The Clan Records: Five Stories of Korea. Kajiyama Toshiyuki. University of Hawaii Press, 1995 (translated).

The Clan Records is a collection of five short stories by a Japanese author who was born in Seoul (then called Keijo) in 1930, where his father was a civil engineer, and grew up there until he was repatriated to Japan in 1945. Kajiyama’s stories of colonial Korea mourn the even then quickly waning of traditional Korea and provide a glimpse of what was. A writer, he died in 1975 at the age of 45 and it is clear that his youth in Korea made a deep and lasting impression on his life. Kajiyama’s viewpoint is sympathetic to the land where he was born and critical of Japanese colonial policies, but without falling into the self-loathing, own-nation-hating apologist mindset that has become too common in contemporary academia.

The Clan Records, from which the book takes its name, is the story of a low-level Japanese office worker who took government work in Korea in 1940 to avoid being drafted into the military. His office had the task of convincing Koreans to take Japanese names, at first with describing it as a benefit (e.g. becoming Japanese!), but finally with threats and outright force. The story revolves around the office workers efforts to convince a Korean patriarch, with clan records going back 700 years, to change his name.

Seeking Life amidst Death: The Last Day of the War, where an “insolent, cheating [Japanese] student” skipped school on 15 August 1945, the last day of the war, and so gets the news late.

When the Hibiscus Blooms is the story of a Japanese school teacher who takes his first job after college in Seoul. He eventually stumbles upon previously unappreciated Celadon and other Korean pottery and in part created a market for it that saw much of those treasures sold cheaply in Korea and go to Japan.

The Remembered Shadow of the Yi Dynasty focuses on the obsession of a young Japanese artist, unworried about the draft due to bad eyes, to capture some fading Korean tradition by painting a beautiful kiseang.

A Crane on a Dunghill in Seoul in 1936 also involves a school teacher, one who falls for a kiseang who was the sister of a Korean freedom fighter.

Several themes replay throughout these stories – admiration for the beauty of Korea and Korean tradition; torment and seeing much of traditional Korea evaporate and knowing nothing could be done about it; and a good deal about drinking establishments and kiseang. Clearly kiseang made a deep and lasting impression upon the youth.

The Clan Records is a good read and, due to a quality translation, a quick one. There are mundane parts, but there are also a lot of little gems of knowledge about colonial Korea that make it well worth reading.