Ever since the house fire, we’d never had so much as a single futon between us. We just slept on the floor. It was difficult to get to sleep in the cold house, especially for my infant son. My father and I would take off our shirts and snuggle close to him to keep him warm with our body heat. We’d take him to the warmest place near the heating stove. And when the stove gave out, we’d cuddle him again and take him to the cooking stove and lie down there.
He often cried from hunger during the night. I’d make a thin rice gruel of cornstarch and rice powder and give him a few spoonfuls in an attempt to assuage his constant hunger. But sometimes that didn’t work, so I’d carry him around on my back to try to pacify him. Sometimes I fell asleep standing up. And then, if my knees gave, the jolt would wake him and make him cry even more. In the end, I leaned against the wall and slept like that. He could so easily have died—from hunger, from exhaustion, from the cold. I lived in a constant state of fear and dread and helplessness as there was so little I could do for him.
Life was just as hard, even harder than before, but my son took my mind off my mother’s death. Apart from him, I had nothing to live for. And if I thought too much about that, well, I moved toward the abyss. So I struggled desperately just to make it from one day to the next.
CHAPTER 4
During that time, the world seemed completely unforgiving. I was a single father at age twenty-six, divorced after a meaningless marriage that had lasted a year. My mother had died young after a lifetime of misery. My father and I struggled to keep my son from the jaws of death. And all around me, I saw nothing but a kind of farcical futility. I could no longer really see the point of being alive.
So what did I do when I reached this new low? Human beings are nothing if not irrational, so I did what countless people had done before me and countless others will do long after I’m dead: I prayed. It didn’t even matter that I didn’t really believe in God. I prayed that no more tragedies would befall me. I prayed for my son’s health. I prayed for a change of fortune. I prayed every single day. And God watched over me. For five years. For five years, nothing happened to me at all. And then I turned thirty-one.
And God got bored again.
It was autumn, just after the harvest. Food-distribution day was coming up, the one time of year you could relax a little. I came home from work one day and found my sister Masako cuddling my son. She was crying inconsolably. I took him in my arms and asked her what was wrong with him, but he was fine. He too was wondering why Masako was upset. “Why are you crying, Auntie?” he asked. No answer. She just continued to sob. Then she suddenly stopped crying and looked at me very seriously. “Masaji, please don’t get angry with me,” she said. “I’m pregnant.” I was stunned, having had no inkling she was even seeing anyone.
“Who is he? Are you planning to get married?” I asked.
And then it all came tumbling out. His name was Han Om-choru, and he was a farm laborer from the village. He had been all doting and sweet when my sister was willing to do what he asked, but as soon as she told him she was pregnant, he changed his tune. When she had asked him if he intended to marry her, his family had gotten involved. Then it was the usual story. Of course he couldn’t marry her—she was a Japanese bastard. And with that, they’d pushed her out of the house.
I could feel the rage building inside me as she told me the story. My mother had always admonished me to watch my temper and be patient; to her mind, violence was never the solution. But I just couldn’t bear it. Masako was my sister, and they were disrespecting her.
Holding an ax in my hand, I went to Han’s house, about a ten-minute walk from ours. I found him outside.
“You’ve taken advantage of my sister, you brute! Well, you know what, asshole? You can’t get away with that.”
His family tried to restrain me, but I grabbed him by the back of the neck and pulled him down to the ground. He looked scared to death and burst into tears. Then he cried, “Forgive me! I’ll take full responsibility!” But I was beyond reason and just beat the living daylights out of him. I knew better, but I couldn’t control myself.
Even as I pummeled him with my fists, I still couldn’t get rid of my anger. I guess my mother was right; you can’t solve anything with violence. But I had been told my whole life that since I was Japanese, I was less than human. I’d had enough. Eventually Han’s family managed to pull me off him. I was weary of fighting by that point and stumbled off toward home.
Incredibly, Hifumi’s husband found someone willing to marry Masako. He was an accountant working in a school in a town called Mensan, deep in the mountains. His wife had died, and he had two kids. A returnee, of course. I sensed trouble from the outset since she’d never even laid eyes on him. Having gone through that myself, I was skeptical about whether it was really the right solution for her. But Masako was happy to go ahead with it. I guess she was willing to do anything for a chance at a stable life.
On the day she left, I said to her, “If he treats you badly, just let me know. I’ll take care of it.”
“No thanks,” she said. “No more violence. Promise you’ll try to stay coolheaded.”
My father and I felt lonely without her around, as did my son. It felt strange not to have a woman in the house. My father started asking me if I was interested in getting married again. I wasn’t exactly enthusiastic, but when I thought of my son and my future, I knew deep down that I wanted to find someone to share my life with. Maybe it would work out the second time round.
In 1976, I met a woman by the name of Kim Te-sul. We’d both come to North Korea from Japan in the sixties, and we were both divorced. She’d previously been married to a native North Korean, but her mother-in-law bullied her constantly: “You’re a returnee. Why haven’t you got anything of value?” So her marriage had lasted all of two months. Because we’d been through similar painful experiences, we thought we could share our feelings and spend a peaceful life together.
The wedding ceremony was very simple. We shared what little food we had, and Te-sul and I had a cup of sake to mark our pledge to each other. After the ceremony, my father told me that Te-sul would have to leave for a while to look after her bedridden grandmother in Hamju. So we wouldn’t even begin our married life under the same roof.
Te-sul, her sister, and her brother had been brought to North Korea by their grandmother after their father was killed in an accident in Japan. After his death, their mother had disappeared, so their grandmother was left to raise them. Her grandmother had no one else to help her at the time, so we agreed to live separately for a while. I understood the difficulty of Te-sul’s situation, and so we saw each other when we could, taking the forty-five-minute train ride to visit as often as possible.
The new year came. Spring came. It was 1975. One day, I saw a woman standing outside the house when I came home from work. She was wearing tattered work pants and had two kids in tow. She looked so disheveled, I thought from a distance she might be a homeless person. When I got closer, I noticed she was pregnant. And then she turned to me. It was Masako.
“What are you doing here? You look terrible. What’s happened?” I asked.
She just looked at me and burst into tears. I took her inside, and through her sobs, she explained to me how her mother-in-law had bullied her. Once again, it was the same old story.
“You’re a returnee. Why haven’t you got anything?” her mother-in-law had said. “Our relations in Japan send us money and things. Why don’t yours?”
Her new husband soon joined in. Eventually, they forced her and his two kids—his two kids, mind you, from his first wife who had died—out of the house.