This book contains the following stories and poems by eight author.

Contents

Note on Translations

Introduction

Kim Sa-ryang
Into the Light (1939)

Kim Tal-su
In the Shadow of Mount Fuji (1951)

Noguchi Kakuchū
Foreign Husband (1958)

Kim Hak-yŏng
Frozen Mouth, chapters one and two (1966)

Chong Ch'u-wŏl
The Korean Women I Love (1974)
Testament (1984)
Name: For Pak Ch'u-ja (1984)

Yi Yang-ji
Koku (1984)

Kim Ch'ang-saeng
Crimson Fruit (1988)

Yū Miri
Full House (1997)

Additional Readings on Zainichi Korean Literature

About the Translators

Back cover promotions

The back cover describes the book like this.

Apparently Japan has a "Korean community" called "Zainichi Koreans". Apparently there is such a thing as "Korean ethnicity" and apparently this has something to do with being a "Korean in Japan" -- as opposed a "Japanese community" of "Zainichi Japanese" who are of "Japanese ethnicity" who write stories pondering what it means to be "Japanese in Japan".

The above description is preceded by two endorsements attributed to professors of Japanese literature at American universities. The first endorsement reads as follows.

Steve Rabson is saying, in effect, that he has compared the translations in the anthology against the originals, and as an expert witness -- a professor of Japanese language and literature -- he testifies before the bench that he regards them to be of "high quality".

I beg to differ.

Editor's profile and related writing

The back cover reports that the editor, Melissa L. Wender, "has taught at Bates College, Tufts University, and Harvard University and is currently teaching E.S.L. at a Boston high school."

Wender is also the author of the following work, which I shall have occasion to cite in this review, as it touches on some of the writers and stories in the anthology.

Melissa L. Wender
Lamentation as History
(Narratives by Koreans in Japan, 1965-2000)
Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005
xiii, 252 pages

Melissa L. Wender states in her introduction to Into the Light that "Koreans in Japan" are commonly known in English as "Resident or Zainichi Koreans". She then speaks mainly of "Resident Korean" or "Zainichi Korean" authors and their works. She does not define these terms or otherwise explain how they differ from "Japanese" or "Resident Japanese" or "Zainichi Japanese". Though at times she appears to differentiate them, the overall impression is that she regards them as synonyms. Her descriptions of Koreans in Japan in Lamentations of History similarly tend to conflate Koreans in Japan, Resident Koreans, and Zainichi Koreans as in what boils down to an essentially racialist rather than civil definition of "Koreans" in Japan.

Who are Resident Koreans?

Wender, in her introduction to Lamentation as History, answered the question "Who are Resident Koreans?" as follows (Wender 2005, page 4, underscoring mine).

In her introduction to Into the Light, Wender briefly describes the legal status of "Koreans in Japan" as follows (page 8, underscoring mine).

I have not reproduced Wender's endnotes, in which she cites, paraphrases, and comments on a number of secondary Japanese and English sources that considerably vary in quality.

All the underscored statements are erroneous or seriously misleading. Many others also suggest that Wender does not have a very good grasp of Japan's political and legal history. Her descriptions of treaties, ordinances, and laws and their effects are generally incorrect. Even her better descriptions tend to misinform because they lack the nuancing essential to comprehension of the fact that the legal status of "Koreans in Japan" is at once both less and more complicated than she seems to realize.

Wender would have saved a lot of grief had she simply defined "Koreans in Japan" as including anyone thought to have one or more drop of putative "Korean" blood as a matter of racioethnic descent -- regardless of legal status -- for that is what she seems to mean. Obsession with "blood" -- not nationality -- is what appears to define "Koreans in Japan" in English writing today -- and in Japanese writing using Japanese expressions with similar racialist implications.

Comments on Wender 2005

These are some of the problems with remarks in the above citations from Lamentations as History.

"immigrant minority" (Wender 2005)

Wender notes in Into the Light that as of 1965 the majority of "Koreans in Japan" had been born in Japan (see above citation). She also speaks, in her introduction to this later work, of "migrants" and "migration" -- apparently aware that Koreans in Japan are not an "immigrant minority".

Zainichi Koreans . . . Official estimates (Wender 2005)

"Zainichi Koreans" is an emotionally considered racioethnically category of no concern to the Japanese government, which regards only nationality -- a purely civil status -- as cause for statistical enumeration under Japan's raceless laws. All aliens who are of one or another "Korean" civil status under alien registration laws are counted as "Koreans" under a conflated status that includes nationals of the Republic of Korea (ROK), affiliates of the non-state legacy entity of Chōsen, and affiliates (citizens) of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK).

"comparable to North Korean citizenship" (Wender 2005)

How is the legacy entity of Chōsen comparable to DPRK nationality? Legally, Chōsen affiliation and DPRK nationality are entirely different. Some ROK nationals, some Chōsen affiliates, and some Japanese claim to have DPRK nationality, and may possess DPRK documents to support their claim, but neither ROK nor Japan recognize such claims. On the other hand, both Japan and ROK have admitted aliens who have come from DPRK with DPRK documents. In Japan, such people are conflated along with ROK and Chōsen Koreans as "Koreans", while in ROK, if permitted to settle, they usually acquire ROK nationality.

"closer to a million" (Wender 2005)

The inclusion of non-Koreans among "Koreans in Japan" comes at the expense of racializing both "Koreans" and "Japanese". The attempt to expand the count of "Koreans in Japan" beyond its legal reference to "aliens" affiliated with one or another "Korea" requires including people in Japan who are not "Korean" aliens. The "descrepancy" is not in Japan's raceless laws and disinterest in racialization of its national (Japanese) and alien (non-Japanese) residents -- but, rather, it is in the need among some people, including apparently Wender, to racialize what they regard as a "community" of "Koreans in Japan" on mostly ethnonationalist and related racialist grounds.

"Japanese citizenship" (Wender 2005)

Wender's regard for what she calls "large numbers of people who are either wholly or partly ethnically Korean" -- who have "obtained Japanese citizenship through naturalization, marriage, or having one parent who is a citizen -- is odd for both legal and demographic reasons.

Legally . . .

It was possible under the 1899 Nationality Law, and under previous status laws, for a Korean to become a Japanese through marriage or adoption until 1910, when all Koreans in the Empire of Japan became Japanese. Some Koreans, who during the Occupation of Japan had dual status as "non-Japanese" and "Japanese", became only "Japanese" through marriage or adoption as a result of migration from a Chōsen to Interior register -- until the 1950 Nationality Law, which did away with such derivative status in the cases of alliances of marriage and adoption involving couples or families of different "nationality" or "territoriality".

For sure, a lot of people have "obtained Japanese citizenship through . . . having one parent who is a citizen". But if we are talking about nationality at time of birth, then one also has to consider that many people who are "wholly or partly ethnically Korean" defined by ancestral descent have acquired Japanese nationality through two parents who are nationals. Note Japan's status laws do not define "citizenship" or "citizens" as such.

Demographically . . .

If one can be "wholly or partly ethnically Korean" -- how does a demographer armed with an Ethnic Quantum Meter count, say, a Lee who is "wholly ethnically Korean", and a Son and a Smith who are each "half ethnically Korean"? As three Koreans? Or two Koreans? And what if such people tell the demographer they are just Japanese, and have no interest in the "Zainichi" race box?

What, exactly, does an Ethnic Quantum Meter measure? Biological lineage? Kimchi consumption or hangul literacy? How small does one's quantum of "Korean ethnicity" have to be to disqualify one from regard as a "Korean in Japan"?

Wender and the contributors to her book appear to endorse the notion that scholars RESUME have the write to embrace anyone in their "putative ethnic quantum, ascribed be the criterion for embracing a writer as a "Korean in Japan" -- whether or not the writer desires to be racialized this way. or "Korean Residents" or "Zainichi Koreans" -- then her own attempt to expand Wender does not begin to account for the demographic possibilities of people in Japan who are neither Korean aliens nor Japanese nationals being "wholly or partly ethnically Korean". The main problem, though, is that she does not account for any she has the right to claim that such people should be included in her racioethnic "Koreans in Japan" cohort.

"U.S. Occupation of Japan" (Wender 2005)

As I recall, the Empire of Japan Japan was occupied by the Allied Powers. The occupation zone known as Occupied Japan was under the authority of the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP). The San Francisco Peace Treaty was an agreement between Japan and the Allied Powers, not between Japan and the United States.

"Koreans' legal status was ambiguous" (Wender 2005)

The legal status of Koreans in Occupied Japan was fairly clear. Under SCAP rules they were "non-Japanese" for so-called "repatriation" and a number of other persons, including eventually alien registration. Under Japaneses law, and in SCAP's eyes, those who remained in Japan remained Japanese nationals during the Occupation.

The Alien Registration Order of 1947 did not designate Koreans in Japan as "Korean". Rather, there was a provision that Chosenese and some Taiwanese -- though not "aliens" as formally defined by the law -- would be treated as "aliens" for purposes of the law.

The 1947 Alien Registration Order did not become a law in 1952. The 1947 order was revised and replaced by an entirely new law, that was both promulgated on and enforced from 28 April 1952, when the San Francisco Peace Treaty came to effect.

"stripped of their Japanese citizenship" (Wender 2005)

Chosenese (Koreans) and Taiwanese (Formosans) were never "stripped" of their "citizenship" either "unequivocally" or otherwise. They were regarded as having lost their Japanese nationality as an consequence of Choōsen (Korea) and Taiwan (Formosa) having been territorially separated from Japan under the terms of the peace treaty. The 1952 Alien Registration Law had nothing to do with this loss of nationality.

"no right to live in Japan" (Wender 2005)

While Potsdam-qualified Chosenese and Taiwanese did not have the right of permanent residence in Japan, as Japanese nationals domiciled in Occupied Japan they had the right to reside there. Moreover, from 28 April 1952, when they lost their Japanese nationality and became categorically aliens, those who continued to be qualified under rules based on the terms of surrender under the Potsdam Declaration, and their qualified descendants, continued to have the right to reside in Japan. Since then, and for reasons directly related to their Potsdam-related qualifications, they have continued to be treated differently from ordinary aliens.

"new category of 'permanent resident'" (Wender 2005)

No such new category was defined in 1965. The status of "permanent residence" came into existence from 28 April 1952 under provisions of the 1951 Immigration Control Order. A law facilitating the Japan-ROK status agreement that came into effect from 1966 included provisions for Potsdam-qualified ROK nationals to become permanent residents under the agreement. The permanent residence status was not created for such Koreans. Alien registration statistics began to tally Koreans who had obtained permanent residence under the agreement as "agreement permance residence" aliens. Their actual status of residence, however, was simply "permanent residence".

"allowed stateless Koreans" (Wender 2005)

1981 revisions to the 1951 Immigration Control Order, which also changed its name to Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Law, effective from 1982, contained no provisions regarding permanent residence of Potsdam-qualified aliens. A separate law, promulgated and enforced at the same time, made permanent residence available to Potsdam-qualified aliens other than ROK nationals who qualified under the Japan-ROK status of agreement. The law did not mention "Koreans" or any other specific Alien status, since it covered all non-ROK aliens who met Potsdam-related conditions.

"granting all Resident Koreans" (Wender 2005)

Again, no law has ever "granted" so-called "Resident Koreans" anything. A 1991 law redefined all aliens who met conditions tied to provisions of the Potsdam Declaration and the San Francisco Peace treaty as Special Permanent Residents. No law in Japan -- most certainly not the 1991 law -- has ever "granted" any -- much less "all" -- "Resident Koreans" anything. Ever.

As of this writing, twenty years later, the status of Special Perament Resident (SPR) is held by people representing about fifty nationalities. The vast majority are ROK nationals. Both the number and percentage of ROK nationals who qualify as SPRs has been rapidly dropping, as the legacy population of Koreans in Japan whose legal status is tied to the legacy of Japan's annexation of Korea as Chōsen -- i.e., 1910-1945 -- is rapidly decreasing.

Comments on Wender 2011

Wender regard for "Koreans in Japan" does not essentially change in Into the Light.

"quite complicated" (Wender 2011)

However "complicated" the status of "Koreans in Japan" may seem to Wender, she complicates the aspects of status she attempts to describe with erroneous description. And she seriously oversimplifies the aspects that are truly complicated.

The legal aspects are actually rather uncomplicated. Nationality in Japan has always been a civil status based on affiliation with a family register under the jurisdiction of a local polity that is part of Japan's sovereign territory.

From 1910 to 1952, Chosenese (Koreans) were Japanese in the eyes of Japanese Law.

From 1945 to 1952, when Occupied Japan was under the authority of the Supreme Commander for the Allied Forces (SCAP), Chosenese in Japan were "Non-Japanese" for certain legal purposes under SCAP rules and under Japanese laws which reflected these rules while remaining "Japanese" as a matter of nationality.

Since 1952, when Chōsen was formally separated from Japan's sovereign territory, everyone in registers affiliated with Japan's former territory of Chōsen became aliens in the eyes of Japanese law -- including those who were residing in Japan.

Under Japanese law today, Koreans are merely those who, regardless of their race or ethnicity, are affiliated with a population register on the Korean peninsula, whether regarded as the former Japanese territory of Chōsen, or ROK, or DPRK.

"stateless" (Wender 2011)

Koreans in Japan, regarded as aliens affiliated an entity on the Korean peninsula, have never been stateless. They are classifed as "Koreans" precisely because they cannot be classified as "stateless" -- i.e., only aliens who have no affiliation with a state or state-like entity are stateless.

After losing their Japanese nationality on 28 April 1952, and until 1965 when Japan and ROK established formal diplomatic relations, Koreans in Japan had the equivalent of a nationality -- the nationality of of Chōsen as a legacy state-like entity. But because Chōsen had no state -- or, more correctly, was claimed by two states, neither of which Japan recognized -- Koreans in Japan were merely de facto stateless -- not de jure stateless. The legal significance of the difference between true statelessness, and being regarded as affiliated with an entity that has no state, is huge.

"come from 'Chōsen'" (Wender 2011)

Alien registration cards do not show where anyone has "come from". They show only one's "nationality" as a matter of legal affiliation with a state or state-like entity (non-stateless alien), or the lack of such affiliation (stateless alien). People may infer from "nationality" that a person "comes from" his or her country of nationality, but as a legal term it implies only civil affiliation with a state or state-like entity.

"citizenship . . . noncitizen status" (Wender 2011)

ROK, like Japan, defines "nationality" rather than "citizenship". There is no such thing as "noncitizen status" under Japanese law, which regards "Chōsen" as a legacy entity, hence "Chōsenjin" (Chosenese) as affilates of this entity. Chōsen's status as a legacy entity derives from the effects of treaties and other agreements and related legal actions which remain in force. I regard "Chōsen" as "ghost entity" in the sense that it hangs around to haunt not only considerations of personal status in courts of law which have to adjudicate the effects of dead laws and ordinances, but also to haunt relations between Japan and both ROK and DPRK concerning matters related to 1910-1945, when Korea was under Japanese rule.

"new status as permanent residents" (Wender 2011)

Under the 1965 Japan-ROK status agreement, effective from 1966, only ROK nationals who qualified as continuous residents of Japan's prefectures on or before 15 August 1945, and their descendants born in Japan on or after 16 August 1945 and continually resident in Japan, could apply for permanent residence under the status agreement.

In 1991, so-called "agreement permanent residence" and other alien statuses of residence tied to the terms of surrender signed on 2 September 1945, were consolidated into the Special Permanent Resident status, covers those resident in Japan on or before 2 September 1945 and those born in Japan on or after 3 September 1945.

For this review, I have used the text of the story as published with seven other stories in the following 1952 anthology.

金達壽 (著)
許南麒 (カット)
宮田武彦 (装幀)
富士のみえる村で
東京：東方社
昭和27年9月10日印刷
昭和27年9月15日発行
282ページ
定価百八十円
地方定価百九十円

Kim Talsu (author)
Kyo Nanki (cuts)
Miyata Takehiko (design)
Fuji no mieru mura de
[At a village with a view of Fuji]
[In a village at the foot of Fuji]
[At a village by Fuji]
Tokyo: Tōhōsha
Printed 10 September 1952
Published 15 10 September 1952
282 pages, softcover
Price 180 yen
Regional price 190 yen

For a look at all the stories in this collection, and related commentary, see Kim Talsu's buraku stories: Chosenese and so-called special buraku people in the Literature section of Yosha Bunko.

Telling English title

The first thing that struck me about Orbaugh's English version of Kim Talsu's story was the title she had slapped on it. "In the Shadow of Mount Fuji" is a perfect example of the sort of the "uber translation" (超訳 chōyaku) that is more than ever accepted today even in the academic world.

"Fuji no mieru mura de" (富士のみえる村で) means "At a village where Fuji can be seen" or "At a village with a view of Fuji" -- or "In a village at the foot of Fuji" or simply "At a village by Fuji". The story unfolds mainly in a home in the village.

The narratory never speaks of a "shadow" -- which is not to say that a shadow does not figure in the story. But to specify "shadow" is to explain and otherwise spoil the story. And "in the shadow" imposes on the story a gloomy interpretation that lacks foundation in the narrative.

Moreover, specifying "Mount Fuji" denies Fuji its fame.

Translation

Orbaugh's translation of Kim's smooth, tightly and precisely phrased narrative, is accurate in the sense that she gets most of the grammar right. But her English lacks the literary polish of Kim's prose. And she distorts a number of key metaphors in a way that gives the wrong impression of the terms Kim used to refer to the categories of people his story is mostly about -- "so-called special buraku people" -- "so-called ordinary people" -- and "Chosenese".

"burakumin"

Orbaugh's characterizations of "Zainichi Koreans" and "the burakumin" -- in her introduction -- reflect her faulty understandings of political, legal, and social history. Her misunderstandings are evident also in her translation, and in the reasons she gives for her standards of translation.

One would think that a professor of Japanese literature would be motivated to respect the quality of stories as told by their writers. Yet Orbaugh exhibits the tendency, seen in many translation projects such as that represented by Wender's anthology, to press yesterday's stories into the service of today's minority advocacy, rather than respect them as works of literature that constitute primary historical evidence.

Such translations, like the explanations that accompany them, tend to pander to the multiculturalist victimization market -- at the cost of undersanding the realities and truths of political, legal, and social history -- red in tooth and claw -- such as they existed before the advent of the ideological concerns that move many scholars and publishers to tamper with historical evidence. Literary quality also suffers in the hands of translators who change a story's phrasing and metaphors and otherwise hijack the author's chair.

Occupation history

Orbaugh makes this remark about the history of the period in which Kim Talsu's story is set (page 40, underscoring mine).

If by "other Japanese residents" Orbaugh means that "burakumin and "Zainichi Koreans" were Japanese -- fine. Her qualification of Japanese as "residents" though is extremely odd, for being a "resident" has never been a foundation for whether one is legally "Japanese".

In any event, SCAP never -- in policy much less in principle -- "raised the status" of putative "burakumin" or putative "Zainichi Koreans" to "complete equality". No "burakumin" existed as a legally defined cohort. Outcaste statuses legally had ended in 1871. There were, to be sure, vestiges of social discrimination in some localities in Japan. And SCAP and Japanese constitutional reformers had such discrimination in mind when they worked out the language of Article 14 of the 1947 Constitution, which proscribes legal discrimination because of "race, creed, sex, social status or family origin".

Not only did "Zainichi Koreans" not exist as a legally defined minority, but Koreans in Japan were very clearly defined by SCAP as "non-Japanese" who would be treated as "Japanese" nationals when necessary but never with "equality". From the moment the Allied Powers began to exercise their authority over law and life in Occupied Japan and other parts of the former Empire of Japan, in the process of dissassembling the empire under the terms of surrender, GHQ/SCAP -- the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (General Douglas MacArthur) and his General Headquarters -- defined and continued to differentiate all manner of unequal statuses both between and among "Japanese" and "non-Japanese".

Yes, GHQ/SCAP found reason, along with many politicians and bureaucrats of the Japanese government, to be concerned with demonstrations on Japan's streets, which seemed to have become more violent as the zeal of revolution spread through China and inspired communists in other Asian countries. Local uprisings in what had become the Republic of Korea in the southern part of the occupied peninsula, too, were viewed with increasing alarm by those who feared a communist overthrow of ROK by elements sympathetic with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea in the north.

A lot of people in Japan, who wore their political colors on their shoulders, found themselves unwelcome by employers who feared they would bring their ideology into the school, office, or factory, sew seeds of discontent among other workers, establish a branch of a radical labor union, or build a local cell of a movement to overthrow authority. The opposition in Japan to socialism generally, and unionism in particular, went back to the late 19th century, and gathered momentum after the Russian revolution in 1917, was strongest during the war years, and did not vanish simply because Occupation Authorities had freed political prisoners.

There is no evidence that SCAP reversed "inclusionary policies" that never existed in the manner that Orbaugh implies. The most conspicuous activist organizations were conscpicous because they went out of their way to act out their radicalism in full view of the public, the press, and newsreel cameras.

This did cause some officials and employers to be wary of those who might be sympathetic with radical causes, and people considered to be descendants of yesteryear's outcastes, especially if residing in neighborhoods controlled by the Buraku Liberation League, were likely to find themselves unwelcome as employees, or even as brides or grooms. The same can be said for Koreans in Japan, who some politicians and even a few GHQ/SCAP officials would have been perfectly happy to deport en masse to the Korean peninsula if this had been physically or legally feasible.

Linguistic politics

Orbaugh overplays the victimhood card, not only the above very shaky summary of Occupation history, but in the following appraisal of the term "burakumin" (page 40, underscoring mine).

Orbaugh's statements are not correct.

No "ugly baggage" when story was written

The term burakumin did not convey any "ugly baggage". It was merely a label. As such it enjoyed a fairly brief life in the propaganda of the liberationist movement organizations. It lives today mainly in misinformed English writing.

Kim spoke mainly of "special buraku people"

Kim Talsu spoke mainly of special buraku people (特殊部落民 tokushu buraku min) -- which Orbaugh totally supresses. This expression had considerable currency even among buraku liberation activists until after World War II.

During the Occupation, liberationists targeted "special" as discriminatory, and called for the adoption of "hisabetsu" (被差別) or "mikaihō" (未解放) -- respectively "receiving discrimination" [discriminated-against] and "unliberated" -- as the most appropriate (and, for them, ideologically manditory) modifiers for the "buraku" (hamlets, settlements, neighborhoods) they regarded as candidates for "liberation".

"Me no Iro"

"Fuji no mieru mura de" can be read as a self-contained story. However, it is actually a sequel to "Me no iro" (眼の色) [The colors of eyes], which Kim wrote in December 1949, a year before he wrote "Fuji no mieru mura de".

"Me no iro" was written a few months after the pro-communist, pro-DPRK organization Chōren -- which figures in both stories, and which Kim had joined -- was disbanded. The Chōren-related magazine Minshu Chōsen (民主朝鮮) -- "Democratic Chōsen" -- which also figures in both stories as "M·C" -- ceased publication in July 1950, a few months before Kim wrote the sequel.

Kim wrote for the inaugural and practically every subsequent issue of Minshu Chōsen, and became one of its editors. In otherwords, the voice (eye color) of the narrator in both "Me no iro" and "Fuji no mieru mura de" is essentially Kim's. Kim joined Sōren (K. 1955-5-26 [25-26] Formation of "Zai Nihon Ch?senjin s?reng?kai" (Ch?sen s?ren) [S?ren], from various organizations that had sprouted in the wake of Ch?ren's dissolution in 1949. 在日本朝鮮人總聯合会 (朝鮮總聯) [總聯] [?? Ch'ongry?n, Chongryon] [ In-Japan Chosenese General Association ] ( General Federation of Korean Residents in Japan [< Zainichi (sic)]) [Mitchell] < General Association of Korean Residents in Japan > , which

The main characters of the two stories are the same, and it is in "Me no iro" that Kim most fully introduces them and develops their relationship. It is also in "Me no iro" that Kim more fully reveals the differences in the eye colors of "so-called special buraku people" like Iwamura Ichitarō and "Chosenese" like the narrator, as well as those of "ordinary people".

At the time Kim Talsu wrote the two stories, proletarian spirited activists were desperately searching for a common ground among themselves while dividing their ranks along both old and new lines. "Me no iro" -- the prequel of "Fuji no mieru mura de" -- involves disputes among Chosenese activists like the narrator and his comrades, and between Chosenese like the narrator and so-called special buraku people activists like Iwamura Ichitarō, regarding the proper place for the publication of fiction about buraku discrimination.

Iwamura had submitted a story to the narrator, an editor of "Democratic Chōsen", for publication in the magazine, which was deeply connected with Chōrean and operated out of room in Chōren Kaikan in Tokyo ("Me no iro" pages 214-215). The narrator thought the story ought to be published in a more "central" magazine, and the two men argued a bit about the colors of people's eyes, including their own.

The "eye color" metaphor also appears in "Fuji no mieru mura de", but Orbaugh freely renders Kim Talsu's phrasing and metaphors into her own ("Fuji de mieru mura de" page 233; structural translation mine and underscoring mine; Wender 2011, page 43).

This is a typical example of how Orbaugh generally captures the abstract meanings but loses the concrete phrasing and metaphors of Kim's story. More examples of how she restyles and often degrades Kim's narrative below.

"burakumin" not bracketed

Kim Talsu did not bracket "burakumin" or "tokushu buraku min in either story. Nor in "Me no iro" did he always qualify such terms with "so-called" (いわゆる). In both stories he used "so-called" rather liberally, usually (but not always) with "burkumin" or "tokushu buraku min", but also with "me no iro no mondai" (眼の色の問題) ("Me no iro" page 201) and sometimes with "futsūmin" (普通民) ("Fuji no mieru mura de" page 231).

In "Me no iro" Kim he gives the most succinct gloss possible for the meaning of "burakumin" as used then in buraku liberation literature -- to wit: "We are people of buraku" (われは部落の民なり Ware wa burku no min nari) (Kim 1952, page 213). A few decades ago, in order to embrace all people who reside (but also who have resided or will reside) in a neighborhood where it is active, the Buraku Liberation League began speaking of "buraku residents" (部落住民 buraku jōmin).

If the sloganistic expression cited by Kim Talsu were used today, six decades later, it would be "We are residents of buraku" (われは部落の住民なり Ware wa buraku no jōmin nari). Most writers inEnglish today do not seem to understand that BLL long ago replaced "min" with "jōmin" in order to stress its notion of residential rather than descent discrimination -- though the organization also argues, out of the other side of its mouth, that buraku-related discrimination qualfies as a form of descent discrimination under the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD).

BLL's postwar birth and growth

The Buraku Libereration League (BLL) was just begining to emerge when Kim wrote his stories. The expression "tokushu buraku" was still, at the time, widely used, for the simple reason that it had become the standard term for what the 1919-1920 edition of The Japan Year Book referred to as "special people" in its article titled "Problem of the Emancipation of the 'Special' Class People" (page 38). This usage in English reflected "tokushu buraku" in Japanese, which was used by most Japanese anthropologists, sociologists, and historians when writing about buraku-related discrimination.

BLL is a postwar reincarnation of the buraku liberation radicalism of its ideological progenitor, Suiheisha, or "Levelers Association". In 1922, at its first annual assembly convened in Kyoto, at the height of the proletarian fervor then stirring buraku liberationists, Suiheisha presented its "Fellow tokushu burakumin throughout the country, unite!" manifesto. Suiheisha was dissolved in 1942 because most of its key members were in prison as communists or socialists.

BLL historians have had to recognize that liberationists themselves formally used "tokushu buraku" for about two decades, and that this was the standard term of reference at the time of its own formation. It was, of course, BLL that put the expression high on its references that were no longer to be tolerated. BLL still denounces publishers that faithfully reproduce earlier works of literature that used the expression "tokushu buraku" -- not necessarily in reference to discriminated communities.

In 2002, BLL condemned Chikuma Shobō for republishing an essay written in 1950 by Mishima Yukio (1925-1970), who had used the expression metaphorically in reference to a "special hamlet of only outsiders" as a place where he could escape "the stifling pressures of general society" (my translation).

BLL emerged after World War II as the leader of the most radical factions of the reincarnated buraku liberation movement. BLL resumed pre-war efforts to exorcise words like eta from the living language.

"Tokushu buraku" (special buraku) also joined the list of candidates for dead word status. Writers and publishers were expected to follow BLL's preferences for expressions like "hisabetsu buraku" (discrimination-receiving buraku) and "mihaihō buraku" (unliberated buraku). And BLL has largely had its way -- as many writers and publishers now precensor themselves, knowing what will happen if they don't. Writers and publishers who wish to be extra safe will adopt BLL's own usage.

Translators and publishers of foreign works into Japanese are also subject to the rules set down and enforced by BLL. And academics writing in English, say, are very likely to reflect -- unwittingly if innocent of such linguistic politics -- BLL's view of history and social discrimination.

Chosenese

Like many other writers in Japan whose family registers were in Chōsen, Kim Talsu spoke of Chōsenjin -- which means Chosenese, not Koreans. The distinction between Chōsenjin (Chosenese) and Kankokujin (Koreans) is significant because, in his early postwar stories, Kim was writing from a proletarian perspective which embraced hope that the revolution taking place on the peninsula would succeed in its presumed goal of unification.

"Me no iro" was written half a year before the start of the Korean War. Though written half a year after the war had begun, "Fuji no mieru mura de" continued to be set before before the war. If Chosenese (in the eyes of Japan's status laws) or Koreans (in GHQ/SCAP terminology) were divided in their loyalties toward ROK in the south and DPRK in the north before the war, the war both sharpened the divisions among them and started a flow of side changing that continues today. Nor was the division simply between ROK and DPRK, as Kawamura Minato aptly points out in his description of feelings among people in the Kim Talsu's world (Kawamura 1999, page 59).

Passage from opening scene

The following passages are from the first scene of the story (Original: Kim 1952, pages 230-231; structural translation mine; received translation Orbaugh's, in Wender 2011, pages 41-42).

Passage from opening scene

Forthcoming.

I am referring to the author as Kin Kakuei, because this is how his name is usually represented on his works. He may or may not agree with the efforts by zainichi publicists today to "repossess" his "enthnicity" by "Koreanizing" his name -- but, as a fact of publishing history, the pronunciation of his name, when shown in kana or romaji, was Kin Kakuei (きん かくえい).

"Kogeru kuchi" -- which I translate "Freezing mouth" -- was first published in the November 1966 issue of the literary journal Bungei (文藝). For purposes of this review, I have used the version of the story published in the following collection of novellas four years later by the literary house which puts out the journal.

金鶴泳
凍える口
東京：河出書房新社 昭和45年7月15日 印刷
昭和45年7月20日 発行
302ページ

Kin Kakuei [© Kin Kakuei]
Kogoeru kuchi
[Freezing mouth]
Tokyo: Kawade Shobō Shinsha
Printed 15 July 1970
Published 20 July 1970
302 pages, hardcover

The collection includes the following three novellas.

Kogoeru kuchi 凍える口 Freezing mouth
Bungei, November 1966

Dansei genkai 弾性限界 Limits of elasticity
Bungei, December 1969

Manazashi no kabe まなざしの壁 Wall of gazes
Bungei, November 1969

Takeda 1983

I have also consulted the following source, among others, for information about Kin Kakuei.

竹田青嗣
＜在日＞という根拠
(李恢成・金石範・金鶴泳
東京：国文社、1983年1月30日1刷発行
232ページ

Takeda Seiji
"Zainichi" to iu konkyo
(Ri Kaisei, Kin Sekihan, Kin Kakuei)
[The foundations of "Zainichi"]
Tokyo: Kokubunsha, 30 January 1983
232 pages, hardcover

Wender on "Kin Kakuei" and "The Benumbed Mouth"

In Lamentations of History, Wender speaks of "Kin Kakuei" and refers to "his most famous novella" as "Kogoeru kuchi [The Benumbed Mouth, 1966]" (Wender 2005, page 58). She goes on to describe how various critics have viewed Kin's use of stuttering as a metaphor for the difficulties some Koreans have had in Japan. And after talking about Moses -- who Kin cites at the outsite of the story as being "not elequent" and "slow of speech" and "of a slow tongue" (pages 59-59), and she points out was also described as having "uncircumcised lips" -- she offers her own appraisal (Ibid., page 59).

Foxworth on "Kim Hak-yŏng" and "Frozen Mouth"

Foxworth turns Wender's "Kin Kakuei" and "The Benumbed Mouth" into "Kim Hak-yŏng" and "Frozen Mouth" and is generally more generous with her praise for the story.

Foxworth on Kim Hak-yŏng

Foxworth says that Kim was born in Gunma in 1938, received a Ph.D. in chemistry, and was awarded a "prestigious" literary prize in 1966. "Sadly, in 1986, at age forty-seven, Kim took his own life."

She goes on to state that the "tragic and compelling circumstances" of Kim's life contributed to "a uniqueness of perspective on difference that sets him apart from other Zainichi Korean writers of his era." She then claims that "Kim, unlike his peers, articulates the notion of embodiment -- the social, cultural, and physiological processes of living and being a body -- as an integral aspect of self and identity" (page 92).

Much of Foxworth's commentary is in the same psychobabble vein. Toward the end she makes more sense, but nonetheless persists in characterizing Kim as a victim of society who "seemed to need to believe in a unified -- albeit buried -- interior self" that might someday "enable him to overcome the constraints of his own personal history and the ideological belief systems of his day that he felt suffocated and silenced him" (page 93).

In my estimation, Kin Kakuei was the pen name of a man who happened to be born to Chosenese parents in Gunma prefecture on or about 14 September 1938. The 4th Bungei Award he received in 1966 was not terribly prestigious. In 1968 he dropped out of a graduate program in chemistry at Tokyo University. Three stories he wrote in the 1970s were candidates for the Akutagawa Prize, which as prizes go is the most prestigious. But collections of his stories did not sell especially well.

Kin Kakuei also wrote as an editor for the Tōitsu Nippō (統一日報), literally "unification daily bulletin" but "One Korea Daily News" in English -- which leans toward the Republic of Korea but is not connected with the Unification Church.

Kin killed himself with gas on 4 January 1985 when he was fully 46 years old, but was in his 47th year of life from birth, or in his 48th year according to reckoning age as the number of calendar years in which one has lived.

Foxworth on "Frozen Mouth"

Foxworth says that "Kogoeru kuchi succeeds as a narrative for understanding the pain of the stutterer and embodied difference [and] also plays a crucial role in demonstrating Kim's ideas about ethnicity and politics." (pages 93).

She describes "Kogeru kuchi" as an "eight-part novel [about] a chemist with a stutter, whose troubles are complicated by his Korean minority status" (page 92). However, other remarks she makes about the story suggest that the protagonist's "troubles" are not caused by his "Korean minority status" but by his own attitudes toward his having been born a Korean in Japan.

Foxworth on "interracial love affairs"

Foxworth says the story "sheds light on the motives for and meaning of suicide" but also "celebrates the power of love to sustain the will to live" (page 93). About the "tender relationship" between stammering chemist Sai Keishoku's and Michiko, the sister of Isogai, Sai's friend who killed himself, Foxworth says this (page 93).

Assuming that the "relationship" described in the story constitutes "a model . . . of a successful inter-racial love affair" -- why does Foxworth believe that such a model was "unprecedented"? The history of Japan-Korea relations is a history of successful "love affairs" between "Japanese and Koreans". This is as true for the earliest centuries of the history of relations between "Japan" and "Korea" -- as it is for the 20th century. By the time Kin Kakuei was born in 1938, marriages between Chosenese and Interior subjects were fairly common. And by the time he is writing "Kogoeru kuchi" in the mid 1960s, over 20 percent of all Koreans in Japan were marrying Japanese. And rate continued to accelerate, to over 30 percent by the mid 1970s, over 50 percent by the mid 1980s, and over 70 percent by the mid 1990s.

Foxworth's translation

Foxworth translates the first two chapters of this eight-part novella. Here is the first paragraph as written by Kin Kakuei, with my structural translation and Foxworth's version (Kin 1970, page 7; Wender 2011, page 97).

If I were to give Kin Kakuei's writing an "A" I would give Foxworth's effort a "C". I do not get the impression that she made a serious attempt to capture the power and flow of his prose. Not only is her version often clunky as an English adaptation, but in places it misrepresents what he wrote.

Foxworth does, however, show that the stammering represented in "Kogoeru kuchi" does not present a particularly difficult translation problem -- though she herself has problems following the clear flow of the -- as in the following passage (Kin 1970, page 22; Wender 2011, page 103; underscoring reflects emphasis in the original text).

Stammering and suicide

Why Foxworth wrote "Sadly, Kim . . . took his own life" is beyond my sense of how good writers should write. I would think that "Kim . . . took his own life" fulfills the necessary and sufficient conditions of telling when and how he died. Kin Kakuei's life and manner of dying may have had their sad and even tragic aspects, but no reader needs to be told this.

Foxworth's comments about stammering are even more puzzling to me. She is right to suggest that stammerers make difficult protagonists in fiction, drama, and film, especially if they have long lines consisting of lots of stammering. I would add that people who have trouble counting to ten may have trouble opening their parachutes in time.

But just as readers and audiences are "forced to . . . decipher the sounds", stammer's are equally forced to endure the impatience of others. And, in point of fact, nothing in "Kogoeru kuchi" constitutes a particularly difficult challenge for readers who no nothing about stammering. On the contrary, it constitutes an extremely accurate account of the kinds of problems stammerers face, in terms of their relations with other people, and they ability to understand and deal with their own difficulties.

I know something about this, as I was a severe stammerer until, in the seventh grade, a speech therapist taught me to ignore what others think and focus on being patient with myself. The drills I was assigned, among other supposedly therapeutic exercises, included those described by the protagonist of "Kogoeru kuchi", and seemed to be be equally useless. Not even lapping milk like a cat in the evening ended my stuttering.

In time, mostly through taking deep breaths and otherwise controlling my stress, I learned how to control my speaking to the point that today I rarely stammer. But there a moments, still. And the same sounds that are likely to trip me when speaking my native English also pose problems when I speak Japanese.

A friend with him I shared a delivery-boy job at a drugstore when 12 and 13 years old said people tipped me more because of my stammer. When 14 I began clerking in a shoe store and haberdashery, but I don't think my stammer brought more sales. Someone wrote "The talking seal" on my leather sliderule case in college.

I was petrified to call anyone on the phone, because I tripped over the first letter of my own name. "Bill" had to come out "pill" -- among numerous other workarounds, precisely of the kind that Kin Kakuei describes.

I still hate phoning people and avoid parties. Oddly, though, I relish opportunities to give improptu lectures about anything, including subjects I know nothing about, and the larger and stranger the audience the better. Since middle school, I made it a practice to volunteer my oral report first to get it over with. I still do this when served a dinner plate at the home of friend or relative, when green peas or lima beans are served. Seeing me eat them first, hosts will immediately offer me a second helping, thinking they were my favoirtes.

My most unusual experience, though, was at a home I was renting next door to a banker who stammered worse than I did. We had absolutely nothing in common but our stammer and his wife, which is not to be taken the way it might sound. I met her several weeks before I met him, since he was always at work or in the house, while I was often at home doing my research and writing. I finally met him, alone, over the fence between our yards. She later told me that, after our meeting, he had come into the house and complained that I had mocked him, and she had explained that I, too, stuttered.

A few weeks later he invited me over one evening for a some sushi and sake. After our tongues had sufficiently loosened, and his wife had stopped serving us and joined us for a few more rounds, and the reason they had invited over finally became clear. She, he explained, was reluctant to wash everyone's underwear in the same load. This was going to be a greater problem, she added, because his parents were going to be living with them. Did I have any advice?

They asked me because, at the time, I was studying suicide at the National Institute of Mental Health. They figured that a student of suicide ought to be able to deal with an aversion to mixing family germs in the laundry. This was in late 1975 or early 1976. Around then I had begun writing a chapter for the Lee and De Vos book on Koreans in Japan. I had created a number of files on Koreans, including several for authors of fiction. In January 1985, a news report moved me to transfer Kin Kakuei's file to my collection of materials on suicide among writers. At the time I had bought only Nomi (鑿) [The chisel], a 1978 collection of four stories, including the title story, billed as Akutagawa Prize candidates.

Forthcoming.

宗秋月 (チョン・チュaウォル)
猪飼野タリョン
東京：思想の科学社 1986年7月25日 第1版第1刷発行
2003年3月1日 第2版第1刷発行
286ページ

Chong Chuwol [Chon Chuworu]
Ikaino taryon
[Ikaino songs]
Tokyo: Shisō no Kagaku Sha
25 July 1986, 1st edition, 1st printing published
1 March 2003, 2nd edition, 1st printing published
286 pages, hardcover

This copy bears this inscription by the author.

南村かおる様(ちゃん) / 3.6.6 宗秋月
Minanmimura Kaoru-sama chan
6 June 2003 Chong Chuwol [Chon Chuworu]

The author's afterword to this second edition is dated 10 February 2003 (285-284). Not that the second edition is published on 1 March, the anniversary of the 1919 movement for "liberation" that began with the demonstrations in various parts of Chōsen and the Interior on that day.

Song Ch'uja (宋秋子), as Chong has been legally known, was born in Saga prefecture in 1944. She migrated to Osaka at age 16 and began living in Ikaino (猪飼野), a part of Osaka that straddled (and in popular regard still straddles) what is now Higashinari-ku (東成区) and Ikuno-ku (生野区) in the city. The name Ikaino, as the area was known when Chosenese began settling there in large numbers during the period that Korea was part of Japan, vanished as a formal place name in 1972, according to Chong's note in the front of the book.

Also according to her note, "taryon" (タリョン) reflects the graphs 打鈴, which are read "t'aryŏng" in Sino-Korean and mean "strike bell" -- as when causing a bell to toll in respect for the dead. Wender refers to Chong's "the 1984 Ikaino taryon (Ikaino Lament)" (page 113), which will ring a bell with readers familiar with Lamentation as History, her collection of "Narratives by Koreans in Japan, 1965-2000" (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005).

東京：、2005年8月15日
ページ

Forthcoming.

Norma Field's translation is not bad. Her attempt to exploit the grammatical possibilities of "ga" as both a possessive as well as subject marker after "watashi" and "kimi" in the first two lines is within the bounds of "license" in the translation of poetry. However, I feel her rendition is overwrought -- too convoluted in its attempts to "tell" rather than "show" Chong's lyrics. The original is more elegant in terms of both the simplicity and linearity of its phrasing and metaphors.

In her introduction to the poem, Chong writes "namae・irumu" (名前・イルム), placing both terms on an equal footing. The title of the poem is graphically "namae" marked with furigana to be read "irumu", reflecting Korean "illŭ", but the furigana do not negate the graphs they mark. The poem includes the phrase "there were two names" (名前は二つあった namae wa futatsu atta), goes on to metion different kinds of names, and cites several actual names. Singularizing the title as "name" is on a par with saying "the sky is blue" somewhere over the rainbow.

Field's renderings of "residing in Japan" and "residence in Japan" for the Sino-Japanese expression "zai-Nichi" (在日) gasps in the stuffy air of the legalistic "resident" tag that many writers in English, including myself at one time, have attached to the "zai" (在). There are, however, proper legal terms corresponding to "residence in Japan" as a legal status. Graphically, "zai" resonates more with the "aru" (ある) of "atta" (あった) in the "de aru" (である) and "de atta" (であった) in the poem. I.e., "zai-Nichi" has more affinity with "being in Japan" as opposed to somewhere else. While attributively used mainly with aliens, as in the general expression "aliens in Japan" (在日外国人 zai-Nichi gaikokumin), it has also been used to speak of "Japanese in Japan" (在日日本人 zai-Nichi Nihonjin).

Here I cite just the first part of the poem (Japanese text, Chong 2003, page 276; structural translation mine; Field's translation from Wender 2011, page 129).

Forthcoming.

李良枝 (イ・ヤンジ) <Lee Yangji>
刻 (こく) <KOKU>
東京：講談社
1985年2月20日 第1刷発行
1989年8月25日 第4刷発行
198ページ

I Yanji <Lee Yangji> (© Lee Yangji)
Koku
[Ticking]
Tokyo: Kōdansha
20 February 1985, 1st printing published
25 August 1989, 4th printing published
198 pages, hardcover

Forthcoming.

柳美里
フルハウス
東京：文藝春秋
平成8年6月25日 第1刷
平成9年2月5日 第10刷
190ページ

Yu Miri (© Miri Yu)
Furuhausu
[Full house]
Tokyo: Bungei Shunjū
25 June 1996, 1st printing
5 February 1997, 10th printing
190 pages, hardcover

This volume includes the following two novellas, first published as shown according to data in the back of the book (page 190).

フルハウス、文學界
Furuhausu, Bungakukai
May 1995, Bungei Shunjū

もやし、群像
Moyashi, Gunzō
December 1995, Kōdansha

Forthcoming.