The Columbia Anthology of Modern Japanese Literature: From Restoration to Occupation, 1868-1945: vol. 1 (Modern Asian Literature Series)

by J. Thomas Rimer

  Watching from the rim of the crater, First Class Private Hirao quietly continued twining the thread. It seems as though countless thoughts were rushing through his brain, or possibly none at all. He appeared serene as much as gripped by violent turmoil.

  All of a sudden rapid-fire cannons commenced to bang away furiously from the rear, throwing the enemy trench into a plainly visible chaos. With that as a signal came the order to charge.

  Hirao sprang up, rifle and bayonet at the ready, and bolted forward ahead of everyone. Some hundred yards to the right, old Kitajima, the company commander, was running along a ridge brandishing his long sword. The immaculate whiteness of the rabbit fur wrapped around the commander’s neck impressed itself for an instant on the corner of Hirao’s eye. The enemy trench was less than two feet wide and a full four feet deep. Chinese soldiers in blue cottonpadded uniforms scurried like moles along this narrow ditch in their haste to escape. Hirao jumped into the trench, lay limply on the ground, and gasped for breath. “I’m alive, still alive,” he murmured. Suddenly he was seized with unbearable pity for Fukuyama. They had never been particularly close, but the placid nature of the man who had gone to get a light for a cigarette struck him now as irresistibly sad.

  Covered with dirt, he clambered out of the trench, picked up his rifle, which had suddenly grown heavy, and retraced his steps to search for Fukuyama.

  Fukuyama lay prone in the field, the cigarette still in his mouth. Hirao rested his rifle next to Fukuyama’s head and looked down at him. A wave of blinding anger surged up within him.

  He glanced around. A number of dead Chinese soldiers lay strewn about in ditches, behind a small grave mound, and throughout the field. With the stock of his gun Hirao turned the bodies over onto their backs and searched through the pockets. The fourth had matches. Hirao returned to where Fukuyama lay, sat cross-legged beside his head, and lit the cigarette in the man’s mouth. He could not rest content until he had done so.

  The cigarette feebly smoldered between the lips of the man powerless to inhale. “Fukuyama!” whispered Hirao in a choked voice, joined his hands, and closed his eyes.

  The unit was swiftly receding in the distance, relentlessly attacking the fleeing enemy. He stood up and gazed at the rust red solitary sweep of vast, dead cotton fields. The dust of battle had settled, leaving not a creature in the vicinity. Far to the rear, reserves could be seen advancing. Perhaps it was the medical corps.

  He lifted Fukuyama’s heavy body onto his back. Holding the rifle and knapsack with one hand he started after his comrades along an elevated footpath.

  Before sundown the Nishizawa regiment had disposed of the enemy remnants and completely occupied the town of Zhitang-zhen. The Kitajima company had suffered eight soldiers killed and twenty-three wounded. The dead were reverently cremated the same night. The soldiers dug a large hole for them and lay the corpses side by side with heads to the north.1 First the company commander used scissors to clip a few strands of hair from above the ear of each dead soldier; then the platoon and squad commanders did the same, wrapping the clippings in white paper.2 Brushwood was piled atop the corpses, and while the entire company stood at the present arms, Company Commander Kitajima lit the brushwood. Next to the flames, army priest Katayama Genchō, still wearing a khaki uniform, rattled the beads and chanted a sutra.

  That night horses remained saddled in preparation for an enemy attack, and the men, covering themselves with straw, slept by the side of the road with their rifles.

  First Class Private Hirao sat cross-legged with about ten other soldiers near the flames and smoked all night, feeding wood to the fire and waiting for it to burn down. The night sky over the darkened city glowed red in four or five places with the chilling blaze of cremation fires.

  As he sat staring into the flames, resting his cheeks in his hands, Hirao’s sensitive nerves started once again to rush out of control. This made him feel gravely imperiled, enveloping him with the horrible sensation of going insane. The unleashed nerves would scatter and smash up, he thought, leaving the brain certain to grow deranged. He must summon up his entire energy to grapple with this madness. An unspeakably painful, anxious struggle ensued.

  “I was the first in my platoon today to jump into the enemy trench!” he abruptly shouted, not sure at whom. He had the hollow feeling the words were directed not so much at the soldiers seated by the fire as at those who continued to burn inside the hole. And yet he knew he could not bear to cut short the bragging.

  “The enemy were tossing hand grenades all over. I dodged through and leaped into that slit of a trench. They came at me, but I stuck the gun right up against their noses and shot them. First, second, third—I blew a hole through each one. The one in front dropped dead, spouting blood out of the side of his nose. . . . Fukuyama got hit. He’s lying down there now, the fourth man over. ‘Give me a cigarette,’ he says, so I give him one. ‘Got a match? No. Too bad. . . . Well, guess I’ll go get a light.’ He says it so damned casually, and just when he bolts ahead . . . I’d plucked some cotton and was making thread inside the hole. I worked it very carefully and got about five inches of even thickness. I kept twining it and watching. . . . He still had the unlit cigarette in his mouth, the son of a bitch.”

  Hirao suddenly rose and moved away from the cremation fire into the roadside darkness. The sky’s expanse shone white with the light of innumerable stars. He stood with his legs apart and urinated while tears trickled down his face. As the threat of nervous disintegration abated, his emotions seemed gradually to grow calmer. Utterly worn out, he paced aimlessly about.

  KAJIYAMA TOSHIYUKI

  Kajiyama Toshiyuki (1930–1975), long a highly appreciated writer of popular stories and novels, was brought up in Seoul, Korea, then a Japanese colony. He remained there with his family until the end of the war, when he was repatriated while still in high school. Although much of his writing is about the postwar situation in Japan, his stories concerning Korea, in which he used his own memories to reconstruct the atmosphere of the period, are particularly poignant, especially “The Clan Records” (Zokufu, 1961).

  THE CLAN RECORDS (ZOKUFU)

  Translated by Yoshiko Dykstra

  In those days I held a job in a government office because of a cowardly desire to avoid the draft. It came about this way. . . .

  As a result of my physical examination I was classified as unfit for military service, but since my weak constitution had led me to enter the school of fine arts, and in those critical times oil painting was a trivial activity, I was clearly in danger of being called up for some kind of labor service. Sure enough, in that summer of 1940, just at the beginning of August, I was ordered to report for ten days of labor on the height called Namsan, where the “Korea Shrine” stood—a shrine the Japanese had erected to their own Shintō deities in an attempt to extend those deities’ potency to Korea.

  On the continent the summers are hot and the winters are cold. Summer that year was especially hot; the burning heat continued for days. Japanese soldiers were constructing an antiaircraft position on Namsan. We laborers were to clear the mountainside. There was no protective shade. I was quickly exhausted.

  The work was simple, crushing rocks and carting away the sandy soil. A group of middle school students had been summoned to help, but it was our group of some two hundred men who were abused by the soldiers. “You don’t work hard enough,” they railed. “Compared with the students, you grown men are slackers.” Most of us were artistic or literary types, weak and pale like me. We knew nothing about laboring together, and we were not energetic.

  I ignored the soldiers’ goading, but one day I passed out in the sun. “Go rest in the shade,” a soldier scolded, and then he shouted, “By tomorrow every one of you will crop his hair! Long hair causes sunstroke!”

  That was ridiculous. Almost all of us had long hair, but the sun had prostrated me because my straw hat had blown away. I was incensed. I dodged work for two days using sunstroke as my excuse. I heard
that on the last day they would give us from three to five yen as transportation money, so like a model laborer I went back to work. It took me an hour to climb the steep slope. Unexpectedly I was summoned by the commanding officer, an artillery captain. “Why didn’t you report before you took leave?” he barked. “Taking leave without permission shows no sense of responsibility.”

  He was so pompous that I couldn’t suppress a grim smile. That was a mistake. He ordered me to go down the mountain, get a doctor’s diagnosis and an excuse for my absence, and report back within two hours. It was preposterous to make such demands in the labor service, but the consequences could be terrible if I disobeyed. I glanced at my watch and rushed down the mountain. There was no time to return to where I was living in Sŏsomun, so I burst into a small clinic at the foot of the mountain, explained my situation to the doctor, hurried his diagnosis, and wrote an excuse for absence on his stationery.

  The climb up the mountain was hot. I ran the rocky path, gasping and dripping sweat. Still, I was five minutes late. The captain read the diagnosis and asked my address. I said that the diagnosis was made by my family doctor.

  “Clever, huh,” he said, clicking his tongue. Then he grabbed my collar and shouted, “So you were not sick! You were faking to avoid work! Tell the truth!”

  The whole experience was bitter. Once was more than enough, but I was sure I would be summoned again. My anxiety increased when I heard from the head of my district that every district was required to provide five more men for labor service.

  It was not that I was averse to physical labor. But to have my body abused while my mind was deadened—to swing a heavy pick and shovel in the burning heat while soldiers reviled me—was intolerable. My life would turn to ashes. Hastily I looked for regular work.

  It was arranged by my brother-in-law, who was a section head in the governorgeneral’s office. I readily accepted, since it required no special skills, but in the end I found it unendurable.

  Every morning I put the lunch prepared by my elder sister into an old briefcase given to me by my brother-in-law and went to the office. I was a punctual machine. A chauffeured car picked up my brother-in-law every morning, but he never offered me a ride. My sister was busy raising two children and had no time to look after me. I thought of moving to a lodging house, but just the idea of looking for a place tired me. I resigned myself to the situation.

  From the official residences at Sŏsomun I went down the slope to the Paejae Middle School, passed the courthouse, and reached T’aep’yŏng Avenue, where Tŏksu Palace stood on the left and the prefectural office building was on the right. I walked north along the tram line toward the imposing white headquarters of the governor-general. Just before it, on the right, was the brick building that housed the Kyŏnggi Provincial Office, where I worked.

  Fall turned quickly toward winter. The big leaves of the plane trees along the avenue fell in the wind. In the swirl of the leaves along the pavement each morning, I heard the footfall of approaching winter and saw the sad image of myself. I was not doing well in my job.

  The war in China was deadlocked. Reflecting the frustration of the war, Seoul was restless. There were air-raid drills; people wore the drab national uniform; and the “volunteer soldier system” was imposed. Every phase of our daily life was affected.

  When my work stalled I went to the window for a cigarette. Through the faded autumn foliage I could see the propaganda slogans hung on the white walls of the governor-general’s headquarters: “Japan and Korea Unified” and “A Hundred Million People of One Mind.”

  “Japan and Korea Unified,” I would say to myself. “Governor-General Minami Jirō must like the sound of that.”

  But it gave me no inspiration at all.

  “Mr. Tani!”

  The voice of the chief made me turn. I knew he disliked me because I still wore a civilian suit handed down from my father, while the rest of the section were in the national uniform. I heard that behind my back, he had slandered me as a traitor. But I had something on him: an artist friend had told me that he was secretly keeping a mistress, a waitress in a Meiji Street coffee shop.

  I stubbed out my cigarette, left the window, and walked slowly to the chief’s desk. He knew very well that I was there because he had just called me, but he pretended to be so deeply engrossed in the document on his desk that he was unaware of me. I knew it was a report from Suwŏn County. “I know, Chief, you are a very busy man and the model for our section,” I said to myself as I stood silently before his desk.

  “Oh, Mr. Tani.” He raised his head as if he had just noticed me. A small man, the shine on his face betrayed his heavy drinking at nightly parties. As usual, he pushed up his spectacles with his right index finger and frowned deeply.

  “So, how is your work going? Well, I suppose.”

  I was prepared for criticism, but his sarcasm nettled me. “Yes, mostly. . . .”

  “Hah. Mostly, you say. But according to this report, your district is only 37 percent. Do you call that ‘mostly’?”

  “But Chief, a step like changing one’s family name can’t be taken in one day.”

  “Wait a second. ‘One day,’ you say. But Mr. Wakuta, who has the counties of P’och’ŏn, Kap’yŏng, and Yangju; and Mr. Ninomiya, who has Yangp’yŏng and Kwangju, have both achieved 70 percent. Why have you only 37 percent? Do you think Mr. Wakuta managed this in one day?”

  “Chief, that’s because Mr. Wakuta and Mr. Ninomiya have forced the people. The directive says that family names should be changed voluntarily. I’ve been trying to get them to change their names willingly.”

  “Don’t talk nonsense. Of course, that’s what the directive says. But Koreans won’t move until they’re forced to. How in the world can you make them change their names by sitting at your desk and writing letters to the district office! At our last meeting we carefully laid out the tricks to get the job done. Yet you . . . fellows like you are no good!”

  “Fellows like you.” I suppose he meant my young artist friends who gathered at the Domino Bar on Meiji Street. Recently, one of my buddies had had too much to drink there and got into an argument with an offensive military policeman posing as a civilian. My friend landed in jail. I had to bail him out and assume custody. The chief must have heard about it.

  “In any case, you must achieve 100 percent by next March. Understand?” Without replying, I dipped my head and left him.

  As many of you already know, name conversion was a policy of assimilation that the Japanese imposed on the colonies of Korea and Taiwan. It was an attempt to make Japanese out of their populations by forcing them to take Japanese names. It was part of the scheme heralded under the slogan “Japan and Korea Unified.” It was one of the most arrogant measures carried out in Korea.

  When I began my job, it never occurred to me that this conversion-of-names program had ulterior motives. On the contrary, I regarded it as a boon to the Koreans, who had suffered from discrimination. When I was assigned to this duty, I thought, “This is certainly more meaningful than building an antiaircraft position.”

  I was truly innocent, ignorant of reality. My father was a government official. When I was five we moved to Seoul, where I went through primary and middle schools. When we returned to Japan I went to a school of fine arts. But I missed Korea and returned to Seoul, relying on my elder sister and her husband.

  I thought I knew something about the Korean people and their lives, and I sincerely believed that the conversion of names would help them. In those days the Koreans were oppressed into a condition of slavery. As a child I pitied them, but I never questioned how or why they had been tyrannized. Only after I went to art school did I become aware of the cruel methods used in the Japanese occupation of Korea. Even then, what I was told was only superficial.

  Despite the slogan “Japan and Korea Unified,” the Japanese scorned the Koreans. Even Japanese children showed contempt, using expressions like yobo, which the Koreans deeply resented. A Korean word, yobo orig
inally meant “hello,” but in the mouths of the Japanese it implied “you slave.” By taking Japanese names, the Koreans could speak and be spoken to as equals, and longtime Japanese residents of Korea did not welcome this: they would not so easily shed the contempt they had cultivated for thirty years.

  My job was to enforce the conversion of names in Kyŏnggi Province, the capital district. I had no interest in politics, and neither did my comrades at the Domino Bar. When I told them about my job, one of them said, “Huh! Do you think that changing Korean names like Kim and Pak into Japanese names like Kaneda and Kinoshita will unify Japan and Korea? What nonsense!” My friends were cynical about everything and, in their negative attitude, demonstrated their sense of futility by hanging out in a colonial bar.

  Kyŏnggi Province was divided into five areas parceled out to the five members of our section. I was assigned the counties of Sihŭng, Suwŏn, and Chinwi. My area was the smallest in size but the largest in population.

  There were no Koreans working in either the First (mine) or Second Section of our office, which was called General Authority and which was under the General Affairs Department, which reported to the provincial governor, who took orders directly from the governor-general. My chief constantly bragged about this. After a month in the office, I understood why our position in the organization was so close to the governor-general. We were charged with publicizing and enforcing policies in a manner that would give the Koreans no choice but to comply. In the conversion of names, for example, this was typical of our propaganda:

  The Korean people have strong aspirations to work side by side with the citizens of Japan, who today lead the world. And every Japanese hopes that Korea will be unified with Japan. However, the Koreans have suffered discrimination because they are judged by their names. The Japanese and the Koreans share the same ancestors and physical features; the only difference between them lies in their names. Until now, complicated qualifications and procedures have made it very difficult for Koreans to become naturalized Japanese. But now, in response to urgent requests from the Korean people, the governor-general has made the momentous decision to implement the conversion of names in order to solve burdensome problems for the Koreans, including discrimination.