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Epilogue “Four Volunteer Soldiers”
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e p i l o g u e · “Four Volunteer Soldiers” Because so many things pile up, one after the other, things we remember and things we wish to remember are steadily forgotten. It is regrettable, but in a way unavoidable. The episode I am going to relate here is one such thing. While I’d like to include it in a novel, considering that I don’t know when I can write that novel and such, I thought it best to at least write it down. In that way, perhaps it might be possible to avoid forgetting. nakano shigeharu, “Yonin no shiganhei” (Four Volunteer Soldiers), Minshu ChOsen, March–April 1947 In April 1947 Nakano Shigeharu, the Marxist writer, poet, and critic, published a short essay titled “Four Volunteer Soldiers.” More a column than an extended essay , Nakano tells the story of his encounter on a train with four young men in Japanese army uniform in September 1945—four men who had belonged to the first cohortof KoreanswhohadvolunteeredfortheJapanesearmyin1938.Liketheyouths, Nakano had just been demobilized, so when they met they shared a common history as soldiers in the Imperial Army. However, while Nakano was middle-aged, theywereintheirtwenties;andwhilehewastravelingtorejoinhischildreninFukui Prefecture, they were bound for Shimonoseki. From there they intended to board a ship to Pusan, and then make their way back to their hometowns or villages in Korea, three of which were located north of the thirty-eighth parallel.1 The Korean youths had come of age during the last phase of Japanese rule in Korea ,whenKoreawasincreasinglybecomingapartof anexpandedconceptof Japan, and Nakano’s attentiveness to their mannerisms, language use, and general sensibilities allows us to see that they embodied some of the strange symptoms of the inclusionaryracismof thatperiod.AsNakanowatchedthemonthetrain,heobserved their almost disembodied Japaneseness. He “sensed” (kankaku) from their speaking that they were Korean. But he admonished his readers not to assume that that 375 they spoke Japanese poorly. Rather, their spoken Japanese sounded “far purer” (kissui no Nihongo) to Nakano than the “very strange Japanese” (zuibun okashii . . . Nihongo) used by a rustic middle-aged woman who asked one of the young men something aboutthetrain. Nakanoexplained that it was precisely because theirspoken language was so perfect, so pure or unadulterated in that it gave no hint of an upbringing in any particular region of metropolitan Japan, that he recognized them as Koreans. They spoke perfect Japanese, but they spoke it as a national language, not as a vernacular with an organic relationship to a place. As for the interregnum between the death of the former sovereign power and the birth of the new,2 Nakano observed that even though the war had ended, most Japanese in the train around him did not yet seem able to “understand the enormous significance of Japan’s defeat.” And though the defeated Japanese soldiers wore their uniforms, they did so almost as ghostly apparitions, with their shoulder insignia removed. Colonialism seemed not yet to have died. As Nakano observed, even though “the young men knew of Korea’s independence, they were still far fromcompletelyfreedfromthesortof feeling(kankaku)thatthepowerof theJapanese government still ruled over Korea. It seemed that as an embodied sensibility (nikutaiteki na kankaku) they were still not fully living the idea that they were but outsiders passing through the foreign country of Japan, on their way back to their home country” (p. 53). In fact, it could hardly be denied that the dying colonial power continued to exercise some control over their destiny, for they depended on the travel documents issued by their Japanese commanding officer to guarantee their passage home. Yet evenheretheformerpowerwasbutaskeletonof itsformerself.TheKoreanyouths worried that their travel documents indicated that they were bound only as far as Shimonoseki in southern Japan. They wondered how it would be possible to cross the strait to Pusan. And even if they made it to Pusan, how would they return to their hometowns or villages? Nakano reminded them that the Japanese were no longer the authorities in charge. Still optimistic about the U.S. occupation of Korea and the presence of People’s Committees, particularly in the north, Nakano told theyoungmenthattheyshouldsimplywriteintheirdestinationsinKoreaandboldly board the ship to Pusan. If any Japanese military men should raise questions once they had arrived in South Korea, Nakano advised, the youths should call on the American troops to come to their aid. AlthoughNakanodescribedthisinterregnumasoneof ruin,ghostliness,andpossibilities , he wrote about the Koreans with happiness and optimism, albeit in a sub376 · epilogue [3.81.79.135] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 23:59 GMT) dued...