by T'aejun Yi
“Let’s just wait a bit longer.”
This was how Hyŏn had seen off his family’s complaints about his uselessness for more than a year now.
At Tongdaemun Station, Detective Tsuruda from the Higher Police had been assigned responsibility for Hyŏn, but he did not leave a particularly severe impression. As long as the chief was not present, he would greet Hyŏn first in Korean, saying, “I’m sorry to ask you to come in again today, it’s really nothing special.” Today, however, the chief leant back in his chair, eyes deep set and forehead round like a gourd bowl; Tsuruda ignored Hyŏn’s fairly lengthy bow of greeting and merely glanced toward a chair placed to one side.
Hyŏn quietly took a seat, nervously fingering his hat, which differed conspicuously from their wartime National Defense caps. It was a while before the detective stopped writing and asked Hyŏn what he had been up to recently. When Hyŏn replied that he was doing nothing in particular, the detective pressed him on his future plans. “Well,” Hyŏn hesitated, forcing a friendly smile, at which the detective glanced back at his chief. The chief was busy pressing his seal onto some documents. Only then did Tsuruda take out some covered papers and look through them while keeping them out of view, and then he asked, “Why are you doing nothing to help with the current situation?”
“What could someone like me do?”
“How about you stop thinking like that and just do something? To tell the truth, we’ve received an urgent directive from the provincial police department asking us to report back on several persons including yourself … what you have done to cooperate with the current situation, what you are currently doing, and what kinds of possibilities there are for your cooperation in the future. We also need to know your source of income and so on.”
“I see.”
Hyŏn watched Tsuruda’s face nervously.
“So, what should I report back? How about changing your name? That would be easy.”
Hyŏn did not know how to answer this, as Tsuruda seemed to think he hadn’t adopted a Japanese-style name because of the paperwork involved.
“I’m just a low-ranking policeman, so what do I know? But it seems to me that no one will be allowed to stand on the sidelines from now on.”
“You’re probably right.… In any case, I had been about to do something soon. Please report back that everything will be fine.”
Hyŏn was just relieved that this summons did not mean he would be imprisoned as feared, and with this vague reply uttered after some hesitation, he left, stopping by a certain publisher on his way home. He could no longer refuse the request to translate the Record of the Greater East Asia War, which was not so much a commission from the publisher as a directive from the Central Police Bureau, directed through the editor; that editor had suggested it would be wise to make a gesture of sincerity soon, because the army was causing a fuss about Hyŏn being the only one to speak in Korean at the last Writers Lecture on the Current Situation, where he had read just one verse from the Tale of Ch’unhyang at that.
When Hyŏn tossed down the pile of Japanese newspaper clippings in his study, which his wife had taken especial care to tidy that day out of sympathy for her husband and his perturbed state of mind, he had never before felt that study to be so dirty.
For more than forty years lived in humiliation since coming of age we’ve never known the pleasures of love, the glories of youth, nor the honor of art. What am I doing, touching this record of war with my own hands when it doesn’t even record Japan’s defeat but supports its cause?
Hyŏn really did want to live. Or rather, he wanted life to be bearable. Apparently one poet who had believed that socialism would bring about the overthrow of the Nazis—enemies not only of his homeland but of all humanity and culture—had watched Molotov shake Hitler’s hand and sign the Non-Aggression Pact between the Soviet Union and Germany, and committed suicide in despair at the simplicity of thought.
That poet had passed judgment too rashly. Aren’t Germany and the Soviet Union at war now? America, Britain, and China are all at war with Japan. I must believe in the victory of the Allied Forces! I must believe in justice and the laws of history! If justice and the laws of history betray the human race, there will still be time to fall into despair later!
Hyŏn did not sell his house. A second front was yet to open up in Europe, and Japan was still holding Rabaul out in the Pacific. Thinking that this might last another two to three years, Hyŏn put his house down as security to borrow the largest amount possible and left Seoul. He moved his family to a mountain village in Kangwŏn Province, where they knew a village doctor. It was an old, secluded village, eighty ri by bus from the railway line, and although a county magistrate had once lived there, only a township office and police substation remained. Hyŏn’s chief goal was to avoid conscription, and he presumed that the doctor would have connections amongst the officials, as in other villages, but he had also chosen that place with the problem of food in mind, because it was located in a grain-producing region and he would be able to wait out the months fishing in the upper reaches of the Imjin River, which flowed nearby.
Upon arrival, however, he discovered that none of these suppositions could be relied upon. The township office was under the charge of a model mayor, who had at least ten certificates of commendation hung on his office wall and exhibited all the contradictions of an age when receiving a commendation earned an equal amount of resentment from the people. The polite and upright doctor had soon clashed with the mayor and been sent to Seoul for six months of training; he could no longer guarantee Hyŏn avoiding conscription. Hyŏn’s only other acquaintance ran the village Confucian school and had been introduced to him by the doctor. An old-fashioned gentleman who still wore his hair in a topknot and only surfaced in the villagers’ memories twice a year, at the time of the spring and autumn rites, “Headmaster Kim” was in reality just as impractical as Hyŏn and struggled to feed his family, let alone his friends.
Even the fishing site that had at first seemed so close could only be reached by an almost ten-ri walk, which was too exhausting for frequent visits and took Hyŏn right past the substation of all places, so that if he wanted to go unseen by the station sergeant and constable, he had to climb over a hill with no paths. One day he was turning the corner of the post office when he caught sight of the Korean constable Kanemura. Startled, he quickly hid his fishing gear behind his back as he retreated back into the shadows and watched on while the villagers seemed to examine a pile of bark they had gathered together with the township clerks. Kanemura was stripped to his vest on top but still wore his gaiters and sword as he strutted up and down before the group, whip in hand. It did not appear as if the inspection would come to a quick conclusion, and so Hyŏn turned around, having decided to climb over the hill to the rear yet again.
He had just reached the more gently curved middle slopes, after pushing through the undergrowth in the pathless woods and wandering for a while on a steep incline, slippery from the rain, when suddenly towering over him at close quarters there appeared a figure as black as a bear; it was the station sergeant. Hyŏn would not have been more startled had he encountered a real mountain beast, and he dropped his fishing gear on the spot.
“And where are you going?”
The sergeant shot him a fierce glance.
“I just thought I’d get some fresh air.”
Hyŏn quickly removed his wood-stripping hat in greeting, but the sergeant had already turned away. Hyŏn could see the mayor standing in the sergeant’s line of sight and a rope marking out a rectangular shape the size of a large tennis court on the south facing slope; judging from their conversation, they were selecting a site for a Shinto shrine. Hyŏn froze, not knowing what to do. He did not have the courage to pick up his fishing rod nor to continue past the shrine site, which would involve him climbing over at least two ropes. To make matters worse, the sergeant and the mayor were whispering to each other and glanced in his direction from time to time. If there had been
any flowers around he might have even pretended to be picking them, but not a single pink was to be seen. Finally, he took advantage of a moment when the sergeant and mayor were both looking in the other direction to quickly pick up the evidence of his own negligence toward the current situation with hands that felt as if they had been handcuffed, and then he rushed back down the hill to his home.
“Dad, why aren’t you fishing?”
Before he could even think of a reply, the boy from next door, who must have followed him, answered, “Your dad was caught by the sergeant.”
On days that he could not go fishing, Hyŏn would either read or visit Headmaster Kim, who would invariably come calling if it seemed that Hyŏn might not be at the river. The more time that Hyŏn spent, indeed was honored to spend, with the old man, the more the latter’s integrity became apparent; he was the only true gentleman in the village worthy of deep respect. Hyŏn sometimes felt as if the phrase “as pure as jade” had been coined with men like Kim in mind. Since the collapse of the Chosŏn dynasty, Kim had avoided traveling of his own free will to the capital, where the Government General was installed, although he had been imprisoned there during the March First Uprising. Needless to say, he had refused to change his name to the Japanese style, and from the day of his release from jail was back in his topknot and horsehair hat. Both his and Hyŏn’s only regrets were mutual: that with several decades separating them in age, Hyŏn’s classical Chinese was not good enough to appreciate the poems that the old man wrote, and the old man, in turn, was unable to discuss the new literature, in which he had no interest. Yet as members of the same unhappy race, fumbling through the endless darkness toward a faint ray of light, no words were necessary for the feelers of their desperate hearts to clasp onto each other, and they had already grown quite intimate after only a couple of meetings.
One evening the old man arrived with tears welling up in eyes that glistened brightly from the midst of wrinkled skin. Hyŏn lit a precious candle.
“I caned my grown-up nephew in the street today.”
Kim’s hands were still trembling. This nephew worked as a town clerk, while his brother-in-law, the young lad who had married Kim’s niece, had fled to the village after being drafted to Japan. When the mayor discovered the lad was hiding out at his in-laws, he had instructed the nephew to bring him in. In the meantime, the young lad had sensed what was going on and fled into the hills. But his brother-in-law had those hills surrounded by the Civil Defense Forces and turned him over to the substation like a trapped rabbit.
“What kind of a heartless brother-in-law does that!”
Hyŏn sighed along with him.
“Apparently if he didn’t catch the lad, they had threatened to send him instead, but even so, how could he go and round up the Civil Defense Forces to trap a brother-in-law who’d fled to his own house, and even beat him with stones on top of everything else? Today’s youngsters have no principles!”
“But these days parents don’t dare take their children to task in public.”
“I was so angry I didn’t know what to do! So what if he’d just left the office and we were in the street! I beat him until the stem of my pipe broke. That asshole knew why I was doing it, and so did some of those watching, and that’s a good thing.”
It had not been a good day for Hyŏn either. A telegram had arrived summoning him to a rally organized by the Patriotic Writers Association in Seoul. It was unlikely that this long telegram had gone unnoticed at the substation, as the police were the first to know if even a postcard arrived for him. Now that the fate of the Japanese Empire hung in the balance, it wouldn’t just be at the substation that people would want to know whether he would forsake his daily fishing and respond or not; when Hyŏn’s daughter had gone to post a letter that evening, even the Japanese postmaster, who was also the head of the Anti-Communist Watch, had asked whether her father was going to Seoul the next day.
At first Kim told Hyŏn not to attend the rally. This had made Hyŏn rather afraid of what might happen if he failed to appear. A second telegram urging him to reply either way had arrived the following day, and a third the day after. When he heard this, Kim rushed over to see Hyŏn.
“What use will an old man like me be when the new world dawns? But you, young Hyŏn, should do what it takes to survive and do your part when the time comes. So don’t be too stubborn over things that aren’t very important. Just do whatever it takes to avoid conscription.”
Next, Kanemura showed up and asked when Hyŏn was leaving: there were only two days left, and Hyŏn would need a travel permit before his departure; and if he wasn’t planning to travel, then why was he not attending the rally; and, by the way, if he were to go to Seoul, would he mind taking Kanemura’s fob to be repaired.
“I just want to live!”
Hyŏn let out a silent scream before leaving a day early for Seoul and the Patriotic Writers Association in heavy rain, Kanemura’s watch in hand.
There was a reason Hyŏn had been sent three telegrams. Recently some executives from the Patriotic Writers Association had arranged an evening meeting with the Head of Information for seven or eight midrank writers who were not exactly enthusiastic about cooperating with the current situation. As Hyŏn had been the only absentee, it would look good for him, and also prove the sincerity of the executives, if he were to assume a special role at the rally. He was asked to offer some words on behalf of the fiction section. He grumbled for a while but could hardly resist, having already shown up, and the next day he followed the others into the rally hall. The scene in the assembly hall at the Municipal Center took his breath away. Never had there been such a breathtaking display since literary circles had formed in Korea: ceremonial cordons were draped over the standard imperial wartime uniforms, and swords glittered beside the uniforms and ceremonial wear of the higher ranks of the Korea-based Army and the ministers from the Government General, and then, there were the writers from Japan and from Manchukuo. Hyŏn wore flannel trousers under his jacket, which was still rather muddy from his fishing trips in the countryside; he would have been hard pushed to justify his sartorial insensitivity to the current situation as he wore neither gaiters nor the khaki of the wartime uniform. But Hyŏn had no way to suddenly disguise his clothes and, in any event, as he watched the proceedings unfold, he gradually found himself interested in the great gathering. His eyes and ears seemed to have grown more simple while gazing at carp and listening to orioles in the countryside, and now the barbarity of the fascist state’s cultural policies was ever more apparent to him. One minister even repeated Hitler’s words, that anything that could not be used as an instrument of war—whether literature or art—must be relentlessly eradicated, because culture could always be quickly revived when necessary. All the producers of culture present—whether poets, critics, or novelists—did not merely applaud the military speeches but competed with each other to be first to stand up, and then not in support of a dying culture but in order to expend their saliva lapping up the vulgar tastes of bureaucrats and soldiers. Yet, what struck Hyŏn as even more pathetic were the congratulatory remarks offered up in clumsy Japanese by the pale, thin writers from Manchukuo. Their faces looked so small and sad as they contorted into unnatural positions in order to speak a foreign language with which they were not familiar. The Korean writers were for the most part fluent in Japanese. Why, when it should be more pleasant to watch something fluent than clumsy, did that fluency seem more ugly here? Somehow even dogs and pigs seemed more honorable with their inability to speak any language other than their own. When a weaker nation begins to learn a stronger nation’s language, so begins the tragic submission. Nevertheless, the congratulatory remarks and statements offered by the Japanese writers did not look or feel particularly natural or right either. Hyŏn had a hard time understanding the behavior of the Japanese writers. At one time some among them had spoken out, such as Yanagi Muneyoshi, who had said, “My fellow countrymen, let’s abandon militarism. It’s no honor for Japan to
abuse those weaker than itself. If we push our violation of ethics to the extreme, then the whole world will become Japan’s enemy, and it will be Japan, not Korea, that ends up ruined.” Even when Hitler had sent the homeless Jews into exile and burnt books of philosophy and literature in the name of rules and regulations, like the first emperor of Qin, hadn’t there been men of culture in Japan who had resolved to resist? What were they doing now, remaining as silent as mice? Was there not freedom and responsibility enough for them to voice their opinions and true love for their homeland and compatriots, more so even than in Korea and Manchukuo? Instead, pseudo-believers had sprung up all over, attempting to stifle the instinct—if there was any sincere conscience at all left in people of culture—to at least disagree with what was going on, even if they were unable to comfort the Koreans and Manchus or resolve their discontent. And even if they could not protect the culture and arts of Korea, which might be considered one origin for their own culture, to go so far as to become the agents of a barbaric bureaucracy and take the lead in the slaughter of the Korean language, with their nationalistic plays and meaningless theories of the common descent of Japan and Korea, seemed to suggest the last half century of Japanese culture amounted to nothing at all. Of course, those people of culture with a conscience must certainly be encountering a lot of trouble. But wasn’t it all just too calm and quiet? A round of applause suddenly jolted Hyŏn from his train of thought, and he realized that he would soon have to take to the podium and contract his own facial muscles to excrete foul content in Japanese, even more tragically than those writers from Manchukuo, and just as he had been sitting there criticizing Japan’s cultural figures. He could only ask himself, “Just who are you then? What are you doing sitting here?” It was all a horrific nightmare. He braced himself as if to jump up, but instead he barely managed to rise from his seat, as if he really were in a dream where no matter how hard he tried to move he just remained sitting down. Unlike in the dream, however, his feet began to move as soon as he stood up. Forgetting his hat on his seat, he quietly slipped out of the hall, where every stare threatened to ensnare him.