Go

by Kazuki Kaneshiro

“The Berlin Wall crumbled, and the Soviet Union doesn’t even exist anymore. Just the other day, the people on TV were talking about how the cold temperatures caused the Soviet Union’s fall. The cold freezes people’s souls . . . their ideological beliefs, even,”

In Japan, there are basically two ethnic Korean organizations: Chongryon and Mindan. Generally, North Korean residents of Japan associate with Chongryon and South Korean residents with Mindan.

Once again, my father managed to put together a massive sum of money, this time using it to buy a three-ton truck, which he shipped to North Korea. My uncle had written in one of his letters that if he had had a truck, he might be appointed the head of the local neighborhood association or something. Along with the truck, my father sent a letter, explaining his change of citizenship. We never heard from my uncle again.

In it, he’s wearing a hibiscus lei around his neck, grinning from ear to ear as he flashes the peace sign. With both hands. Jackass.

when I was a kid, I thought that Hawaii was the symbol of depraved capitalism. I grew up surrounded by books written by Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, and Che Guevara. I attended a Chongryon-run Korean school, where I was taught that America was the enemy.

was just living with the circumstances that I happened to be born into. And given those screwed-up circumstances, naturally I became a misfit. I mean, how could I have turned out otherwise?

“Take a good look at the wide world,” he said. “You decide the rest.”

I asked my father if he’d let me use the travel expenses for something else instead. “For what?” he asked. “I want to go to a Japanese high school,”

Like Malcolm X said, “I don’t call it violence when it’s self-defense. I call it intelligence.”

But just as you might expect from a second-rate school, the teachers were second-rate too, and they listed the name of my junior high school, which includes the words “North Korean,” alongside my Japanese name, “Sugihara,” in the student register.

“The days of acting all high and mighty just because you’re a man or ridiculously old are over.”

could, I’d go to a top-tier college, get in with an elite corporation, fly up the promotional ladder, and if I could, marry a pretty girl, have two adorable kids, build a house in the city, retire, and then learn to play Go.

A communist society like North Korea doesn’t recognize religion but needs something resembling one to unify its people. Kim Il Sung was that something—the charismatic founder of a religion.

hated school with a passion. Especially what took place at the end of the school day: general review and self-criticism, the communists’ favorite pastime. A typical review or soukatsu went something like this. The teacher would single out one student for speaking Japanese in school, make him own up to this offense, and then force him to rat out another student who was guilty of the same.

Anyway, none of the people around me wanted to become doctors or lawyers or believed they could ever become one. We weren’t raised in a system that made that sort of thing possible. That fairy tale every North Korean parent told their kid sounded like this to my ears: join a Serie A league soccer club and score a goal.

“I got fingerprinted awhile back.” Back then, the government still had a fingerprinting system for foreign residents. When you turned sixteen, you had to go to the Alien Registration Office and get your fingerprints taken, like a criminal.

“They finally got me. The government’s power is a terrifying thing. You have to be pretty fast to outrun it.”

Then someone who was able to say exactly what I was feeling appeared, like a superhero. A voice rose up from the back of the classroom. “We’ve never belonged to a country we could sell out.”

I Am a Cat by Soseki Natsume.

In Exile by Takeshi Kaiko.

“A lone person devoted to reading novels has the power equal to a hundred people gathered at a meeting.” Then he’d continue, saying, “The world would be a better place with more people like that,” and smile good-naturedly. And then it felt like maybe he was right.

“But you should live a random life. I mean, your life has already veered off the rails. I wish you’d keep on veering and see where it takes you. You’re someone who could pull that off.

“Are you Zainichi?” When I answered in Korean that I was, he snorted and curled his lips into a sneer. Many Koreans believe that Zainichi live in Japan in blessed, hardship-free comfort, and some of them zealously take swipes at Zainichi.

“Nationality isn’t much more than a lease to an apartment,” I said. “If you don’t like the apartment anymore, you break the lease and get out.”

The voices of minority people had no way of reaching the top, so they had to find some way of making their voices louder.

“What are you doing?” he asked. “Getting out of Japan. Going to Norway.” “What’s got into you all of a sudden?”

“So you’ve given it some thought. But why Norway?” “I’m getting as far away from Japan as I can.” “The other side from Japan is South America.”

“No soy coreano, ni japonés, soy un nómada desarraigado,”

“Language has everything to do with your identity—” “In theory maybe,” he said, cutting me off. “But we live in circumstances that can’t always be explained away by logic. You’ll understand someday.”

“Not a bad thing to know something about darkness. You can’t talk about light without some knowledge of darkness. Like your buddy Nietzsche said, ‘He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.’ Keep that in mind.”

‘Any man in his youth should apply himself to amusement to his heart’s content. Too long a time in a forest of words will leave him trapped and unable to escape.’”

“None of us here can drink alcohol.” Sakurai answered instead. “Even a sip will knock us out cold.”

Usually we’d talk about stuff like why black people were able to produce the blues, jazz, hip-hop, and rap, but Zainichi couldn’t create their own unique culture.

“Never cry in front of others. You boys live your lives surrounded by enemies. Shedding tears before the enemy is the same as begging for pity. The same as admitting defeat. Your admitting defeat means all North Koreans are admitting defeat. That’s why you can’t ever get into the habit of crying in front of others. If you want to cry, go do it alone in the privacy of your room.”

comparison between the mitochondrial DNA sequences of the Ainu descended from the Jomon people and the indigenous people of the Andes showed them to be basically the same. Isn’t that amazing?

“You’re wrong,” I said a bit firmly. “Your family name, ‘Sakurai,’ was a name given to people who originally came from China. It’s all in the New Selection and Record of Hereditary Titles and Family Names compiled during the Heian period.”

“My given name is Tsubaki. Like Tsubaki from La traviata. A name that has the kanji characters for cherry blossom and camellia sounds so Japanese that I didn’t want you to know.”

Japan used to have a law called the Alien Registration Law, which oversaw the foreigners living in Japan. Although “oversaw” had a nice ring to it, the law was basically there to put a collar on so-called “bad” foreigners.

My parents had another fight, and my mother left the house again. This time it was about my mother wanting to get a driver’s license. Whatever.

If I become a model person, more so than any Japanese, I still won’t be treated like a proper human as long as I have Korean citizenship. The way a sumo wrestler can’t become a stable master while he still has foreign citizenship. Assimilation or exclusion. There are only two choices in this country.” “Then why don’t you change your citizenship to Japanese?” I said.

“Are you saying that I should admit defeat to this country?” “What defeat? What are you fighting anyway? What—is your ethnic pride so fragile that it would disappear just by changing your citizenship?”

We were on the phone for about half an hour, and she spent about twenty-five minutes blaming me. About how I lived such a good life but never sent my younger brother anything.” “You sent him plenty,” I said in a firm tone. “Guess it wasn’t enough.”

Can you believe it? Everyone’s always talking about how the technology boom has brought the world closer, but I still can’t go to a place that’s only hours away. I will never forgive the arrogant sons of bitches in North Korea. Ever.

The only thing that was going to knock this man down—a man who’d never gone down in a fight ever—was me.

“If the people up north want to eat crab, then start a freakin’ revolution. What the hell are they doing up there?”

“There’s someone I have to beat. To beat him, I need to study and get myself stronger. There isn’t any going forward until I defeat him. But when I do, I’ll be all but invincible. I can even change the world.”

Won-soo said, “Go. I let you off today for that hit at the funeral.”

‘Somebody stop Sugihara! Go!’ In