Today’s post comes to you from Alison Fincher:

Go and The Color of the Sky Is the Shape of the Heart were not necessarily written for a young adult audience. In fact, Go won Japan’s top award for popular fiction for adults, the Naoki Prize, and The Color of the Sky was short-listed for Japan’s most coveted literary award, the Akutagawa Prize. These two novels are tough. They deal with bullying, violence against (and by) teens, and sexual assault. But the age of the protagonists, the school setting, and the problems many teens cope with every day make them ideal stories for young adult readers looking for something meaty to sink their teeth into.

Both of these novels are by Zainichi Korean authors and tell the story of Zainichi Korean teens. Koreans have been a minority group in Japan for more than a century, and that context is part of what gives these books their emotional punch. To simplify an extremely complicated history, Japan absorbed Korea as a colony in 1910 after decades of increasing control over the country. Koreans immigrated to Japan in droves in the early 20th century—both by choice and by coercion. In Japan, they faced poor-quality housing, dangerous and low paying jobs, and racialized discrimination and violence.

By the end of the Pacific War in 1945, there were about two million Korean people living in Japan. Neither American occupation officials nor the new Japanese government that followed it knew what to do with them. Between 1952 and 1965, Koreans in Japan were essentially stateless and stripped of all political rights. After 1965, Koreans in Japan faced a complicated choice whether to accept North or South Korean citizenship or remain stateless. In 1992, after decades of political mobilization, all Koreans in Japan who could prove their families were in Japan during the colonial period were granted special permanent resident status. Most of the 600,000 or so ethnically Korean people living in Japan in 2010 still held that status—few have been able to become full Japanese citizens.

Especially during the childhoods of authors Kazuki Kaneshiro and Chesil, Korean families in Japan have chosen between sending their children to Japanese-speaking schools run by the Japanese government or Korean-speaking schools run by an organization sponsored by North Korea that teach “North Korean values and norms.” Both Go and The Color of the Sky Is the Shape of the Heart take place partially in these schools and draw from the authors’ own experiences.

Go by Kazuki Kaneshiro / Translated from the Japanese by Takami Nieda (Amazon Crossing, 2018)

Go tells the story of Sugihara, the high school son of a retired professional boxer. Sugihara explains near the novel’s opening:

“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.”

Still, the 172-page book is full of details about life as a Zainichi Korean; Sugihara can’t tell his own story or the story of his great love affair without explaining the shadow his heritage casts over his life. 

After being bullied at Korean school for not being Korean enough, he has elected to go to a Japanese school where only his own fighting ability stops him from being relentlessly bullied for being too Korean. One night at a party, he meets Sakurai, a beautiful Japanese girl. In a moment of almost Romeo-and-Juliet-esque poignancy, he opts not to tell her that he is ethnically Korean. “Outing” himself to Sakurai is at the heart of the novel’s climax. “Nationality doesn’t mean anything,” he tells her.

The Color of the Sky Is the Shape of the Heart by Chesil / Translated from the Japanese by Takami Nieda (Soho Press, 2022, Penguin Random House 2023)

The Color of the Sky Is the Shape of the Heart is a quieter, more restrained novel. As the novel opens, the protagonist, Ginny Park, is about to be expelled from her third high school after being kicked out of a North Korean school in Japan and a boarding school in Hawaii. She just can’t bring herself to care about school anymore. In a reflective, non-linear narrative, the reader slowly learns about the trauma beneath Ginny’s apathy and its connection to her heritage as a Korean living in Japan. Like Go’s Sugihara, she found herself too Korean for Japanese school and not Korean enough for a Korean one.

Both Go and The Color of the Sky Is the Shape of the Heart were translated into English by Takami Nieda. She describes Go as “the story I wanted to read growing up Japanese-American in a very non-Japanese American neighborhood in New Jersey. The protagonists in the few so-called “Asian” books that I’d encountered seemed to me so well-mannered, so restrained.”

About The Color of the Sky, she notes “this book is marketed as a YA book,” but “it’s also meant to be read by older readers.” She says, “It was clear to me that Chesil wrote the book, in part, to call out grownups for creating this world which is divided and tribal in ways that can be dangerous for girls like Ginny.”

Ultimately, both Go and The Color of the Sky Is the Shape of the Heart carry the border-crossing message that we are all more than society tells us we are. For young adult readers especially, the stories emphasize that we all deserve belonging and respect, and it’s okay to fight for our place in the world. Both young adult and general readers who enjoy Go and The Color of the Sky might enjoy other Japanese novels written for a broader audience, including Colorful by Eto Mori (translated by Jocelyne Allen); I Want to Kick You in the Back by Risa Wataya (translated by Julianne Neville); or Lonely Castle in the Mirror by Mizuki Tsujimura (translated by Philip Gabriel)—all of which take up similar themes and feature school-aged protagonists.

Alison Fincher is the founder of Read Japanese Literature and co-editor for Japanese fiction at the Asian Review of Books, for which Alison has reviewed more than fifty titles. Alison holds a master’s degree from Oxford University and lives in the American South.