The story is set in Tokyo, alternating between the present day and colonial era. It is rich in anti-Japanese epithets and North Korean interpretations of various historical and current events, from the Imjin War to the Great Kanto Earthquake to a recent mushroom smuggling scandal.
Since there is quite a lot of meat in this story, I am dividing my summary into two parts. The second half of the story will be posted at a later date.
Story Summary
The story opens on the narrator, a Japanese journalist, meeting in a smoky Ginza nightclub with a man named Ozawa Kenichiro.
 |
| A Zaitokukai protest in Tokyo |
“Listen up, Mr. Fancy Reporter, you pay your respects at Yasukuni; if you have a speck of the Yamato spirit left in you, you’ll help us out.”
“What do you want from me?”
“Write an expose on the Eastern Trading Company violating trade law. Under your name as an elite Asahi Shimbun reporter. We’ve prepared all the materials for you.”
The Eastern Trading Company was a minor zainichi-owned firm unrelated to Chongryon. It had garnered public scrutiny for its role in the matsutake mushroom import scandal.
Matsutake mushrooms are delicious and high in calories; you may wonder why it should matter whether they came from China or Korea. Apparently, the sensitive Japanese palate could even detect a food’s nationality.
It was as if the Japanese authorities saw these mushrooms as some sort of special forces sent to penetrate their net of sanctions. Or did they think the stems were missiles, and the caps were the DPRK’s increasingly advanced ballistic warheads? At any rate, the whole Japanese archipelago was aflutter over these mushrooms.
The forces behind this mushroom-phobia had sought to stir things up further by raiding the heads of Chongryon. Since they had no connection whatsoever to the Eastern Trading Company, the raid was hard to explain.
Their raid hadn’t proven anything and had only given Chongryon and North Korea another cudgel to beat Japan with.
Ozawa supplies the reporter with detailed notes for another story on the matsutake scandal, this time directly implicating the son of the director of Chongryon (the main pro-NK organization for Japan’s resident Koreans). When the narrator hesitates, calling the story “boring” since the investigation has yielded no real evidence, Ozawa prevails upon him to “Do your national duty as a Japanese.”
Troubled, the narrator returns home and contemplates Ozawa’s words.
Our national duty?In the whole world, is there any other people who use that phrase as much as us Japanese? Even in this age of globalization, our nation’s blood nationalism has not changed.The same words rang like a tired refrain through every newspaper and TV broadcast.Revering fallen soldiers, paying respects at Yasukuni – all part of our ‘national duty’! Sending SDF troops abroad, revising the constitution, claiming neighbors’ territory as our own, distorting history, on and on. With the recent anti-Chongryon craze, this exclusionary sentiment had only become more overt.We were all drunk. Intoxicated by militant nationalism, staggering around with our haorijackets untied, hollering at the world.We were all crazy.Shuffling our getaover the world again just like in the old days, when we brandished our bamboo spears and katanas, waving the hinomaruflag and belting out kimi-ga-yo.And this intoxication, this craziness, was paradoxically justified as part of our “national duty” in the name of building “Strong Japan,” “Beautiful Japan.”Just what was this duty?
In search of inspiration, he takes up his grandfather’s diary from 1923 and begins to read.
–Grandfather’s Diary–
The grandfather, a landlord in a Tokyo shantytown, writes of two young students who rented a room above an inn he owned by the river. Both were students at Tokyo Imperial University.
One, named Ri Chŏng Sam, was a tall good-looking young man with striking clear eyes, quite popular with the young ladies. The other was a swarthy fellow with a prominent forehead named Ishikawa Shintaro. He was Japanese but had been raised in Korea and was very vague about his origins.
 |
| Students at Tokyo Imperial University, 1917 |
The diary described an encounter with a very inebriated Ishikawa, who raged about being bullied at school and called a “bat brat.”
“Why a bat?”
Ishikawa downed his cup of masamune [North Korean word for Japanese sake] in one swallow and sighed. “It’s ‘cause I’m from an immigrant family.”
“Huh, what, then all the thousands of people who’ve migrated to the continent are all bats? Such bullshit.” I refrained from mentioning that his dark face did remind me of some kind of rodent excrement.
But he just got even more upset. “That’s not it! It’s 'cause I’m hangwae, y’see! Hangwae!”
That was the day I first learned of a small offshoot of Japanese migrants to Korea known as hangwae.
During the Japanese invasion of 1592-98, known in Korea as the Imshin Waeran and in Japan as Bunroku- or Keichō-no-Eki, Ishikawa’s ancestor had been among those samurai who grabbed their katanas and muskets and gleefully joined in the fight. There’s no accounting of his deeds or how many Korean ears and noses he lopped off.
But somehow, at the end of that miserable war that killed or maimed some 300,000 of our ancestors, he escaped with his life as a POW. That’s all that is recorded in the family register.
Korean artist's depiction of Japanese soldiers during Imshin War
After the war there were some few Japanese prisoners who, deeply impressed by Korea’s advanced culture and refined etiquette, and fearing persecution by the ham-fisted daimyo government, refused to return to Japan and asked to become naturalized Koreans. For Koreans, allowing these mortal enemies to remain on their soil was about as fun as getting pricked by a chestnut burr, but in an excess of generosity they allowed it.
Like a bad penny, this vomit leftover from the war kept causing problems in society again and again, but they were always treated magnanimously on account of being “naturalized.” Every step of the way, they were never forced and received nothing but kindness. Eventually, over hundreds of years, these hangwae (defeated Japanese) became almost completely transformed into Koreans. They took Korean names, spoke Korean, wore Korean clothing, and adopted Korean mannerisms. Then Japan annexed Korea, and suddenly they began swaggering around with big bloated heads.
They dug out their old moss-grown family registers from their hiding places in crock pots and buried caches, assiduously traced their genealogy lines back hundreds of years, and scuttled off to the Government General to certify their Japaneseness based on their ancestry. In a single morning, Kim-this and Lee-that became this-and-that Japanese surname.
These upstart Japs became the islanders’ scouts and guard dogs on the mission to rob the country that had fed, clothed and cared for them. So went the history of the hangwae, who are called “bats” on account of how they flit back and forth between sides whenever it suits them.
Through a series of other encounters, the landlord learned the tangled history of the two boys’ families. During a peasant revolt just before the first Sino-Japanese war, when anti-Japanese sentiment was high, Chŏng Sam’s father (who was head of the Ri clan) had saved Ishikawa’s father from an angry mob. Since then the Ri family had always protected the Ishikawas.
At first both boys received monthly remittance checks to support their studies, but Ishikawa’s support dried up after his father lost all the family land to loan sharks from the Dongchŏk (Oriental Development Company). Chŏng Sam took on part-time work to help cover the shortfall. Moved by his selflessness and industry, the landlord gave the boys a break on their rent deadline.
Meanwhile, it became clear that Ishikawa was hiding something from Chŏng Sam; he asked the landlord to deliver all their mail directly to him.
Finally, the terrible day of judgement arrived.
September 1, 1923!
A vast force exploded on that harsh, brutal land. In one instant, the great city was leveled.
That day, nature itself visited a calamitous holy war upon the island whose people had only trampled and destroyed other lands. Every passing second was filled with towering rage and violent judgment. The earth sank and the sky fell. It was as if an underground giant had twitched his finger beneath the city. The whole city was reduced to ruins, and everything melted into a sea of ash, flame and blood. In that city that had been gripped and crushed by an irrestible force, a bone-deep bitter despair and fear lingered.
They should have carefully heeded this murderous warning of nature. But instead, a deep resentment belched forth like sewage from the rotten hearts of the Japanese and fell upon the Korean people.
“Koreans started the fire!” “Koreans poisoned the wells!” “They incited the riots!”
The Great Kanto Earthquake set the opportune conditions for a kamikaze wind to fall upon and slaughter the Koreans. The whole Kanto region transformed into a heap of skulls and a banquet of blood as the “samurai” feasted on Korean flesh and sucked Korean blood.
 |
| Great Kanto Earthquake scene by Kanokogi Takeshiro. |
When a gang of hoodlums came to the inn demanding that they “turn over that Korean,” the landlord initially lied and said he was gone. But the cowardly Ishikawa promptly gave him up.
Eventually they came back down, dragging a tightly bound Chŏng Sam. It seemed he’d put his wrestling skills to use; many bled from their mouths, eyes and noses, and their dwarfish leader appeared unconscious or dead.
 |
| Illustration of Koreans and Chinese being rounded up after the Kanto earthquake, by the Japanese artist Kayahara Hakudō, who witnessed the slaughter as a young man. |
As they dragged him out the door, Chŏng Sam glared at Ishikawa and asked, “How could you do this?”
“Because you’re Korean,” was Ishikawa’s cold reply.
The next day Ishikawa was seen leaving with a bunch of bundles and a trunk. The landlord realized with disgust that he was selling off Chŏng Sam’s possessions. He went up to their room and, sure enough, all of the Korean’s things had been cleared out.
He discovered three revealing letters that painted a very different story of Ishikawa’s family circumstances back in Korea. His father had indeed lost all his money gambling, but then he used his Dongchŏk connections to claim the Ri clan’s ancestral burial land as his own. There was a lawsuit, but the colonial government always favored the Japanese claimant in such things. In a fit of rage, Chŏng Sam’s father assaulted Ishikawa’s father and ended up getting thrown in jail. Ishikawa had been warned to keep this news from Chŏng Sam, because it would complicate their legal rights to the land if another claimant with the right family name showed up.
And now, Ishikawa had seen an opportunity to get rid of his problematic roommate.
Soon after, another gang of Japanese hoodlums showed up at the door, hauling Ishikawa in by the scruff of his neck.
“Hey, you! You know this guy? You’re the landlord, right? Tell us, is he Korean or Japanese?”
Ishikawa pleaded, “Oh, sir, please! Explain to these guys about me. They heard me say ‘15 yen and 55 sen’ and thought my pronunciation was weird. Help me!” Ah, Ishikawa, done in by the infamous “15 yen and 55 sen.” That misbegotten hangwae had never been able to match the nasal g of a pure-blooded Yamato.
“You’re not hiding Koreans again, are you?!”
“Sir, please tell them. You know my whole story better than anyone.”
As I looked down at him, my mind flashed an image of Chŏng Sam’s face, smiling in the sun. And on top of that came the image of Ishikawa blustering about “our national duty.”
I realized then that betrayal was not “our national duty.” It was our people’s destiny, part of our genetic makeup – the demon blood, the black blood passed down continuously from the beginning of time.
We could never resist fulfilling this treacherous duty, bringing down heaven’s divine punishment.
It was Ishikawa who helped me to realize it.
And I faithfully executed that duty.
I bit off the icy cold words: “This one is no Japanese.”
Depictions of
This story illustrates some of the ways that language is employed to paint the Japanese as simultaneously conniving and foolish. Examples include: repeatedly referring to Japan as “that island country” (섬나라) and Japanese characters as “islanders” (섬나라사람); ironic repetition of well-known Japanese terms like “kamikaze” and “samurai,” and idiomatic phrases like “swishing the hems of their haori” and “brandishing their katanas,” invoke a sense of ridicule behind the menace.
Ishikawa, the hang-wae descendent, gets the business end of most of this negative description. For instance, here's how the grandfather's diary describes him begging to hide mail from his roommate Chŏng Sam:
Ishikawa, the hang-wae descendent, gets the business end of most of this negative description. For instance, here's how the grandfather's diary describes him begging to hide mail from his roommate Chŏng Sam:
In his face I saw that hateful dog-like look, that pleading expression meant to appease and persuade. It was a familiar look. It was the same anxious and guilty look that was a characteristic of all our kind, myself included.
The landlord resents Chŏng Sam’s popularity with women but can’t help admiring his strength of character, clear eyes and upright bearing. He finds himself instinctively using polite speech forms with him as if speaking to an equal or superior, while talking down to his roommate Ishikawa and privately scorning his ugliness and cowardice.
Nevertheless, in several ways I feel like this author has skated up to the edge of what may be permissible in terms of depicting Japanese favorably. The narrators are both Japanese – the reporter and his diary-writing grandfather – and since the narrative takes their point of view, they become at least quasi-sympathetic characters.
When the reporter reflects on Japan's various misdeeds - "sending SDF troops abroad, revising the constitution, claiming neighbors’ territory as our own, distorting history" - he does so with remorse rather than exaltation. The grandfather's diary expresses similar sentiments about the anti-Korean violence he witnesses after the Kantō earthquake. Both narrators can’t help but grudgingly admire Koreans, suggesting that they have enough humanity to recognize inherent value and to struggle against their prejudices. I wonder if North Korean literary theory does not have the concept of an unreliable narrator.
Based on what we know from Kim Ju-song's memoir, I would guess that this story was labeled a "problematic work." Recall that Kim's fiction was frequently given bad reviews for being set in Japan. Even though he depicted the Japanese purely in negative terms, his editors preferred for him to write stories set in North Korea.
Links
The scandal of matsutake mushrooms from North Korea being re-labeled "Made in China" fell out in 2015 and prompted a police raid on Chongron. Here is NK News on Japan’s matsutake smuggling ring: https://www.nknews.org/2015/06/the-prized-mushroom-that-may-help-fund-pyongyang/
 |
| Illustration from the serial novel "Hangwae Kim Chung-Sŏn." Src: Chungang Ilbo |
Some explanation in English can be found here.
The Dongchŏk (동척 - Oriental Development Company) was a colonial institution set up by the Japanese to implement their land reform and fund economic development projects in Korea. Ishikawa's father's experience - getting bilked out of his family land after taking a dongchŏk loan that he was unable to repay - is a common story told by Koreans of that era.
