperhaps no other country which hasexperienced such a dramatic change in itspopulat ion. The Depress ion and theconcentration of land ownership drasticallyaffected the agricultural population, and amassive workforce was created from thesurplus. Kyongsang Province was a particularlyimportant source of this outflow of people.

My father was just one young man from a poorfarming family who was caught up in thesufferings of this vast and chaotic movement ofpeople. The heavy burden of the times lay onhis shoulders, condemning him to a harshfuture. My father’s youth in Japan was sounsettled that I don’t know how many times heshifted from one place and one job to another.Finally he moved to Tokyo where he got a job ina munitions factory. By this time, the nationalmobilisation system had been imposed onKorea as well, and forced labour was beingrecruited. Under the slogan ‘integrating Japanand Korea’ [naisen ittai], forced assimilationwas proceeding apace, and finally the door wasopened to the enlistment of colonial subjects inthe Japanese army. In order to look after hisyounger brother, who was climbing this ladder

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of ‘advancement’ within the colonial system,my father worked day and night, barelysnatching time to eat and sleep.

Father looked like the peasant farmer he was,stockily built, unsophisticated, and, perhapsweighed down by the burden of unremittinghard work, relatively short. By contrast, hisyounger brother (my uncle) was a tall andimposing young man with a handsome face.Remarkably for a person from the colonies, hestudied law at university and eventuallybecame a member of the Japanese militarypolice [kempeitai], serving in Kumamoto. As Iwill explain later, his urge for self-bettermenthad an influence on my life.

In the year the Pacific War broke out, mymother came over from her village of Chine,near the southern Korean city of Pusan, to visither fiancé, my father. She embarked alone onthe ferry in Pusan and arrived in Shimonosekiat the very time of the outbreak of the war thatwould bring disaster to Japan. She had nothingto guide her but my father’s address, and aftertravelling from one place to another she finallyreached the district of Sugamo Sanchome inTokyo, where father was living in the quarterswhere the factory lodged its workers. There shebegan her married life. She was just eighteenyears old.

My mother had been deprived of chances foreducation as a child and she was illiterate,unable to read or write Japanese or even hermother tongue. This devoted new bride,dressed in traditional chima-jeogori[5] andbarely able to utter a few words of brokenJapanese, seems to have been a figure ofcuriosity to those around her. Apparently shewas o f ten surrounded by groups o fneighbourhood housewives making scathingcomments about her clothing, and all she couldd o w a s s t a n d t h e r e b u r n i n g w i t hembarrassment. The joy and sorrow of zainichiexistence settled like a sediment in mymother’s heart, from time to time bursting

forth in the form of mournful songs or of rushesof passionate emotion.

As the war situation grew worse and air-raidson Tokyo intensified, my parents, together withmy father’s younger sister and her husband,were evacuated to Ichinomiya in AichiPrefecture. Soon after, my parents’ first childwas born. They named him Haruo—‘haru’[spring] being also part of my mother’sJapanese name, ‘Haruko’. However, thefamily’s life was full of troubles. The air-raidscaused my father’s sister to lose her sanity, andHaruo, my family’s first-born son, died. Mymother clung to her dead baby for several days,as if she had gone mad, refusing to let his bodybe taken away from her. To this very day, whenshe is eighty, my mother has never once missedcommemorating the day of Haruo’s death. Theway she speaks of him makes me think thatperhaps for her the tragedy still seems likesomething which happened yesterday, and Icannot help feeling that far from memoriesfading with time, on the contrary they actuallyrecur more vividly than ever.

Taking their son’s ashes with them, my parentsmoved from Ichinomiya through Osaka andHiroshima, eventually arriving in Kumamoto.By that time, Japan was already close to defeat.Apparently my parents were intending toreturn to Korea, and wanted to say theirfarewells to my uncle, who was stationed inKumamoto with the military police. They werethere when Japan surrendered. In the end, myparents gave up the idea of returning to theirhomeland, and my uncle returned alone. Myparents ended up staying in the zainichisettlement.

For the colonies, Japan’s defeat in the war wasa joyful day of liberation. The hearts of zainichiKoreans were seized by a burgeoning andenduring hope that they would be able toreturn to their homeland. But in 1948 theRepublic of Korea was established in the Southand the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea

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in the North, and finally the Korean War brokeout, with unprecedented massacres and vastnumbers of victims. The devastation of theirhomeland was a crushing blow for the zainichipeople. For those who had found shelter in thezainichi settlement where I lived, the roadhome had been closed. Once again, they had tosteel their hearts to endure the experience ofethnic discrimination.

The settlement was looked on as a kind ofghetto, an alien space in the midst of Japan.First-generation zainichi at that time all boretheir own particular deep sorrows, growingbleary-eyed with the struggle for survival.Finally, the movement for repatriation to NorthKorea took off, and people from my settlementwere among those who returned in largenumbers to the North. From 1959 onwards,more and more people left for the North. In themidst of it all, my parents were urged torepatriate to the North, but they never agreed,choosing instead to stay in Kumamoto. I am notsure precisely why they were reluctant torepatriate to North Korea, but I think theremust have been two reasons. First, my uncle,who had served as a judicial staff officer duringthe Korean War, had strongly warned themagainst repatriation. My uncle’s absolutefeelings of anti-communism and hostilitytowards North Korea made my parents standtheir ground. The second reason was that theyfelt they could not abandon my father’s family’sancestral graves, which were in the South.Particularly for my mother, who had a powerfulsense of respect for the ancestors, to move tothe North would have been an immoralbetrayal. So my parents remained in Japan.

Life amidst people of the ‘lower depths’

When I was six, our family left the settlementwhere I had been born, and moved to the footof Mount Tatsuta, from which you can lookdown on the campus of Kumamoto University.We laid out the little money we had to buy aplot of land just about big enough to swing a

cat, and set up in business as ‘Nagano TradingCompany’, a tiny family scrap business,collecting and recycling garbage. MountTatsuta is a spot from which you can see thewhole of the town centre, and a place wherethe citizens of Kumamoto like to come forrecreation. It is also the hill that appears inNatsume Soseki’s famous novel Sanshiro.

Unlike my mother, my father was not entirelyilliterate. He could read and write someJapanese. All the same, it was really difficult forhim to get a driver’s licence. I still recall theresolute expression on my father’s face as hesat in bed first thing in the morning strugglingwith the questions for the test. Every adult issupposed to be able to apply for a driver’slicence, but for first-generation immigrantsburdened with the handicap of dealing with aforeign language, acquiring a licence wasundoubtedly a painfully difficult hurdle to clear.On his second try, my father, remarkablyenough, was successful and soon after ourfamily acquired a little three-wheeled vehiclecalled a ‘Midget’. After that, every day myfather would leave home at the crack of dawnand not return until late at night. Day after day,he silently laboured away at his tough job.

For me, life in this unfamiliar place was a bigchange. I was cut off from the communal life ofthe zainichi settlement and plunged into themidst of a wholly Japanese environment. I feltalone, as though I had somehow becometrapped on a remote island. For some reason, Imissed the odours of pig-swill and dung, andthe smell of brewer’s yeast. The environmentand the people had changed, but all the same aremarkable assortment of people made theirway in and out of our family’s garbagecollecting business. Looking back, it trulyseems like a human tragicomedy. I think Ibecame almost painfully aware of the sighs ofpeople who were relegated to the very bottomof society and were desperately trying to keepbody and soul together. This, moreover, was a‘lower depths’ different from that of the

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settlement where we had lived before. Thedifference was that the main characters whoappeared in our lives were now ‘Japanese’.

My mother, who could not read, had to take ona whole range of tasks, from calculating theitems and numbers and value of the scrap thatwas collected to single-handedly conductingbusiness negotiations. For this purpose, sheworked out a system of symbols which only sheunderstood, and which she memorised in placeof Japanese characters. I think her excellentpowers of memory were probably the result ofdesperate efforts to make up for the handicapof illiteracy.

So, little by little, our family’s scrap businessgot underway. This precisely coincided with thestart of Japan’s period of high economicgrowth, following a postwar economic recoveryspurred on by the ‘windfall’ of Korean Warprocurements.

One thing that remains firmly fixed in mymemory is the mass of military swords, helmetsand other discarded weaponry which washeaped up in front of our house. It seemeduncanny to see so many swords rusted reddish-brown together with bloodstains. They bore theunmistakable smell of war. My mother, perhapsfollowing Korean purification rites, wouldsprinkle salt around them, murmuring prayersas she did so. Memories of war, reeking withblood, lingered on even in a place like this. Itwas the business of garbage collectors to clearaway the brutal carnage left by history. I amsure my mother instinctively understood this.

My parents’ struggling family business was alsosustained by another first generation zainichiwho came to live in our house as part of thefamily. This man, whom I knew from my earlychildhood as ‘Uncle’, had sworn an oath ofbrotherhood with my father, and thus becomepart of our family. ‘Uncle’ became as much asor even more than a second father to me. Later,after ‘Uncle’ had died, I learned for the firsttime that he had left a family of his own behind

in Korea and come to Japan by himself, his lotthereafter that of a man with no home of hisown. He had knocked about in the world ofoutlaws, and had at one stage apparently beenquite an influential figure. Subsequently he hadfallen on hard times, though just how he hadended up living with our family I do not know.However, as I shall explain later, ‘Uncle’ playedan enormous part in my education.

‘Uncle’ was just one of the wide variety ofpeople whom I encountered in the worldaround me at that time. They all had theirshare of hardship, and it seemed to me thatthey all lived with desperate intensity. Eventoday, I cannot forget them.

Across the street from our house was a manwho could have stepped straight out of thetextbook ballad of “The Village Blacksmith”. Inhis roaring furnace he heated iron and shapedit to his will, producing reaping hooks and hoesand other farm implements before your veryeyes. He was immensely skilful, and his wareswere of the highest quality. He was a big,uncouth-looking man, but a very gentle person.Every now and then, from over the other side ofthe road we would hear an astonishingly loudsneeze, which told us that the blacksmith wasbusy at work again today. It was somehow areassuring feeling.

For one reason or another, the blacksmith and‘Uncle’ got on well together. They didn’t havemuch to say to one another, but they seemed tounderstand each other nonetheless. “Tetsuo,that uncle of yours is a good’un. True enough,he calls you ‘Teshio, Teshio’. But he’s still agood’un.” ‘Teshio’ was as near as ‘Uncle’ couldcome to pronouncing my name, and I thinkmaybe the blacksmith, who really understood‘Uncle’s’ true nature, was trying to comfort me.Not long after, however, the kind-heartedblacksmith was suddenly struck down by aheart attack and died. The sound of hammer onmetal and the mighty sneezes fell silent.

It was Mr Iijima who gave me a glimpse of the

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horrors of the adult world.

In those days, wild dogs roamed aroundeverywhere, and were a major nuisance. Weused to call the person who was employed bythe dog pound to round them up ‘the dogkiller’. The phrase contained feelings of bothfear and contempt. Mr Iijima, with his littlemoustache, seemed amiable enough, but whenhe came to our house our pet dog seemed to beovercome by terror. It would make low whiningnoises and crouch ready to hide under thefloor. “That there dog knows a thing or two! It’syears since I was the ‘dog killer’, but I reckonthe smell still hangs about.” The events of acertain night made me wonder whether thesmell of human blood, as well as that of dogs,clung to Mr Iijima. He was very drunk, andbegan recounting how during the war in China,he had raped a young woman and tortured herto death. There was a bitterness about MrIijima’s mouth as, grinning but seemingly ill atease, he made this confession. Afterwards, Ihad a sense of regret that I had heardsomething I should not have, and could nothelp shuddering at the knowledge of thecruelty within the adult world whichsurrounded me.

When I came to understand the memory of waras a political problem, I found myself oftenthinking of Mr Iijima. It seems to me that thewar memories of ordinary soldiers were carnalsensations of slaughter remembered with greatforce throughout their bodies, and that whenthe war came to an end, such things were notto be spoken of openly—at the most, they couldbe vented as a sort of confession in the midst ofthe droning nonsense which drunkennessallows. There was no sense of guilt, but also nopowerful sense of self-affirmation, just asentimental attachment to a sad and shabbyexperience, one which was only loosed byalcohol, history recalled as a transient memory.

I don’t know what happened to Mr Iijima afterthat.

Writing of unforgettable people reminds of‘Kaneko-san’, a good friend of ‘Uncle’s’.Perhaps because ‘Kaneko-san’ was from thesame zainichi background, he was in and out ofour house all the time.

To the north of our house, on the way toYamanaga, was Kei fuen, the famousleprosarium. The Precautionary Measuresagainst Leprosy [Raiyoboho] have now beenrepealed but in those days the policy ofisolation was in force and it seems that Keifueneven had rooms constructed for solitaryconfinement as a disciplinary measure.Surprisingly enough, however, despite therigorous isolation policy of the times there wereoccasions when the inmates went outside. Oneof my playmate’s parents ran an amazake[6]and steamed bean-cake shop, and there werepatients from the leprosarium among theircustomers. My friend’s parents were good, kindpeople, so a particular incident made animmense impression on me. My friend’s motherused chopsticks to take a hundred yen notethat a customer with Hansen’s Disease held outbetween two fingers, and then put it in thesteamer. I think she also handed over the bean-cake in some sort of little bamboo basket. Thiswas forty years ago, but I remember the sceneas if it were yesterday. I was absolutelystunned that a usually admirable adult couldbehave so cruelly to those who in those dayswere literally treated as ‘untouchables’.

I seem to remember, though, that when‘Kaneko-san’ came to our house, I would alwaysscurry off and take refuge in the back room. Ididn’t know why, but some ill-defined fear justseemed to chase me away.

It was completely different with ‘Uncle’ and myparents, though. My father and ‘Uncle’ werequite comfortable about collecting garbagefrom the leprosarium, never showing theslightest fear or hesitation. On occasion, theyeven shared the inmates’ meals, helpingthemselves from the same dish. They often

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invited them into our home, too. It seems to methat they felt sympathy or something likekinship, perhaps because they shared theunfortunate consciousness of living as‘outsiders’ in Japan. They possessed an innatecourage that made them unafraid of contactwith things the world considered ‘unclean’ or‘unsightly’. Their kindness of heart wasc e r t a i n l y n o t e r a s e d b y t h e h a r s hcircumstances being zainichi; indeed, the veryfact that they had to live in that harshenvironment may actually have strengthenedtheir fellow-feeling with the unfortunate.

Both my father and ‘Uncle’ have passed away,and my mother, now eighty, spends much ofher time in bed. I hear that ‘Kaneko-san’,though, despite the Hansen’s Disease whichused to be feared as an incurable, is still haleand hearty and seems set to live to a ripe oldage. The Precautionary Measures againstLeprosy were repealed and the nationapologised, but prejudice and preconceptionslinger stubbornly in people’s minds, and it doesnot look as if they will be overcome in ‘Kaneko-san’s’ lifetime. If I could meet ‘Kaneko-san’again, I would like to apologise sincerely for myown past—and I have come to wish that the twoof us could together retrace our memories ofmy father and ‘Uncle’.

A way of living as ‘zainichi’

It was from the woman from Shimonoseki that Ireceived the strongest image of ‘ethnicity’ atthat time. She was what is known as a mudang,or spiritualistic medium, similar to the itako ofnortheastern Japan.[7] Most zainichi peoplehad reverence for their ancestors, and themudang’s repertoire of rituals were a type ofshamanism, originating in ancestor worship,fused with Buddhistic forms. My mother was adeeply devout woman, and the mudang wassummoned from Shimonoseki each year, alongwith two or three other women who providedthe traditional wailing accompaniment. Theywere all zainichi people.

The woman from Shimonoseki was very tall,and you could imagine from her clearcutfeatures that she would have been a head-turning beauty when she was young. She heldherself very straight, her movements werecrisp and energetic, and her gait deliberate andunhurried. One felt she was a personality to bereckoned with. Her sidelocks were arranged toperfection, and she dressed in a spectacularchima-jeogori and white rubber shoes calledgeomjeong. And thus she would arrive in stateat our house. It was undoubtedly a bizarrespectacle for the watching Japanese. I found itunendurable, and when she was due I wouldrun away as far as I could.

The woman from Shimonoseki would comeonce or twice a year without fail to tell ourfortunes for good or evil. For two or three days,my mother would dance to the accompanimentof gong and drums, moving about the house ina trance-like state, murmuring the words thatwould ward off misfortune and foretell thecourse of events. At this one time, women wereat the centre of all the rituals; men werepushed aside into odd nooks and corners,sitting in formal posture and trying to makethemselves as small as possible. Whenmisfortune was forecast, my mother would bedeeply afraid, and in order to avert it would setout for Mount Kinpo, where she would performreligious austerities in a waterfall. This mayhave been because it was believed that MountKinpo, which soars above Kumamoto in thedistant west, had the appearance of a sacredmountain.

The neighbourhood gossip was that there wassomething odd about young Tetsuo’s family—allthose gongs and drums. Perhaps his motherhad a screw loose … All I could do was willthose few days and their ceremonies to be overas quickly as possible.

In my twenties, I discovered my name and thatof my elder brother engraved on the smallshrine at nearby Suigenchi. This epitomised my

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mother’s concern for the security and goodfortune of her two children, and brought hometo me once again how deeply she loved us.Years later, the woman from Shimonoseki diedand was succeeded by her adopted son-in-law.When my father died, it was this ‘she man’ whomade the final farewells at his cremation. Itmay at the same time have been a messagefrom the woman from Shimonoseki. At thatmoment, all my former opposition wastransformed into something akin to sympathy.

One can view this world of my mother, thewoman from Shimonoseki and the others as asacred space governed by folkloric tradition,accessible only to women, who were otherwiseforced to submit to the patriarchal system ofthe zainichi. It was a space charged with theirdeep love for family and their feelings for theirhomeland. Was this not perhaps for them thevery way of living as zainichi?

The rituals did not end there. That is to say,regularly as clockwork, when the correctseason came, the woman from Shimonosekiwould arrive. For a full two or three days, mymother would have worked around the clockpreparing mountains of special delicacies to beused as offerings. While feeling great nostalgiafor these intensely zainichi memories, at thesame time I was also driven by a desire todistance myself from them. They were bitter-sweet experiences.

The people engraved on my memory, bound upin these complex feelings … When I look backnow, I see how they gave shape to mymemories. It may be that my ‘homeland’ is tobe found in memories like these.

Kang Sangjung (front left) and his family

A member of the zainichi ‘elite’, whobecame a military policeman

In writing of my life so far, I cannot possiblyneglect to mention my two uncles.

As I wrote briefly earlier, one of them was myfather’s only younger brother, and so my uncleby blood; the other was not a blood relative,but the ‘Uncle’ who was virtually a secondfather to me. Both were first-generationzainichi, but their life circumstances couldscarcely have been more different.

My blood uncle, extraordinarily for a Koreanduring the war, received a Japanese universityeducation. The year before the war came to anend, he joined the military police and wasstationed in Kumamoto. When defeat was athand, my uncle decided he would kill himself.He had a Japanese wife and a little daughter. Itwas not until I was at university that I saw thefamily photograph taken at the time he madehis decision. In dull sepia, it shows an imposingyouth in military uniform, wearing the armbandof the military police and a sword at his hip,and next to him, a baby in her arms, ananxious-looking woman in Japanese dress.

For a colonised people, the day of Japan’sdefeat should have been a joyful day of

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liberation, but for my uncle it was instead theill-starred day he would meet his death.Although he felt cornered and as if he had noalternative but death, perhaps because henevertheless could not bring himself torenounce the attractions of the world, my unclelet himself be talked out of it by my father andhid himself in the Mount Mannichi air-raidshelter to escape the pursuing army ofoccupation. I don’t really know how it cameabout that my uncle returned to the familyhome….

Not long afterwards, my uncle returned to hishomeland to ascertain how things were in hismother-country. He went alone. The oldcountry which my uncle encountered had beenthrown into the tragic chaos of ‘contemporaryhistory’ [gendaishi], disorder which lasted fromthe day of liberation until the bitter civil warand the birth of the divided nation now knownas the Republic of Korea and the DemocraticPeople’s Republic of Korea. Caught up in this,my uncle again donned army uniform,becoming a judicial staff officer and taking upmilitary duties. Amidst the chaos and ruin, hegave up hope of ever seeing his family again.After the Armistice, he became a lawyer,establishing a practice in Seoul. Whether it wasdue to the vitality with which he wrestled withadversity and his indefatigable hard work or tohis extraordinary adaptability, before long myuncle married the daughter of an affluentfamily. They were blessed with children, andhis feet were set on the path to a happy andsuccessful life.

When the Osaka Expo took place in 1970, myuncle returned to Japan for the first time sincethe war. He searched for the wife and child hehad left behind in Japan twenty years earlier,but without success. I was never far from hisside during his visit, and he told me of his lifesince his return to Korea. It was almost in thenature of a confession.

My uncle had wiped out all memories from

before the war, of having been a member of the‘pro-Japanese faction’ military police, of thewife and child he had left behind in Japan. Byburying his own past, he had been able to builda successful new life in his homeland. Thesacrifice this had required, though, had beenseparation from his family and the erasing ofhis memories. Such was the ‘buried past’ of an‘elite’ colonial subject, able to survive byobliterating half his own life. Another personwho after liberation had a similar ‘buried past’was, it goes without saying, the great dictatorand former president of South Korea, ParkChunghee.[8] My uncle, though nowhere nearas much of a ‘big shot’ as Park, was clearly alsoa ‘mutant’ driven across the boundaries ofJapanese and Korean history. Such ‘mutants’were excluded from the body proper ofJapanese history and unable to find a place toexist peaceably within ethnic history. Evennow, it is as if they are hovering on theperiphery. They have passed away, and historymoves uncaringly on.

After my father’s death, my uncle seemedeager to follow him. His family scattered, andhis spent his last years lonely and alone. How, Iwonder, did those expunged memories of histime in Japan return to my uncle in his finalhours?

I cannot find it in my heart to condemn myuncle’s ‘anti-ethnic’, ‘pro-Japanese’ past. Evenwithout such condemnation, the past hascertainly exacted appropriate revenge throughthe burden of sad memories he borethroughout his life. While accepting this, I havethought that even so I would like to bring tolight once again the memories and history thatmy uncle blotted out, and throw into relief thenuances of the intricate cross-grainedrelationships between the ‘defeat’ and‘liberation’, and Japan and the Koreanpeninsula. I regard this is the weighty task thathas been left behind for me.

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Kang Sangjung (centre) with his uncle (left) inSeoul, 1972

‘Uncle’ who lived as an exile in theshadows

In striking contrast was the life of my other‘Uncle’. Unlike my father’s younger brother,‘Uncle’ had no education to speak of, andremained illiterate all his life. He had been ayakuza and active in the outlaw world in hisyouth, but eventually his life fell apart and hefinished up in my house despite being norelation. Always having time for me, he stood infor my busy father.

‘Uncle’s’ name was Yi Sangsu. His Japanesename was Iwamoto Masao. For almost thirtyyears I was completely unaware of ‘Uncle’s’original name. He was always there, occupyingsuch an incalculable place in my memories thatit just never occurred to me to inquire abouthim. Sadly, it was only when ‘Uncle’ died that I

learned of Yi Sangsu for the first time. I amsure my father felt with painful intensity thathe wanted ‘Uncle’, who had no relations of hisown, at least to be buried under his ‘realname’. This encapsulates the heartbreak of firstgeneration zainichi like my father and ‘Uncle’,who did not speak openly about ethnicity.When I learned that ‘Uncle’ was Yi Sangsu, Ifelt a deep sense of shame at my own lack ofawareness, and wept as I understood the depthof their sorrow.

It may well be that ‘Uncle’ was so good to mebecause he saw in me a trace of the child hehad left behind in the homeland.

‘Uncle’ was vigorous and tough, a man of fewwants. Even so, at times his face would bemelancholy, shadowed by loneliness. When Ithink about it now, I am sure that at such timeshe was looking back with regret at the manwho had abandoned wife and child and lost hishome. ‘Uncle’ did not grumble about his hardlot, however; his dauntless personality probablydid not permit it. I think he probably acceptedit as something he would have to go onenduring stoically, and determined somehow orother to work his way through. Even so, hispent-up feelings would sometimes burst outwith passionate emotion—“My country hascome to this … my life has come to this … andyet I still feel …”. As his words came to a haltand he fell into silence, I think ‘Uncle’ wasmourning bitterly.

More than anything, ‘Uncle’ loved politics.When he talked about politics, ‘Uncle’, faceflushed, was in his glory. He would often befound lecturing ‘Kaneko-san’, whom Imentioned earlier. ‘Kaneko-san’, with his goodwill for the ‘North’, and ‘Uncle’, who believedin the possibility of change in the ‘South’, wereboth concerned about the well-being of theirfamilies as they intently discussed the future ofthe mother-country. As I watched them from adistance, I felt there was something remoteabout the two absorbed figures. This ‘adult’

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face was quite alien to the ‘Uncle’ of every day.

‘Uncle’ sometimes told us about socialconditions or international relations, based onthe store of information he had picked up fromhere and there. Such-and-such a politician wasin a class of his own… this politician was reallysomebody ... there was no politician nowadayswho could pull off a thing like that … and so on,and so on. In general, ‘Uncle’s’ interest was inthe person, and based on that he added to hiss t o r e o f k n o w l e d g e o f e v e n t s a n dcircumstances. It seems to me his critiqueswere often sufficiently accurate to take even apolitical analyst aback. He certainly had a realpolitical intuition.

It wasn’t only political lectures—‘Uncle’ wasalso my guide to an unfamiliar world. At a timewhen entertainment was scarce, whentelevision was a luxury only to be dreamed of,movies were the window onto the world ofpleasure. ‘Uncle’ was a huge fan, and many atime he took me along. Whenever I perched onthe front of ‘Uncle’s’ bicycle as we headed forthe cinema, my heart would beat with suchexcitement I could hardly breathe. And as wemade our way along the dark road home,‘Uncle’ and I would grow quite heated as wediscussed whatever film we’d just seen. As‘Uncle’ pedalled cheerfully along under thebright moon, myself in front, there was a kindof warmth deep in my heart.

‘Uncle’ worked alongside my family, collectinggarbage and feeding the pigs. I stuck to ‘Uncle’like glue, and loved helping him look after thepigs. The daily routine of preparing the foodand cleaning was hard physical work, but‘Uncle’ toiled on, silent and intent. Hiscompassion for living things was very evidentwhen the sows were farrowing. His carefulministrations as they groaned in their labourpangs made a lasting impression on me.

‘Uncle’s’ compassionate kindness was alsodirected to animals that met untimely deaths.

Our house faced a national highway, and wasoften littered with the pathetic carcasses ofdogs and cats that had been hit by cars, victimsof the rapidly rising volume of traffic. Everyoneelse would avert their gaze, but it was always‘Uncle’ who would unobtrusively go and pickup the bodies and carry them in a straw mat tothe bank of the nearby river, where he wouldgive them a dignified burial. Did ‘Uncle’perhaps identify with the lifeless bodies ofthose ‘dumb creatures’ which had met with asudden, meaningless death? It made my heartache to watch him the time he returned fromthe riverbank after burying a dog he’dparticularly loved, smoking in stony silence.

‘Uncle’ got drunk on so little that his oneindulgence was cigarettes. There was always apacket of ‘Peace’ jammed into his back pocket.I loved ‘Uncle’ when he was smoking, most ofall as he sat tranquilly in a corner of theextensive stadium at the University, puffingaway as his gaze wandered idly over MountTatsuta before him.

‘Uncle’ and I would go each day to pick upleftovers from the kitchens of the studentdormitories at Kumamoto University to feed thepigs. We emptied the scraps into two kerosenetins, put the tins in the panniers of ‘Uncle’s’bicycle, and wheeled it home. ‘Uncle’ wouldalways park the bike in the corner of theUniversity stadium, sit in the shade of a tree,and light up a ‘Peace’. As he exhaled with adeep sigh, the purplish smoke would dance inpuffs and disappear into the skies. As I chasedafter it, for some unknown reason I wasabsurdly happy. It may be that I had neverknown such a feeling of boundless joy in mylife. I still recall that scene sometimes today.

When I think about it now, though, I am surethat ‘Uncle’s’ heart was full of homesickness ashe gazed silently into the deep recesses of themountain.

‘Uncle’ died in hospital with a deep sigh, as ifto breathe out all the hardships of this world. I

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broke down and wept.

I want to meet ‘Uncle’ once again. I was notable to ward off his sadness—even if I knewIwamoto Masao, I did not know Yi Sangsu.There are times when I am haunted by thethought that it could be said that I never metthe real ‘Uncle’. I want to meet Yi Sangsu, onceagain. Surely the only way to do so is to ‘goforward’ by facing the past. It seems to me thatthis feeling will grow stronger with the years. Itmay even be that the motivation for my actionsin speaking on social issues is the strength ofthis feeling.

When ‘Uncle’ died, he had virtually nopossessions. He left behind a pair of gumbootsencrusted with food scraps and pig dung, and ajar containing a few cigarettes. As I gazed atthem, I asked myself over and over again what‘Uncle’s’ life had been, indeed, why on earth hehad even been born. An exile from hishomeland, ‘Uncle’ had lived out his life quietlyin the shadows. When he was suddenly felledby a stroke, he tried to brush away the helpinghands, surely signalling that he had hadenough of living.

'Uncle' in Kumamoto

The two uncles who influenced me so deeply…When I compare their widely-different lives, Ifinish up reflecting on what it meant to live as afirst-generation zainichi. It is fine, as far as itgoes, to say that it was a cruel life imposed onthem by historical forces. But it seems to methat although battered by life, they bothsurvived, doing the best they could with themeans at hand. My ongoing wish is to ensurethat the memory of those ‘mutants’ whosurvived the rigours of their lives does notdisappear from the places where they lived.

Torn into pieces time and again

As one follows the traces of my two uncles, themisery of their lives, torn to pieces again and

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again, surfaces. Their misery is intertwinedwith feelings of powerlessness and loss. Butalthough they were stricken with grief, they goton with their lives.

One thing they were denied was seeing theircountry united. What of second generationzainichi like myself, who live on with memoriesof them? I have still not had the opportunity ofseeing my ‘homeland’ united. When I say‘homeland’, it does not of course have the samesense of ‘native place’ [patrie] as it did for myuncles. My ‘native place’ is Kumamoto, where Iwas born and grew up. A ‘homeland’ which isnot one’s ‘native place’ is a nebulous,insubstantial thing. It does not make sense forme to write of the Korean peninsula, whether‘North’ or ‘South’ as my ‘homeland’.

And yet, I want to take the plunge and write ofthe Korean peninsula as my ‘homeland’. Bydoing so, I wonder whether I may be able to re-discover bonds with my uncles. I wonderwhether perhaps I will be able to discover my‘homeland’ in their memories. Of course, theyare no longer alive. Even so, the actuality of thedivision which was responsible for their miserystill continues. Might it not be that when thatstark reality is confronted and ended, I will beable to meet my uncles again and begin to say“at last the time has come when your heartache(han) [9] can fade away.”

Today I am a university professor and haveachieved a certain degree of public esteem. Thecontrast with my uncles is obvious. I cannot ridmyself of a feeling of shame that I perhapsnever really met them, and even now I have nothad the joy of seeing a unified Korea. I amcomforted by the demonstration my parentsand my uncles gave me, a supremely ‘human’way of being in the face of adversity. This isperhaps what Cumings’ meant by “the Koreanpeninsula has both acquired much, and lostmuch” and that “it is a story remarkable forhuman triumph over adversity”.

Kang Sangjung 2003

By the time I was in upper primary school,there was an intangible sense in society atlarge that there was something almost criminalin the very fact of being zainichi, and evenworse was the hard fact of division. Why wasmy parents’ and my uncles’ mother-countrybeing divided? Why was it fighting? Was theKorean race belligerent by nature? When Ithought about it, I had to admit that many ofthe first generation wore their hearts on theirsleeves; they were aggressive, abusive andquarrelsome—and so I supposed it might makesense that the country was divided andmembers of the same race were killing eachother. What a ‘barbaric’ people! Images andconcepts like these formed one after another,leaving me always heavy-hearted.

History and modern society lessons at schoolwere truly wretched experiences for me. I wasseized by a feeling of desolation, as if I hadbeen left all alone in the classroom. Why was Ia zainichi? Why were we ‘at the bottom of theheap’? Such misgivings troubled me deeply, butthere was no friend or teacher in whom I couldconfide. I had no alternative but to bury my

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anxieties deep within myself, and as a result, itwas as if a dark cloud of disquiet hung over me.

I was good at both schoolwork and sport, andprobably seemed a cheerful, mischievous boy.But at times the cheerfulness would be erasedby melancholy and disquiet. There was no realknowledge of or insight into the significance orthe origins of division, but it definitely cast adark shadow. Zainichi—rootless l iketumbleweed, deprived of the protectivecarapace of ‘nation’, fighting among themselveseven when in a foreign country, the country towhich they should return split in two. In thepopular mind, they were nothing short of ‘thedregs of history’. Even the well-meaning peoplearound me were probably unable to imaginehow dark a shadow this negative image castover my young heart. And yet the division wasnot unrelated to Japanese history.

Later, when I was studying in the former WestGermany, I was aware that the division ofGermany cast a deep shadow on its people.There was no mistaking that people who live ina divided country have to bear in the roots oftheir being the burden of negation.

One could perhaps in a way regard the divisionof Germany, with the weight of the dark legacyof Nazism bearing down on it, as history’srevenge. But the Korean peninsula had beenthe victim of long-term forcible colonisation,and for that very reason, the history of divisionwas all the more heartbreaking and itsinfluence the more profound.

When I retrace my childhood memories, I feel amelancholy deeper than simple nostalgia, amelancholy that has continued as I grow older.Why, I wonder? I cannot help but think that theanswer lies in the circumstances of beingzainichi, of which division is the symbol.

There is a complex emotion in zainichi. Some ofthe younger generation talk of there being twostreams within themselves—the country theylove most in the world is Japan and that they

most dislike is the Korean peninsula. Yet at thesame time, the country they most love in theworld is the Korean peninsula and that whichthey dislike most is Japan. It is an extreme formof expression, but I find similar feelings withinmyself— Japan is at once my favourite country,the one I should love, and at the same time thecountry I most dislike; the Korean peninsulatoo is the country I most dislike and that whichin a certain way, I should love. Why does such astate persist in this way?

I think my melancholy usually arises from thissense of division. Division must be healedthrough reconciliation, not force. It may be,indeed, that reintegration can never be fullyachieved. Yet surely it is possible to dispelinsecurity by allowing the ‘other’ to enteroneself and co-exist with that ‘difference’? Itmay be that in the final analysis, it is simplyimpossible to speak of fundamentally dispellinginsecurity. But surely even if the insecuritycannot be dispelled, the heart may be lightenedby confronting its source, accepting it,embracing it?

I somehow feel that when even some smallreconciliation takes place between the divisionsbetween ‘zainichi’ and ‘Japan’, ‘zainichi’ and‘North/South’, ‘North/South’ and ‘Japan’, I willat last be able to meet my uncles.

The unification and co-existence of North andSouth is not simply a matter of bringingtogether a divided country. The process ofreconciliation is itself of great importance.Reconciliation of North and South willnecessarily also be bound up with simultaneousreconciliation with Japan. When this happens,we will surely be able to farewell the cruelyears of the twentieth century and face the newcentury. It will be a difficult assignment andthere will doubtless be many ups and downs,but I want to be on the spot when suchreconciliation occurs. Born as I was during theKorean War, this is my dream.

Translator’s postscript

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The aging of the first generation of zainichiKoreans who are the main subject of this essaybrings sadness and the vanishing of individualhistories, but also sometimes opportunities forremembering. On 3 Apri l 2005, KangSangjung’s mother U Sunnam passed awaypeacefully in Kumamoto. She was 80 years old.Shortly before, on a visit to his hometown,Kang Sangjung had been able to make contactagain with ‘Kaneko-san’, who is now veryelderly but still has vivid memories of the daysdescribed here. They met again after manydecades, and were able to share happy and sadrecollections of the times and places describedhere—a corner of postwar Japan which is ofteninvisible in the big narratives of the nation, butwhose traces still exert a powerful influence onthe Japan of today.

Notes to the translation

[1] Korea was annexed by Japan as a colony in1910. In the 1920s, there were periods ofrelatively unrestricted entry for Koreans toJapan, and there was a great increase in thenumber of Koreans working in Japan. Mostwere single men, employed on constructionsites, in mines and factories. Gradually theirfamilies joined them. They faced considerableracial discrimination and many came to live insettlements of Korean people. Hundreds ofthousands of Koreans were forcibly relocated toJapan with the passing of the NationalMobilisation Law (April 1938) and theaccompanying ordinance on the immigration ofKorean labourers (effective September 1938).By the end of World War II, the number ofKoreans living in Japan, including thosebrought over forcibly during the War, hadincreased to over two million. (Translator’snote)

[2] The General Headquarters of the AlliedPowers (GHQ) declared that Koreans residentin Japan, whether of Northern and Southernorigin, were neither citizens of the victoriouscountries nor of the defeated countries, but

were described as ‘third country nationals’.

[3] When a bomb of unknown origin ripped theJapanese railway near Shenyang (then knownas Mukden), in September 1931, the JapaneseKwantung army guarding the railway used theincident as a pretext to occupy SouthManchuria. This led to the creation of thepuppet state of Manchukuo. (Translator’s note)

[4] In 1871, American teacher Leroy LansingJanes established a school in Kumamoto, theKumamoto Yogakko, which offered a Western,Christian education. In 1876, thirty-fivestudents pledged themselves to the Christianfaith and to missionary work among theJapanese. They were known as the ‘KumamotoBand’. (Translator’s note)

[5] Traditional dress for Korean womenconsists of a short upper-body garment, foldedin front similar to a kimono (jeogori), and apleated long full skirt, gathered above the waist(chima). (Translator’s note)

[6] A sweet drink made from fermented rice,sometimes flavoured with ginger. (Translator’snote)

[7] Itako, blind female shamans or spiritmediums, are renowned for their capacity tospeak for the dead, through a ritual processknown as kuchiyose.

[8] Park Chunghee (1917-1979) was presidentof South Korea from 1961 to 1979. He hadserved the Kwangtung Army (part of theJapanese Army) in Manchuria in colonial times.Park led a military coup in 1961. In 1971, hedeclared a state of emergency and suspendedthe constitution. The following year, heintroduced a revised constitution whichincreased his power to the extent that it madehim a virtual dictator. Having survived anassassination attempt in 1974, Park wasassassinated in 1979. (Translator’s note)

[9] Broadly definable as a sense of deep sorrow

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and a desire for restitution invoked by thesufferings and oppression of history, han isoften seen as one of the defining elements ofmodern Korean culture. (Translator’s note)

This translation of the first part of KangSangjung’s autobiography Zainichi (Kodansha,2004) was first published in Japanese StudiesVolume 26 Number 2 December 2006, pp267-281. Posted on Japan Focus, February 2,

2007.

Note on the translator

Robin Fletcher received her PhD from theAustralian National University in 2005, for athesis entitled ‘Yaeko Batchelor, Ainuevangelist and poet’. In addition to researchingJapanese history, she has translated a numberof Japanese works, including the collectedworks of Yaeko Batchelor.