A River In Darkness

Written by Masaji Ishikawa.

🏔 What is it about?

In 1947, Hisanori Niizuma was born into a desecrate and deeply fragmented Japan. The country's longstanding, imperial system had collapsed alongside Japan's defeat in the Second World War and organized government had yet to be reinstated. As is common with such a void in leadership, the various communities that made up urban life were dominated by small gang activity and black market trade.

Hisanori's mother was well educated and came from what the community regarded as a respectable family. His father, however, was one of the many Korean's freed from captivity at the end of the war. The majority of his Japanese life had been spent in servitude, yet his newfound freedom placed him in a world that rejected his very existence. With little options or opportunity, Hisanori's father found value in brute strength.

He quickly rose through the ranks of the Korean gangs - his days spent drinking, enforcing the Korean community's place in Japan and coming home at night to beat his wife and scare his children. Outside the home, Hisanori and his siblings found little solace. With a Japanese mother and Korean father, the children belonged to neither community. In a particularly heartbreaking manner, the author describes his confusion at being told and believing that "Koreans are dirty people," while simultaneously identifying as partially Korean himself. It was not an upbringing any child should experience, recounts the author. Yet, as is a central theme to the book, it got worse.

As Japan began its rebuild and subsequent march towards democracy and collective capitalism, the utility of a Korean brute diminished rapidly. Hisanori's father's only asset was lost, and as a result, he grew angrier. I won't describe the terrible scenes recalled in the book here, but life for Hisanori and his family was bleak.

One day, representatives from the League of Koreans arrived at their door and began to pressure Hisanori's father into moving back to Korea. The Korea they describe, however, was not the Korea Hisanori's father was from. The Democratic People's Republic of Korea, or North Korea, had not existed until 1948. Again, the author reflects on his confusion: how could we return home to a place none of us had ever lived?" Nonetheless, despite the logical fallacy Hisanori was right to question, his family was eventually convinced, or conned, into moving to "paradise on earth."

From the first sight of North Korea's shoreline, Hisanori recalls knowing that life would not be good here. The ships in the harbour are in disarray, the buildings are worn and tethered, and worst of all, the surrounding agricultural land is barren.

When questioned on work, his father naively stated he was willing to work anywhere, ultimately landing him a job as an agricultural labourer - an extremely low ranking job on the Korean social ladder. Realistically, however, it likely wouldn't have mattered. As immigrants from Japan, the family already wore the badge of "Japanese bastards," once again leaving them without any kind of communal support. Hisanori's mother, despite having trained as a midwife, was shunned and disallowed by The Party to work any job whatsoever. She spent the remainder of her life wandering into the mountainside each day to pick weeds and mushrooms for food. His father, despite working diligently and following the rules, could only bring home the permitted rations of rice - essentially nothing.

Unsurprisingly, Hisanori's family went hungry. Their possessions are destroyed, their loved ones are lost, and all joy from their lives is taken. Some things change with time and new regimes, two factors always remain constant: They're still a family and life gets worse.

Through the eyes of a citizen, A River in Darkness casts broad light on the North Korean government's lies and propaganda. It illuminates The Party's ineptitude, bureaucracy, stupidity, and what can only be described as the purposeful pursuit of enforced suffering. This book, frankly, is a terrible read. It's painful and dark, but it's real. It's a stark reminder of how lucky we are to live where we do, and the necessity of protecting our freedom at all costs.

💭 Thoughts

I don't read books like A River In Darkness often. The suffering these poor people are going through is almost unimaginable to my Western mind. It brings an emotional weight that makes books in the genre hard to read.

But I do think it's important to immerse ourselves in details of human suffering from time to time. Not only as a reminder of how lucky we are but as a reminder that these cruelties are not just acts of history. Hisanori may have escaped, but pain and despair are still being forced down the innocent throats of millions more. It is happening now and it demands our attention.

When we read the news, it's easy to brush stuff like this off as just another dictatorship in a distant country where people are suffering but there's nothing we can do about it. Yet when you read first-person accounts, you are forced to face the fact that North Koreans are still being sent to concentration camps if they dare to complain about their state of life. You learn North Koreans are still boiling and eating tree bark to curb their hunger pangs, only to have them replaced hours later by the inevitable digestion issues you can imagine it causes. You learn North Koreans are still at a point where trading their blood for rice is the best their country can offer.

It's terribly humbling, and although it is little any of us can do about it, it's a message worth reading and a message worth sharing.