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At his burial, Yangjin and her daughter were inconsolable. The next morning, the young widow rose from her pallet and returned to work.
Her father could’ve eaten before the women, but he’d never wanted that. At the table, he’d make sure that her mother had as much meat and fish on her plate as he did. In the summer, after finishing a long day, he’d tend to the watermelon patch because it was his wife’s favorite fruit. Each winter, he’d procure fresh cotton wool to pad their jackets, and if there wasn’t enough, he’d claim his own jacket didn’t need new filling.
light. She would have uprooted herself to have seen the world with him, and now she was seeing it without him.
Patriotism is just an idea, so is capitalism or communism. But ideas can make men forget their own interests. And the guys in charge will exploit men who believe in ideas too much.
To her, being Korean was just another horrible encumbrance, much like being poor or having a shameful family you could not cast off.
that seeing him as only Korean—good or bad—was the same as seeing him only as a bad Korean. She could not see his humanity, and Noa realized that this was what he wanted most of all: to be seen as human.
In Seoul, people like me get called Japanese bastards, and in Japan, I’m just another dirty Korean no matter how much money I make or how nice I am.
“Man, life’s going to keep pushing you around, but you have to keep playing.”
He was a polite boy, but because he had gone to school with Americans and other kinds of foreigners at his international schools, he sometimes said things that a Japanese person would never have said.
There were so many errors. If life allowed revisions, she would let them stay in their bath a little longer, read them one more story before bed, and fix them another plate of shrimp.
“What did he say?” She put two large pieces of chicken on Mozasu’s and Solomon’s plates and a small drumstick on hers. “Was he nice?”
for the first time in her life, perhaps since the moment she was able to walk and perform any chores, Yangjin felt no compulsion to labor. It was no longer possible to cook meals, wash dishes, sweep the floors, sew clothing, scrub toilets, tend to the children, do laundry, make food to sell, or do whatever else needed doing. Her job was to rest before dying. All she had to do was nothing at all. At best, she had a few days left.
Go-saeng—the word made her sick. What else was there besides this? She had suffered to create a better life for Noa, and yet it was not enough.
Until I couldn’t move, every minute I have been here, I have worked to support myself. I never took a yen above what I needed to eat and to put a roof over our heads. I always held up my share, you know.
There’s nothing fucking worse than knowing that you’re just like everybody else. What a messed-up, lousy existence.
Japan is not fucked because it lost the war or did bad things. Japan is fucked because there is no more war, and in peacetime everyone actually wants to be mediocre and is terrified of being different.
In America, everything seemed fixable, and in Japan, difficult problems were to be endured. Sho ga nai, sho ga nai. How many times had he heard these words? It cannot be helped.
It’s a filthy world, Solomon. No one is clean. Living makes you dirty.
“I worked and made money because I thought it would make me a man. I thought people would respect me if I was rich.”
