午夜剧场

"Kohyang, hometown... We and the Zainichi are the same. I want to go home..." The sobs of an elderly woman nearly 90 years old resonate with a clear singing voice. In the spring of 2009, a Zainichi Korean singer performed "Akatombo" (Red Dragonfly) and nursery rhymes from the Korean Peninsula, stirring a deep sense of nostalgia in Japanese wives remaining in South Korea. The nearly 20 Japanese wives living together at the Nazareth Home in Gyeongju, the ancient capital of South Korea, are nothing less than the remnants of Japan's colonial rule.

Under the slogan of "Naisen Ittai" (Japan and Korea as One Body), the Empire of Japan encouraged Japanese women to marry men from the Korean Peninsula. After the war, these Japanese wives became citizens of a defeated nation, and amid resentment and chaos, more than 3,000 lost their place to go. However, it was not only Japanese wives who were left behind in a foreign land.

Kim Kye-sun (70), a second-generation Zainichi Korean soprano, was born in Osaka and encountered ethnic songs at a Korean school. She became a professional singer with the hope that her songs would help unify her homeland. However, as a Zainichi living in a foreign land, her dreams were shattered by the division she was forced to carry. Her parents' homeland is torn between North and South; the Korean Peninsula and her home country deepen their conflict over historical perceptions and abduction issues; and even in her country of residence, hate speech against Zainichi Koreans is rampant. Even within families, one cannot remain free from division. There is a boundary between the third and fourth generations, who are increasingly naturalizing in Japan, and the first generation, who wished for them to preserve their ethnic language and culture. Due to the division, Ms. Kim was banned from performing overseas and deprived of opportunities to work in Japan. Even songs were used as tools to incite division. Lyrics that sang of universal human ideals across borders were rewritten into praises for military dictatorship.

Despairing, Ms. Kim gave up singing and became the proprietress of a yakiniku restaurant to support her husband. However, unable to give up on music, she entered a Japanese music college at the age of 48. After years of hard study, she mastered Japanese songs and was reborn as a singer. This book uses the genealogy and political context of Japanese and Korean Peninsula songs as the horizontal axis and Ms. Kim's life as the vertical axis to clarify the location of latent divisions and seek the possibility of overcoming them through song.

Of course, it may be a naive fantasy to think that songs can serve as a signpost to cross the divide. However, a future cannot be envisioned without hope. It would be my greatest satisfaction if the songs of a Zainichi Korean who has spent her life seeking to overcome division could resonate even slightly within society.

Hyosuke Tsuboi

Shinsensha

248 pages, 1,900 yen (excluding tax)

*Affiliations and titles are those at the time of publication.