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Book Review: Richard M. Kim’s Lost Names – Scenes From a Korean Boyhood
A wonderfully captivating tale of occupation and liberation, Richard Kim’s Lost Names should be included in every secondary school’s East Asia curriculum. First published in 1970, Kim’s collection of seven short stories from Japanese-occupied Korea is neither historical fiction nor a memoir, but something in-between. Lost Names does not tell the experiences of the author, but the experiences of a nation from 1932 – 1945 as seen by the eyes, and retold in the voice, of a Korean boy.
The title Lost Names comes from events of one of the seven stories in the collection. As part of Japan’s domination of the Korean peninsula, every Korean family had to adopt an official Japanese name. This practice was part of an overall imperialist agenda to supplant Korean culture with Japanese culture. The policy also included Japanese school curricula, state-promoted Shinto, and the closing of the Korean-language press. Kim explores the disgrace felt by Koreans in dishonoring their family names, and describes a scene of tearful prayers begging the ancestors’ forgiveness at the local cemetery. However, Kim also tells of defiant Koreans wearing their best traditional dress, and remaining outwardly stoical, when reporting to the police station to register their new names. In the case of the narrator’s family, even the chosen name, Iwamoto, was a subtle act of defiance. Iwamoto means ‘stone base’ in Japanese, and is not an uncommon surname. As the narrator’s family is Christian, the choice of a name symbolic of Matthew 16:18, “… upon this rock I will build my church”, is a subtle act of rebellion against the anti-Western Japanese Empire.
This book is not history per se, but rather an impression of history that provides emotional context for studying a chapter in the story of Korea. Lost Names is appropriate for students as early as middle school, but certainly would not be out of place on a university syllabus. Younger students will relate to descriptions of universal childhood experiences: squabbles with siblings, doting grandparents, caring teachers, temperamental teachers, playing with friends, and the frustration of being told, “You will understand when you are older.” For high school students, the importance of Confucian values in Korean culture is well described throughout the seven stories. Older students will be able to trace the collapse of the Japanese empire as economic conditions slowly worsen, the Japanese increasingly exude a sense of desperation, and the inevitable moment comes when the war’s conclusion is admitted with the emperor’s voice coming through the family radio.
A story of survival more than resistance, Lost Names is a different sort of war story than most students will have read. It is a tale of patience, family bonds, and of pride in one’s own culture. I highly recommend teaching Richard Kim’s Lost Names as part of any course on East Asia. A short read, with vocabulary appropriate for secondary students, this book puts a human face on the Second World War. The book is not unlike Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl in its ability to connect the reader to the impact war and occupation have upon families – especially children.
