When Kyunghee and Sunja entered the butcher shop, Tanaka-san, the tall young proprietor, snapped to attention and shouted “Irasshai!” to welcome them.
The butcher and his helper, Koji, were delighted to see the pretty Korean and her pregnant sister-in-law. They weren’t big customers; in fact, they spent very little money, but they were steady, and as Tanaka’s father and grandfather had taught him—the eighth generation of sons to run the shop—the daily, cumulative payments were more valuable than the infrequent, outsize purchases. Housewives were the backbone of the business, and the Korean women couldn’t fuss like the local women, which made them preferable customers. It was also rumored that one of his great-grandfathers may have been Korean or burakumin, so the young butcher had been raised by his father and mother to be fair to all the customers. Times might have changed, to be sure, but butchery, which required touching dead animals, was still a shameful occupation—the chief reason given as to why the matchmaker had such difficulty arranging an omiai for him—and Tanaka couldn’t help but feel a kind of kinship with foreigners.
The men ogled Kyunghee, altogether ignoring Sunja, who had by now grown used to this invisibility whenever the two went anywhere. Kyunghee, who looked smart in her midi skirts and crisp white blouses, easily passing for a schoolteacher or a merchant’s modest wife with her fine features, was welcomed in most places. Everyone thought she was Japanese until she spoke; even then, the local men were pleasant to her. For the first time in her life, Sunja felt aware of her unacceptable plainness and inappropriate attire. She felt homely in Osaka. Her well-worn, traditional clothes were an inevitable badge of difference, and though there were enough older and poorer Koreans in the neighborhood who wore them still, she had never been looked upon with scorn with such regularity, when she had never meant to call attention to herself. Within the settled boundaries of Ikaino, one would not be stared at for wearing a white hanbok, but outside the neighborhood and farther out from the train station, the chill against identifiable Koreans was obvious. Sunja would have preferred to wear Western clothes or mompei, but it would make no sense to spend money on fabric to sew new things now. Kyunghee promised to make her new clothes after the baby was delivered.
Kyunghee bowed politely to the men, and Sunja retreated into the corner of the shop.
“How can we help you today, Boku-san?” Tanaka-san asked.
Even after two months, it still surprised Sunja to hear her husband’s family name pronounced in its Japanese form. Due to the colonial government’s requirements, it was normal for Koreans to have at least two or three names, but back home she’d had little use for the Japanese tsumei—Junko Kaneda—written on her identity papers, because Sunja didn’t go to school and had nothing to do with official business. Sunja was born a Kim, yet in Japan, where women went by their husband’s family name, she was Sunja Baek, which was translated into Sunja Boku, and on her identity papers, her tsumei was now Junko Bando. When the Koreans had to choose a Japanese surname, Isak’s father had chosen Bando because it had sounded like the Korean word ban-deh, meaning objection, making their compulsory Japanese name a kind of joke. Kyunghee had assured her that all these names would become normal soon enough.
“What will you be cooking today, Boku-san?” the young owner asked.
“May I please have shinbones and a bit of meat? I’m making soup,” Kyunghee said in her radio announcer–style Japanese; she regularly listened to Japanese programs to improve her accent.
“Right away.” Tanaka grabbed three large hunks of shinbone from the stock of beef bones and oxtails he kept in the ice chest for Korean customers; Japanese did not have any use for bones. He wrapped up a handful of stew meat. “Will that be all?”
She nodded.
“Thirty-six sen, please.”
Kyunghee opened her coin purse. Two yen and sixty sen had to last her for eight more days until Yoseb gave her his pay envelope.
“Sumimasen desu, how much would it be for just the bones?”
“Ten sen.”
“Please pardon my error. Today, I’ll take only the bones. Meat another time, I promise.”
“Of course.” Tanaka returned the meat to the case. It wasn’t the first time a customer didn’t have enough money to pay for food, but unlike his other customers, the Koreans didn’t ask him for credit, not that he would have agreed to it.
“You’re making a broth?” Tanaka wondered what it might be like to have such an elegant wife worrying about his meals and being thrifty with her pin money. He was the first son, and although he was eager to be married, he lived with his mother as a bachelor. “What kind?”
“Seolleongtang.” She looked at him quizzically, wondering if he knew what that was.