In “Traumatic Patriarchy,” Hamilton Carroll has shown that Hata’s two assimilations in Japan and in America are strongly interwoven with and accompanied by his traumas. Carroll points out,
Hata’s narrative of successful assimilation becomes the story of a profound self-deception, the telling of which is structured around two relationships, each defined by a profound trauma, that haunt Hata despite his attempts to defray their costs by living a life free from affect. These two relationships are one with Kkutaeh (whom Hata calls “K”) . . . and the other with Sunny.
(592-93)
Aside from the two relationships described above, nevertheless, I consider it is the very trauma in Hata’s childhood that triggers his gesture life. Based on Freudian psychoanalysis, Neil J. Smelser brings up the idea that a particular
psychical assault or event occurring at a particular moment would turn out to be a trauma (33). Moreover, the traumas caused by human agents would be more damaging than those caused by accidents or natural disasters (Willis 27). For Hata, the adoption by a Japanese couple in childhood has been a psychical trauma because of the unforgettable experience of being deserted by his birth parents. Nevertheless, his Korean parents may have thought his future out and therefore decide to give him up. According to Eika Tai’s study, “[t]he presence of Koreans in Japan is a legacy of Japan’s colonization of Korea between 1910 and 1945. Deprived of their lands and employment opportunities in the colonial market economy, Koreans moved to Japan proper in search of work” (357).
Owing to the Japanese colonization, living in Korea becomes increasingly bitter and difficult. For the purpose of changing Hata’s life, his birth parents may have little choice but to let the Japanese bring him up. In this way, they think that he can not only dispose of the identity of the colonized, but lead a better life in Japan. Furthermore, according to the introduction to transracial or transcultural adoption on the professional adoption website,13
[s]ome . . . adoptive parents feel connected to a particular race or culture because of their ancestry or through personal experiences such as travel or military service. Others simply like the idea of reaching out to children in need, no matter where they come from.
Mr. and Mrs. Kurohata, a well-to-do childless couple, want a child so much that they would rather adopt a transracial kid as soon as a chance comes. Besides, I am of the opinion that if the personal experience is taken into account, the way
13 Adoption.com is a website set up by the corporation called Adoption Media, LLC. The company also sets up some other websites relating to adoption, such as Adoption.org, Adoption Blogs, Adopting.
org, Adoption Information, and the like. Now these adoption websites are the most popular adoption information destination in the world. For more information, please browse the following website:
http://transracial. adoption.com/.
they adopt a Korean child perhaps could be regarded as a sort of redemption for Japanese colonization of Korea. Due to the colonization, the political and
economic condition in Korea worsens. By adopting a Korean child, Mr. and Mrs.
Kurohata can not only help the poor Korean parents and their child compassionately, but also reduce the sense of guilt caused by the ruthless
invasion of the imperial Japanese army. Even so, the way in which Hata has been given up must have made him feel unwanted.
Accordingly, the experience of being abandoned turns Hata into an
“emotionally scarred Korean exile,” and becomes the first inner trauma that he is desperate to forget (Bradbury, “Chang-rae Lee”). The best solution for Hata to gloss over the feeling of being unwanted is to erase his Korean identity, “a nativity that he spends most of his life renouncing” (Cheng 559). He himself comes up with an explanation for the abandonment, an excuse for his survival, which results in the denial of his Koreanness. He says,
I’d had one [Korean name] at birth, naturally, but it was never used by anyone, including my real parents, who, it must be said, wished as much as I that I become wholly and thoroughly Japanese. They had of course agreed to give me up to the office of the children’s authority. (A Gesture Life 235-36; italic emphasis added)
The phrases of “it must be said” and “of course” account for Hata’s resolution to become Japanese. He firmly believes that he is meant to be a Japanese not a Korean, and so do his birth parents. Actually, the thinking may have much to do with the notion of internal colonization. Based on Philip Altbach and Gail P.
Kelly’s study, internal colonization can be defined as the domination “of an independent group by another independent group of the same nation-state” (3).
The internally colonized, furthermore, are “groups of people marked out as such
by power relations with the dominant culture” (Brewster 1). Hata, as an adopted Korean child in Japan alone, lives within and is surrounded by the dominant Japanese culture and society. He receives everything Japanese, including education, customs and manners, law, and so on, which makes him internally colonized. Moreover, Martin Padget further indicates that the creation of an internally colonized situation is a process whereby a group of people are
“transformed into ethnic peripheries set against a . . . core culture” (35). Padget continues to state that ethnic peripheries are “more or less subsumed by new forms of labor, law, religion, kinship, skills, and language associated with the dominant national culture” (35). Due to the effect of internal colonization, Hata goes into a state of ethnic periphery which can be assimilated into the core or new culture. In other words, his Koreanness can be diluted and replaced by Japaneseness and the new core culture. Such an idea urges him to live up to the image of a model minority so that he could integrate into the Japanese society well, which he believes is also the hope of his birth parents.
In addition, “models, which by definition construct ideals for people to follow,” as Won Yong-Jin mentions, “standardize reality by prescribing moral and ethical criteria to control the ‘unacceptable’ modes of social life” (58).
Namely, being a model means having to follow higher moral criteria than other people. Besides, a model man also needs to be outstanding so that others can emulate him. With the aim of burying his first trauma and surviving in Japan, Hata as a Korean Japanese struggles to be thoroughly assimilated into the new country so that he can resemble the Japanese more. As it is, he successfully manages to live within model images as a filial son and a patriotic lieutenant.
Either as a pupil or a military officer, he serves as a good exemplar for other children and soldiers. To be the pride of his adoptive parents, he studies hard and
enters a medical school. As Hata narrates,
I feared it would be especially shaming to mine, for as adoptive parents they might shoulder the burden of my vices even more heavily than if I had been born to them, blood of their blood, as there would be no excuse but their raising of me. (A Gesture Life 155)
He does not want to let his adoptive parents have any burden of shame because of him. Accordingly, doing everything well becomes a good way to avoid any embarrassing situations for his adopters. Additionally, to win the trust of his comrades, he is amiable to everyone and strictly complies with the discipline in the barracks. Due to the special minority identity, his loyal image in the barracks can be a paragon of patriotism during wartime. This is because he is not a native Japanese, but can devote himself to the Japanese army. His behavior becomes the most forceful argument to convince those who cannot accept their military duty.
As a Korean minority in Japan, Hata turns into a model Japanese for those who know him. Through the ideology of model minority, he successfully becomes an outstanding person, completely melting into the Japanese life. However, such an image of model minority collapses owing to K the comfort woman, who is vital for the awakening of his selfhood and Koreanness.