Lost Names: Scenes from a Korean Boyhood
By Richard E. Kim
Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
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About this ebook
In this autobiography, Richard E. Kim paints seven vivid scenes from a boyhood and early adolescence in Korea at the height of the Japanese occupation during WWII, 1932 to 1945. Taking its title from the grim fact that the occupiers forced the Koreans to renounce their own names and adopt Japanese names instead, the book follows one Korean family through the Japanese occupation to the surrender of Japan and dissolution of the Japanese empire. Examining the intersections of Japanese and Korean history that influenced Korea-Japan relations at the time, Lost Names is at once a loving memory of family, an ethnography of Zainichi Koreans in 1930s Japan, and a vivid portrayal of human spirit in a time of suffering and survival.
LanguageEnglish
PublisherUniversity of California Press
Release dateJan 24, 2014
ISBN9780520948129
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Lost Names: Scenes from a Korean Boyhood Paperback – 29 March 2011
by Richard E. Kim (Author)
4.5 out of 5 stars 88 ratings
Edition: Second Edition, 40th Anniversary Edition, With a New Preface
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In this autobiography, Richard E. Kim paints seven vivid scenes from a boyhood and early adolescence in Korea at the height of the Japanese occupation during WWII, 1932 to 1945. Taking its title from the grim fact that the occupiers forced the Koreans to renounce their own names and adopt Japanese names instead, the book follows one Korean family through the Japanese occupation to the surrender of Japan and dissolution of the Japanese empire. Examining the intersections of Japanese and Korean history that influenced Korea-Japan relations at the time, Lost Names is at once a loving memory of family, an ethnography of Zainichi Koreans in 1930s Japan, and a vivid portrayal of human spirit in a time of suffering and survival.
ISBN-10
0520268121
ISBN-13
978-0520268128
Edition
Second Edition, 40th Anniversary Edition, With a New Preface
Publisher
*University of California Press
Publication date
29 March 2011
Language
English
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Review
"Lost Names is not a poem of hate, but a poem of love. . . . It is elegaic. It rises to moments of considerable dramatic power, but its finest moments, as when we see the cemeteries full of Koreans apologizing to their ancestors for having lost their names, are lyrical."-- "New York Times"
"The author's clear, evocative narrative describes a terrifying experience--foreign occupation. Its homely detail demonstrates how pervasive nationality is, and how painful any attempt to destroy it."-- "New Yorker"
"This memorable document of courage and endurance is written with clarity and vigor, pierced with moments of poignant love and the blazing resentment of the young."-- "Saturday Review"
About the Author
Richard E. Kim (1932 - 2009) was a celebrated novelist, essayist, documentary filmmaker, and professor of literature at University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Syracuse University, San Diego State University, and at Seoul National University. He was founder and president of Trans-Lit Agency, a literary agency devoted to establishing international copyright for works being published in Korea. His books include The Martyred (nominated for the National Book Award), The Innocent , and Lost Koreans in China and the Soviet Union: Photo Essays . He was recipient of the Ford Foundation Foreign Area Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a National Endowment for the Arts Literary Fellowship.
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Product details
Publisher : *University of California Press; Second Edition, 40th Anniversary Edition, With a New Preface (29 March 2011)
Language : English
Paperback : 224 pages
ISBN-10 : 0520268121
ISBN-13 : 978-0520268128
Dimensions : 13.97 x 1.52 x 20.96 cm
Best Sellers Rank: 869,415 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
180 in Asian Literature Textbooks
739 in History & Criticism of Asian Literature
999 in Regional Geography
Customer Reviews: 4.5 out of 5 stars 88 ratings
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James
4.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating
Reviewed in Japan 🇯🇵 on 14 April 2021
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An interesting dive into a part of history I know so little about. Written seemingly without judgement.
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Anonymous
5.0 out of 5 stars Moving novel, historically informative
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on 9 May 2020
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A wonderful coming-of-age story written with a lot of heart. Even though the product description claims it is an autobiography, the author's note itself says it is somewhere between memoir and fiction. Nevertheless, the historical events and context are a huge focus of the narrative, providing a human look at a time in history that I myself new little about. Thoroughly enjoyed.
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Amazon Customer
4.0 out of 5 stars A great story. Thought it was autobiographical
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on 31 July 2017
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A great story. Thought it was autobiographical, but isn't. The author says everyone and all events true but everything else made up. So I think he means theses things happened to someone not just all to the same person. I didn't find that out until end. An interesting read about a part of history that isn't taught in American school systems.
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Hard To Please
5.0 out of 5 stars Everybody should read this!
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on 5 January 2019
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Anybody from an immigrant population would recognize themselves in this book. Tragic but well told story that I will read again voluntarily, as this was an assigned book for college.
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chief90
4.0 out of 5 stars Coming of Age in Korea
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on 26 December 2012
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This was an extremely emotional book. This is a story of a young boy growing up in Korea and having to deal with Japanese influence. Family names are something that are important and this memoir reiterated the harsh realities of oppression. He recalls events from his adolescence. This was an extremely easy read and flowed very smoothly. Though it may be difficult to comprehend this as a historical document, it serves well to underscore the nature of Japanese occupation.
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Lost Names: Scenes from a Korean Boyhood
Richard E. Kim
3.87
1,028 ratings88 reviews
In this classic tale, Richard Kim paints seven vivid scenes from a boyhood and early adolescence in Korea at the height of the Japanese occupation, 1932 to 1945. Taking its title from the grim fact that the occupiers forced the Koreans to renounce their own names and adopt Japanese names instead, the book follows one Korean family through the Japanese occupation to the surrender of the Japanese empire. Lost Names is at once a loving memory of family and a vivid portrayal of life in a time of anguish.
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196 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1970
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Maria
48 reviews
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September 21, 2011
from my Amazon.com review
I collect books about Korean, and have read many novels, poems and non-fiction works, but Lost Names is certainly one of the best.
Small details and major characters both help to build an accurate, emotional depiction of Koreans and the struggle to live during the brutal Japanese occupation of World War II. I read this book in one sitting, mailed it to one of my sisters, and have bought a copy for another sister.
Some passages are humorous, and others are painfully sad...but the author infuses the entire work with hope and forgiveness. The main character's father is a memorable study of dignity, wisdom and strength. My 13 year old son has read this book four times! It is slightly mature for a young reader, but if you or your child have any interest in Korea, you'll love it.
A must-read for any Korean-Americans wanting to understand the deprivation, tenacity and social conditions forced upon their parents or grandparents, who survived the harsh conditions of life in Korea during WWII.
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Hira
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February 9, 2021
I had to take a break from this book for a few days because an early chapter made me cry and I was deeply UPSET. This year has made it really hard for me to read sad things. I should’ve known since it’s a book about an oppressed country during World War II but like...just when you think you’ve read it all...
The imagery in this book was beautiful. Descriptions of summer days and night skies and feelings of triumph and overwhelming relief are all depicted so strongly. People complain that it’s written childishly but it is from the point of view of a child after all. This book showed a side of Korean life during WW2 that I’ve never seen before.
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Chrissie
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November 5, 2012
Well, humph, what can I say? I am glad that is over. It reads like a child's book. A boy with tremendous wisdom, honor and valor saves the day when the family's Korean town is liberated from the Japanese at the conclusion of WW2! And the conclusion of the book. The adults in the village listen to the wise advice of the thirteen year-old as he explains how the liberation can most effectively be carried out in the town:
The police can be isolated, sir. Most of them are inside the station right now, anyway. We should try to keep them in there and just make sure they don't come out in force. We can always deal with two or three of them at a time, but I doubt if the police will be stupid enough to send anyone out at a time like this. There are Korean policemen, too, sir, and we should talk them into coming out and giving themselves up. But, sir, really, the first thing we should do is to take over everything else,that is, the railway station, the fire department, the government warehouses, and that sort of thing. Cut the telephone wires to and from the police station, cut off their water by locating the water pipes to the station and destroying them, cut off the electric supply, and so on. Then surround the station and send in an ultimatum, asking them to lay down their arms and turn the station over to us. It is really very simple, sir. (page 179)
The horrors of Korean occupation by the Japanese reads like an adventure story. The boy is righteous, always hardworking, kind and forgiving. I would only recommend this book to a young boy who is interested in history AND loves adventure stories. Correct historical facts are sparsely thrown in. They are presented in a simple manner. You do learn about life of a Korean family under the Japanese occupation.
The title refers to the fact that the Japanese demanded that the Korean take Japanese names. This chapter was moving.
Is this fiction or is this autobiographical? I am unsure.... There is an author's note. The author insists that this is a book of fiction, but then he says ambiguously:
Perhaps I should have included a disclaimer: all the characters and events described in this book are real, but everything else is fiction. (page 198)
What?! He says he is happy that everyone thinks it is so convincingly written that they assume it must be true.
So is this a good book to teach a child about Korea during WW2? Perhaps. Although I do not usually fall head over heels in love with YA literature, I have read some that are excellent; there are books that are good for all ages. I do not rank this in that category.
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April 7, 2018
I rate this book four stars, but put a well-deserved extra one for the introduction and afterward, which are blistering and incisive. There is violence here, physical and spiritual, grappling for hope, meaning; there is terrible loss and temporary respite. Reading the book in context of the introduction (tempering the main character's emotionality with the sobering reality of Kim's) changes the book. Incredible pathos and complexity.
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Lynda
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January 10, 2022
"...we had lost even our names to the Japanese, who had forced us to adopt Japanese names. I would ask you to consider that extraordinary, historically unprecedented chapter in all histories of colonial experiences: a symbolic and quite ritualistic effort on the part of the colonizers, the oppressors, to alter the identity and destroy the self-respect of the colonized, the oppressed."
I had watched the 2016 Korean film "The Last Princess" starring one of my favorite Korean actresses, Son Ye-Jin, recently and was surprised to learn that the Koreans were forced to adopt Japanese names. I knew I had to learn more about this topic.
This discovery led me to the book 'Lost Names' which chronicles key moments in the author's life from the time he was born in 1932 to when he turned 13 in 1945 and helped his father to organize the formal takeover of their town in Korea upon learning of Japan's surrender.
It is both a memoir and an autobiographical novel. And it is through the eyes of one Korean boy's experiences during the Japanese occupation of Korea during WWII that I gleaned much cruelty suffered, hardship endured, and fortitude forged of the Koreans, under the thumbs of their Japanese aggressors.
I would need to come back to this book again some other day. One reading of it perhaps does not do it justice.
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Alena
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February 23, 2023
i thoroughly enjoyed how the book was consistently written through the lens of a young boy. it made the story translate well into the perspective of someone who doesn’t know *everything* that’s going on during wwii (“only the grown-ups should hear and talk about it”), but knows enough to recognize how it impacts him. it’s an interesting dynamic that i’m not sure how to describe. overall, it’s a very easy read.
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Miriam
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July 31, 2017
Summer reading so I'm not gonna bother with a review. Ugh.
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August 2, 2022
Gorgeous writing and a fascinating depiction with of a little known part of history.
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February 5, 2021
First the Japanese occupied Korea. They forbade the teaching of Korean language and history. They phased out Korean language newspapers and magazines. The Thought Police imprisoned and beat dissenters. They impressed young Koreans into the army (as "Special Volunteer Soldiers"). They forced farmers to sell their rice to Japan ("voluntary contribution to the national war effort for the glory of the emperor"). They forced schoolchildren to worship at a Japanese shrine to pray for the health of the emperor. They sewed the children's pockets shut so they couldn't put their hands in their pockets, because a slouching posture would weaken them, and prevent them from effectively serving the emperor.
But the greatest humiliation was that all Koreans were forced to take a Japanese name. All the men of the town line up wearing black arm bands to grieve the loss of their names, and then all the family members visit the graves of the ancestors to apologize to them, and cry. There is a lot of crying in this book, but it is not as dismal as it might be. Although the father ends up being sent to a detention camp, and the son, at 13 years old, is sent to a work camp, where he digs until his hands are covered with blisters, and grows weak with dysentery, there is much beauty. The boy's family is loving. Neighbors are respectful. At school other boys want to be his friend. There is a constant undertone of fear, but home in the family's apple orchard is as warm and nurturing as it can be.
This book is about how people survive, and about how people make hard decisions about how much of themselves they can give up. What can they change? What must they accept? Everyone in the book struggles with these questions, but the boy and his family handle them with dignity and quiet pride. There are tears, but mother, father, grandparents and siblings always support each other. Perhaps, the mother says, the tears are "for wounded souls everywhere." More poignant than bitter, this is a very quiet look at a very bad time.
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Danata
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May 9, 2016
I had to read this book for my history of East Asia class, - which often ends up being a bad thing, - but not in this case.
Richard Kim's biographic story reveals the hardships, the extent of Japanese oppression in Korea during WWII. It does so emphatically, vividly, through small, but important details of everyday life. You will not grow to sympathize with the nameless characters, but you will grow to understand that there is no "Good" or "Evil". There is just life, and sometimes it can be extremely hard. Sometimes we make it extremely hard for others. For groups, for populations, for even countries.
This is a great book for anyone interested in the region of Korea and it's history. Not great, but as it is a biographical and historical work, the author honestly does not try to embellish the story with extra literary tropes. Which is also a good thing, in this particular case.
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