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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2000, 2007 by Kazuki Kaneshiro

  Translation copyright © 2018 by Takami Nieda

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Previously published as GO by Kodansha in Japan in 2000 and republished by KADOKAWA CORPORATION in Japan in 2007. Translated from Japanese by Takami Nieda. English translation rights arranged with KADOKAWA CORPORATION, Tokyo through Japan Uni Agency Inc., Tokyo. First published in English by AmazonCrossing in 2018.

  Published by AmazonCrossing, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  ISBN-13: 9781503937376 (hardcover)

  ISBN-10: 1503937372 (hardcover)

  ISBN-13: 9781542046183 (paperback)

  ISBN-10: 1542046181 (paperback)

  Cover design by David Drummond

  CONTENTS

  START READING

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR

  What’s in a name?

  That which we call a rose

  By any other name would smell as sweet.

  —Romeo and Juliet

  1

  “Hawaii . . .”

  I was fourteen the first time my old man uttered that word in my presence. We were watching some New Year’s special where these three gorgeous actresses jetted off to Hawaii and kept shouting, “Beautiful!” “Delicious!” “I’m in heaven!” Up until then, Hawaii was known in our house as the symbol of depraved capitalism.

  At the time, my father was fifty-four and held North Korean citizenship. He was what the Japanese call Zainichi Chosenjin (a North Korean resident of Japan) and a Marxist.

  First, let’s get one thing straight. The story that follows is a love story. My love story. And communism—or democratism, pacifism, otakuism, vegetarianism, or any other -ism for that matter—has got nothing to do with it. Just so you know.

  Anyway, when the old man mentioned Hawaii, my mother (also North Korean) clenched her fist in triumph. She whispered to me later, “Your father didn’t stand a chance against the infirmities of old age.”

  Tokyo was hit by a severe cold snap that winter, and I guess my father’s fifty-four-year-old body was really feeling it, judging from the way he kept rubbing his joints and muttering about his arthritis. He was born in the temperate climate of Jeju, an island province of South Korea, and spent part of his childhood there. By the way, Jeju Island is also the self-proclaimed “Hawaii of the East.”

  My mother was born and raised in Japan. She was nineteen when my father picked her up at Ameyoko Market in Okachimachi and twenty when she gave birth to me.

  Seeing how my father was now teetering, my mother spun around behind him and gave him one last push: “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,” she said with a shiver. I half expected her to burst into a mournful song.

  My father listened with his body stooped slightly forward as if to keep from toppling over. When he looked up and turned his gaze to the television, the three actresses, now wearing bathing suits, turned their rapt faces toward him and called out, “Aloha!”

  “Aloha,” my father muttered.

  It sounded like a death moan. My old man let out a long, deep sigh and fell . . . to temptation.

  Once my father got up off the floor, he acted quickly. As soon as the holidays were over, he began the process of changing his citizenship from North Korean to South Korean, so he could visit Hawaii.

  I should explain. Why did my father, who was born on the South Korean island of Jeju, have North Korean citizenship? And why did he have to change his citizenship to South Korean just to go to Hawaii? It’s a tedious story, so I’ll try to keep it short and mix in some humor here and there. But don’t hold your breath.

  Back when my father was a kid during World War II, he was a Japanese citizen. Why? Long ago, Korea was a Japanese colony. Forced to adopt a Japanese name, Japanese citizenship, and the Japanese language, my father was destined to fight as a soldier in the emperor’s army when he grew up. He came to Japan as a kid when his parents were drafted to work in the munitions factories. But when Japan was defeated and the war ended, the government no longer allowed him to remain Japanese. And to add insult to injury, the Japanese government said, “We’re done with you. Get the hell out of our country,” sending Korean residents into a panic. Before they knew what happened, the United States and the Soviet Union had divided the Korean peninsula into two countries. So Koreans were allowed to stay in Japan but were forced to choose between South and North Korean nationality. My old man chose North Korea because it touted Marxist ideology and was assumed to be more compassionate toward the poor. And because it showed more concern than the South Korean government for Koreans living in Japan. That’s how my father became a North Korean resident of Japan.

  My aging father, having switched his citizenship twice by a young age, was now attempting to change it a third time. He couldn’t get a visa as a North Korean because that country didn’t have diplomatic relations with the United States. Since North Korea had so few diplomatic ties with other countries, North Korean residents of Japan were limited in where they could travel. I’ve heard that you can get a visa for some countries, but with the red tape and hassle, there was no telling how long that could take.

  So what my father did was appeal to a Mindan leader. Ready for some more tedious explanation? Here goes . . .

  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. Reflecting the relationship between North and South Korea, and like the feuding Montagues and Capulets, the two groups clash every now and then but maintain a reasonable distance from one another. You know how Romeo and Juliet ended, right?

  Long ago, my father had been an active member of Chongryon. He spent all his free time fighting for the rights of fellow North Koreans living in Japan and donated tons—I mean tons—of money to “the sound management of the organization.” But all of his efforts and years of service went unrewarded. I really can’t go into the details here, but basically, my father realized that Chongryon was more concerned with North Korea than with the North Koreans living in Japan. Around the same time he’d lost hope in North Korea and Chongryon, the temptation of Hawaii had taken hold.

  Anyway, the first thing he did to get his South Korean citizenship was talk to someone he knew in the Mindan leadership. This was the same guy who’d asked my father to spy on Chongryon back when he was still involved in their activities. My father refused—so he says.

  This guy told my father that all you need to do to obtain citizenship is go to the South Korean embassy, fill out the proper forms, and wait for the application to go through. But the waiting period varies from person to person. In the case of someone who has exhibited “traitorous inclinations” in the past, such as working for Chongryon, and who was a Marxist to boot, who knew how long it would take the application to go through, if at all. No doubt this uncertainty made my father nervous.

  Thanks to some backd
oor dealing, my father’s application sailed through in just two months. That must’ve been some kind of record for a former Chongryon Marxist. What did my old man do, you ask? Simple. He bought off the guy with a massive—I mean massive—amount of money.

  And that’s how my father masterfully obtained citizenship for a third time. He wasn’t the least bit impressed with himself, though. “You can buy citizenship to any country you want,” he used to joke on occasion. “Which country will it be?”

  At this point, he could have taken off for Hawaii, but there was one last thing my father needed to do. He needed to send a truck to his brother in North Korea.

  Which brings me to my last bit of this boring explanation, and there’s no finding the humor in this one.

  My father came to Japan during the war with a brother who was two years younger than he was. This brother—my uncle, that is—returned to North Korea during the repatriation campaign that began in the late 1950s. The campaign essentially touted North Korea as an “earthly paradise,” encouraging persecuted North Koreans living in Japan to return to their homeland and forge a life with their compatriots. At the time, most North Koreans had a vague suspicion that nothing good ever came out of anything called a campaign, but thinking it might be better than Japan, where they faced discrimination and poverty, many went back to North Korea anyway. My uncle was among them.

  I’ll never forget that first letter my uncle addressed to me. He had written in beautifully penned Japanese, “Send as much penicillin and as many Casio digital clocks as you can. Please, I need your help.”

  After changing his citizenship to South Korean and effectively betraying Chongryon, my father couldn’t help but worry about my uncle. My father had never been to North Korea, and now that he had changed his citizenship, there was little chance that he ever would. He would likely never see my uncle again. And neither of them was exactly young anymore.

  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.

  Soon after I entered my final year of junior high school, my old man jetted off to Hawaii with my mother (who had also become a South Korean citizen by then).

  Aloha!

  Now a huge framed photo of a pretty Hawaiian girl in a straw skirt kissing my father on the cheek decorates the foyer of the house. 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.

  And me?

  Finally, I can talk about me. This isn’t a story about my father or mother, after all. This story is about me.

  I didn’t go to Hawaii.

  Why?

  Since I was the child of parents with North Korean citizenship, I automatically became a Zainichi Chosenjin with North Korean citizenship. Like I said, 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.

  Even so, that doesn’t mean that I was infected by communist ideology. I didn’t give a damn about North Korea, Marx, Chongryon, Korean schools, or America. I 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?

  By the time of my parents’ Hawaii adventure, I’d developed into a fine misfit. So I rebelled against my father over changing citizenship. It wasn’t that I had any hang-ups about it, but I had no intention of giving in so easily.

  One spring day, just before the start of my third and final year of junior high school, my old man forced me into the car and started driving. I asked him where he was taking me, but he continued to drive the car in silence, out of Tokyo and toward Kanagawa.

  He’s going to kill me!

  Why such an extreme reaction? My father had been a nationally ranked lightweight boxer and was the type to punch first and ask later. Punk that I was, I’d gotten hauled into the police station a number of times over some mischief that I’d pulled. My father nearly beat me to death three times.

  As I racked my brain for a way to jump out of the car, we arrived at our destination. Tsujido Beach in Shonan.

  After pulling the car over to the side of the seaside road, he slammed the car door and started walking toward the beach. “Come with me.”

  Although the image of my father holding my head underwater until I drowned flashed before my eyes for a split second, as I watched his back, I didn’t sense any bloodlust. I decided to follow him to see what this was all about.

  He trudged ahead of me in the sand, plunked himself down in the middle of the beach, and stared out at the water. I calculated the precise distance that would put me safely out of his reach and took a seat next to him. I deliberately sat on his right. My father was a southpaw.

  He gazed at the sun setting over the early-spring ocean, saying nothing. Meanwhile, I was checking out a cute teenager walking a golden retriever. When our eyes met, she gave me a coy smile. Just as I was about to smile back at her, I sensed a murderous rage on my left. I cursed myself for letting down my guard. My father’s fist was flying toward my head.

  I’m dead!

  I felt his knuckles rap lightly against the side of my head.

  “Look straight ahead,” he said.

  Having escaped what I thought was certain death, I turned toward the ocean and stared. Several minutes passed, and after mumbling something about how he should’ve chosen a prettier spot, my father turned and fixed a hard look on me. I was terrified. His eyes were dead serious. The two-inch scar at the corner of one eye from his boxing days had turned crimson. I was thinking about cracking a smile to lighten the mood when he finally opened his mouth.

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

  That was it. After saying this, he rose to his feet and left me sitting there on the beach.

  I didn’t hate him for pulling such a cheesy stunt. Though I may have been a misfit, I was also a romantic. That part about the “wide world” really got my heart pumping.

  I sat there on the beach and stared ahead. The ocean was wide open and free. As the sunset gave way to moonlight, I ached with the yearning to put my boat in the water and sail to distant countries.

  And so, I gave in. Sure, my father’s cheesy performance had something to do with it, but that wasn’t the only reason. I had grown up trapped in an environment over which I had no control, but now I had been given a choice. North Korea or South Korea? As horribly limited as my options were, the choice was mine to make. I felt as if I was being treated like a human with rights for the first time in my life.

  I agreed to change my citizenship to South Korean but refused to go on the trip to Hawaii with my parents. 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,” I answered, looking my father straight in the eyes.

  Most students who start their education in Korean schools typically continue on to Korean-sponsored high schools and universities.

  “What’s gotten into you all of a sudden?”

  My citizenship had changed from North Korean to South Korean almost overnight, but nothing about me had changed. Nothing about me was changing, and I was bored. With that change in citizenship, I felt like I had any number of choices before me.

  “I want to see the wide world,” I answered with the same determination.

  A conflicted look of joy and worry came over my father’s face. “Do what you want.”

  And that’s
how I quit being a North Korean resident of Japan, busted out of the tiny confines of Korean school, and dove into the “wide world.” That decision, it turned out, came with some . . . challenges.

  The great Bruce Springsteen—he sings about the struggles of the working class. I’m Zainichi. I’ve got my own struggles to sing about.

  Thought I was born in a righteous land

  Been beaten down about as low as you can

  You end up trembling at every touch

  Like a dog that’s been whupped too much

  Born in Japan, I was born in Japan

  That’s right.

  I was born in Japan.

  2

  The door flew open.

  Some kid, a first-year by the looks of him, stood outside the door, his bloodshot eyes searching the classroom. It was only a week into my third year at the Japanese school.

  His eyes found mine and locked on. I decided to ignore him and casually gazed at the anthropology book spread out on my desk. He stepped inside.

  The lunch bell had just rung, so there were plenty of students still hanging around the classroom. They dug out what loose change they had in their pockets and began placing bets.

  The kid walked past the lectern and made for my desk in the back row, slow and deliberate. I closed the book, slipped it into the drawer of my desk, and kept one hand inside the drawer.

  The kid stopped, slightly right of center in front of my desk. He loomed over the chair. I raised my eyes and looked up at his face. He was grunting noisily through his nose. The boy looked nervous, pale, like a child before the start of a race. His chapped lips were pulled tight.

  Hurry up and hit me already.

  If he attacked me now, I didn’t stand a chance. In every altercation so far, not one of my challengers had made the first move. Not a single one. And because of this, I had a 23–0 record and was known throughout the school as the reigning badass.

  The kid opened his mouth as if to speak. I decided to cut him off. I was sick of hearing all the tired epithets.

  “I’ll make you famous,” I said. Billy the Kid said this when he drew his guns.