The Half-Burned Flag
As a detective, having sharp ears was a considerable advantage. But now and then, you heard things you didn't want to hear. The whispering about me as I made my way toward the old Governor-General of Korea building was one of those things.
"What's she doing, a Japanese cop?"
"A young woman? Isn't that Ajisai from Jongno? The Japanese patrolmen all went home, and she's still strutting around in uniform?"
"No, look closer. That's not a Japanese uniform. You think they appointed her as police in the new government too?"
"Seriously? After everything, they're putting a Jap on the force again?"
"Ugh, I think she can hear us. Let's go."
I hadn't been deliberately staring toward the voices, so I had no way of knowing who had been watching me. But when I turned my head, I caught Hui-yeong fixing the gossipers with a dark, cutting glare. I nudged her.
"That's plenty. These days, if it ends with just some whispering nearby, we should be grateful."
"I suppose you're right."
Hui-yeong withdrew her fearsome gaze, apparently satisfied by my answer. I joked lightly.
"Good ears. That chatter was barely audible to mine."
"People were gossiping about you on the street the day we first met, too. Though… looking back, the streets did seem cleaner then. Not that I miss it."
"That was back when the government lived in terror of another March First Movement breaking out. My colleagues at our station stood ready to arrest and beat anyone who so much as dropped trash in the street. Of course it was cleaner than now."
In truth, there was something palpable about how few police were visible in downtown Kyeongseong these days. Unless the Korean government were fools, they would hardly leave unused buildings like the still-standing Jongno Police Station sitting idle. According to Hui-yeong, Koreans who had once worked as Japanese patrolmen had already been rehired. And yet the system wasn't exactly 'running smoothly.' The streets didn't seem to be total lawlessness, not quite, but the government's grip felt tenuous in a way hard to ignore.
On the way, I saw a large Rising Sun flag lying discarded on the ground. No doubt it had been torn down from somewhere when independence came, and with no one hired to clean up properly, it had simply been left where it fell.
A white field with a red disc. The flag that symbolized Japan was stamped all over with black footprints, as if countless people had walked across it. The Vice Minister of Military Affairs, seeing me pick the flag up on instinct, asked me a question.
"Does it bother you? Seeing your homeland's flag treated like that."
"No, it's just… I hear a cry in it. People shouting that the world has changed."
"Hasn't it? Enough that people can walk on the Hinomaru."
"We went back five years, from 1910 to 1905. If you call that the world changing, it sounds like a deception to me."
Hui-yeong seemed to understand what I meant. In 1910, Japan annexed Korea. But that outcome had already been decided in 1905. The national humiliation of the Gyeongsul year was, if anything, less of a shock than the Eulsa Treaty had been — because the treaty five years earlier had already proven the country's sovereignty was gone.
"And if the world has truly changed…"
I took the matchbox from my coat pocket and struck a match. Then, without ceremony, I set fire to the Hinomaru in my hand. Hui-yeong, watching me burn my own country's flag, put on a rather startled expression.
"…Sister?"
"The people wouldn't have stopped at trampling it, either. You know it as well as I do. The empire that crushed them didn't actually fall."
I worried the fabric might refuse to catch, but the match-flame ate into the flag more readily than I expected. Yet it didn't roar into full blaze, and it never consumed the whole thing. Halfway through, the fire died, having burned only half the flag. The match in my hand had gone out entirely as well.
"Shall I light it again?"
"No need. After all, the country didn't actually perish. A flag half-burned is rather the appropriate thing."
As a morally upstanding citizen, my duty would have been to gather the debris neatly and dispose of it somewhere proper, but my interest in a half-burned flag had already faded, so I simply flung it back down where the Japanese flag had lain in the first place.
A half-burned flag. A sundered empire, split in two. Yes — Korea had been half of the empire. Without seizing Korea, developing it, stationing an army there and pushing onward, Japan could never have taken the step toward the continent it had always dreamed of and longed for.
So letting Korea go had been like cutting off one of the empire's arms. And yet… it wasn't over. Because even Korea had been only half-liberated. The Kwantung Army had withdrawn, but Puyi's Manchukuo still lay under the influence of Japanese advisors, officers, and bureaucrats. The Oriental Development Company had formally pulled out of Korea, while the South Manchuria Railway remained entrenched in Manchuria all the same.
The world had not changed. It had merely rolled back five years or so. The Taegukgi flew over the Governor-General building today as it did every day. And yet, honestly, burning even that one halfway would have reflected reality more faithfully.
In front of the building, Hui-yeong asked me something.
"Do you hate the Japanese Empire?"
"That's a complicated question."
"I said it in prison, didn't I? That the Emperor's benevolence may be vast as the seas, but perhaps such benevolence is not needed."
"If anyone overhears, that's dangerous talk. Keep it to yourself, just for me."
"Is it the country itself? Japan — do you hate it?"
I hadn't been speaking loosely when I called the question complicated. Three years was not so long as the time I had lived as a 'Korean' in South Korea. But was the three years I had lived as Ajisai Mizuko really such a brief span?
It wasn't. After becoming a Japanese patrolwoman, there was much about Jongno Station's policies that I found repugnant. When general mobilization was declared, the station lent its manpower to conscripting Korean men. Beyond that, during the war, human rights abuses against the subjugated people were unmistakably committed — abuses I hardly wish to put into words. And yet…
I had lived three years treated with this body, this identity.
"After the Meiji Restoration, Japan achieved dazzling growth. At a speed Korea and China simply couldn't match."
"I'll grant that. Late Joseon floundered helplessly, with no way out."
"But it's also true that it was the first to set foot on the road of violence. In the empire, the Emperor is a living god. A being with the authority, the legitimacy — no, the responsibility — to block that road. And before all of it — Ito's schemes, Ishiwara's strike on Manchuria, Mutaguchi's assault on China, Nagumo's raid on Pearl Harbor — neither Meiji nor Hirohito said a single word. So that was the imperial benevolence, and I simply think such benevolence isn't needed. You know it as well as anyone. Look at the situation in Europe, shaped by Hitler's benevolence."
"Born a few decades earlier, you'd have fought for the Shogunate."
"Maybe. Charging in on horseback in full armor, only to be cut down by a machine gun."
"No, with your skills, you might have sliced the machine-gunners apart with a sword and carried the day yourself."
Even the great Tom Cruise couldn't manage that — and neither could I. We looked at each other and laughed over the pointless nonsense, and the guards watching over the Governor-General, seeing our manner, waved us through.
Only once I'd registered it did I notice that they were wearing uniforms the same deep navy blue as the one I had on. This, it seemed, was the new symbolic color of the People's Republic of Korea's police.
"So, should I head to the Ministry of Military Affairs?"
I asked Hui-yeong after stepping into the building. She shook her head.
"There's nothing for you there. I only just closed a major contract yesterday, so there's nothing to do for the time being."
"What kind of contract?"
"A smuggling contract. It's classified — a government secret. If the Japanese government catches wind of what we're doing, we'll have headaches enough trying to talk our way out of it."
"Smuggling? Smuggling what?"
"Arms, obviously. What else does a Ministry of Military Affairs do? Manchuria's close, which is convenient, but security there has gotten so tight lately that finding trading partners is quietly becoming difficult. China is the best bet. Especially the remnants of Wang Jingwei's Peace Construction Army — they offload old weapons in bulk, dirt cheap."
"What if they hand us broken guns? Wang Jingwei's army can't have been using anything good."
"We have to accept some duds. If our own arsenal reworks them well enough that they can at least fire… ha. And of course, since we're smuggling as much as possible without Japan finding out, there's no lodging complaints about defective goods, either. We'd need at least brigade-strength forces before we could claim to be a real country…"
As she spoke, our footsteps carried us to the Department of Security. The time had somehow become 8:30 in the morning.
It felt late for a first day of work, and an unnecessary anxiety crept over me. Since this would be Hui-yeong's first day at the office since donning her navy uniform, she suggested I simply knock and announce myself. I took her advice, drew a deep, steadying breath, and rapped twice on the door.
"Ajisai Mizuko. Is anyone inside?"