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First tagged "japanese" by Faye
Most Helpful tags Customer Reviews: korean(3), lost names, courage, classic tale, atomicfiber, adolescence, korean boyhood, japanese, korean-american, japan, boyhood, family
Product Description
In this classical tale, Richard Kim paints 7 transparent scenes from a boyhood and early adolescence in Korea during a tallness of a Japanese occupation, 1932 to 1945. Taking a pretension from a grave fact that a occupiers forced a Koreans to forgo their possess names and adopt Japanese names instead, a book follows one Korean family by a Japanese function to a obey of a Japanese empire. Lost Names is during once a amatory memory of family and a transparent description of life in a time of anguish.
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #159792 in Books
- Published on: 1998-06-10
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: .54 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 196 pages
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
From 1932 to 1945, a Japanese assigned Korea. Organized in 7 transparent scenes, Kim's fictionalized discourse tells a story of one family's experience, as told by a boy. The account starts in 1933 with a thespian iced-river channel into Manchuria, when a child was only a year old, a story a child knows from a many times his mom has told him a tale. Next stage and we're in 1938. The child and his family have changed behind to Korea, where a child is a new child in propagandize and is training new routines like bowing his conduct toward where a Japanese czar is ostensible to be in Tokyo. He does as he is told, though wonders if a czar knows a children are bowing to him, wonders if he's asleep, or eating breakfast--or maybe even in a toilet. He cinema someone knocking on a door, saying, "Your Majesty! The children, a children! They are bowing to Your Majesty!" and him saying, "Wait a minute! we have my pants down!"
A few years later, a children are told they need new names--the Koreans contingency forgo their family names and take Japanese ones instead. Later, his father takes him to a tomb to ask redemption from their ancestors for a chagrin of losing their names. The scenes continue as a child grows up, connecting a practice of childhood with a story of a occupation, seen in a tiny day-to-day moments that move story alive. Richard Kim uses a elementary though absolute voice to elicit unpleasant times, a amatory family, and a clever suggestion of survival. Lost Names is a beautifully created reverence to a people of Korea that is subtle, moving, and tough to put down.
Review
"Lost Names is not a poem of hate, though a poem of love. . . . It is elegaic. It rises to moments of substantial thespian power, though a excellent moments, as when we see a cemeteries full of Koreans apologizing to their ancestors for carrying mislaid their names, are lyrical." -- Edward Seidensticker, New York Times Book Review
"The author's clear, evocative account describes a terrifying knowledge -- foreign occupation. Its modest fact demonstrates how pervasive nationality is, and how unpleasant any try to destroy it." (The New Yorker
"This noted request of bravery and continuation is created with clarity and vigor, pierced with moments of touching adore and a blazing rancour of a young." -- Saturday Review
About a Author
Richard E. Kim (1932 - 2009) was a distinguished novelist, essayist, documentary filmmaker, and highbrow of novel during University of Massachusetts during Amherst, Syracuse University, San Diego State University, and during Seoul National University. He was owner and boss of Trans-Lit Agency, a literary group clinging to substantiating general copyright for works being published in Korea. His books embody The Martyred (nominated for a National Book Award), The Innocent , and Lost Koreans in China and a Soviet Union: Photo Essays . He was target of a Ford Foundation Foreign Area Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a National Endowment for a Arts Literary Fellowship.
Customer Reviews
Most useful patron reviews
22 of 23 people found a following examination helpful.
By Sharon K. Martinez
As an zealous tyro of Asian story and culture, I've examination many accounts of a Japanese function of Korea. This is a best so far.
As we have lived in Korea for 10+ years, we have Korean friends in a same age organisation as a author, Richard Kim. From a first-hand accounts we have listened from my friends, we trust Lost Names accurately describes conditions for a common Korean citizen during a Occupation period.
Through a whole book, we believed we was reading a author's autobiography. we didn't comprehend that was not a box until we examination a Author's Note on a final page. we kept wondering why, given these were his memoirs, a author didn't write in a past tense.
For me personally, a book would have been easier to examination if it had been created in a past tense. In any case, we rarely suggest this book for those who adore to learn about a comfortless story of a pleasing Land of a Morning Calm.
13 of 13 people found a following examination helpful.
By Anyechka
This was substantially my favorite of a books we examination in a Japanese History march we took my comparison year of college. Young Richard Kim spent a infancy of his childhood in his local Korea while it was underneath function by a Japanese, who were not unequivocally good to or passive of his people, no matter they were a infancy and a occupying Japanese were a minority. There are many hardships and most influence he faces flourishing up, from neighbors, a government, teachers, and schoolmates, though he never loses his clarity of honour and Korean nationalism, constantly being reminded by his relatives (who are ministers) and his grandmother to sojourn wakeful of where he comes from, his identity, a postulated wish that a Japanese won't always be in Korea, and to do good in propagandize and set a excellent instance to a Japanese, given he mustn't let those Japanese boys during propagandize consider they're improved than he is. When WWII comes along, everybody suffers a normal wartime deprivations, such as food shortages and bombing raids, though it is generally tough for a Koreans in a midst. Young Richard is forced, along with his classmates, to crawl in a instruction of a Emperor any morning, recite an paper of devotion to a Emperor and Japanese government, and, misfortune of all, to even change his family name. All Koreans are forced to change their surnames to Japanese surnames, nonetheless Richard's father is crafty and changes their family's name to one with a bottom definition "rock," that of march is a anxiety to Saint Peter and a family's eremite faith, a anxiety a Japanese won't get. It's adequate to take divided and try to adopt one's culture, traditions, customs, language, and approach of life, though when we take divided someone's name, that is in a approach a ultimate deletion of their identity. Even when forced to, during smallest on a surface, pronounce a unfamiliar language, contention to unfamiliar leaders, and follow visitor customs, there's still a comfort of meaningful your bottom identity, your name, is still a same, though holding it divided creates this influence and attempted appropriation of Korean enlightenment impossibly personal and insulting.
It didn't unequivocally worry me that some of these memories and thoughts are unequivocally formidable and minute for a child as immature as Richard is in a beginning. Many times memories of dire defining events are stronger and some-more clear and genuine precisely given they were so awful and traumatic, withdrawal some-more impact than something as paltry as, say, eating breakfast or walking a dog. And even if some gaps in Richard's memory might have been filled in by what he imagines happened or what his family have told him happened, it doesn't relieve a romantic impact of these events in a slightest. And we like how it was told in a benefaction tense; given finding utterly some time ago that books can be created in a benefaction moving and there's no order created in mill observant we contingency usually and always write in a past tense, I've most elite books created in a benefaction tense. It creates a events seem some-more genuine and gripping, full of torment and tension, like constantly wondering what's going to occur next, vital right in a moment.
10 of 10 people found a following examination helpful.
By Maria C. Gudaitis
I collect books about Korean, and have examination many novels, poems and non-fiction works, though Lost Names is positively one of a best. Small sum and vital characters both assistance to build an accurate, romantic depiction of Koreans and a onslaught to live during a heartless Japanese function of World War II. we examination this book in one sitting, mailed it to one of my sisters, and have bought a duplicate for another sister. Some passages are humorous, and others are painfully sad...but a author infuses a whole work with wish and forgiveness. The categorical character's father is a noted investigate of dignity, knowledge and strength. My 13 year aged son has examination this book 4 times! It is somewhat mature for a immature reader, though if we or your child have any seductiveness in Korea, you'll adore it. A must-read for any Korean-Americans wanting to know a deprivation, persistence and amicable conditions forced on their relatives or grandparents, who survived a oppressive conditions of life in Korea during WWII.
65 used and new from $4.67
Customer Rating:
First tagged "japanese" by Faye
Most Helpful tags Customer Reviews: korean(3), lost names, courage, classic tale, atomicfiber, adolescence, korean boyhood, japanese, korean-american, japan, boyhood, family
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