Yang Seok-il: Blood and Bones 1

Korean Diaspora Literature

It is Osaka in the 1930s. Kim Shunpei, a migrant from Jeju Island, works at a fish cake factory and is widely feared for his physical strength and brutality. He moves through life in the only way he knows how: by terrorizing those around him.

A bestseller in Japan, this harrowing, kaleidoscopic novel portrays the violent and eventful life of a flawed man modeled after the author's own father.

Publisher’s Review

Blood and Bones, originally published in Japanese in 1998, follows a half-century of the violent, eventful life of migrant worker Kim Shunpei in Osaka. Feared by coworkers, bosses, neighbors, family members, and gangs alike, he moves through life in the only way he knows how: by terrorizing those around him. Yang Seok-il's vivid portrait of Kim Shunpei is modeled after the life of his own father. Built from intimate memories of struggle in the gritty underbelly of Osaka, Yang's harrowing, kaleidoscopic novel depicts how patriarchal violence and restricted life chances can wrack a minority Korean community both during and after Japan's empire.

About the Author

Yang Seok-il (b. 1936- )

Born in Osaka, Japan, to a couple from Korea’s Jeju Island who settled in Japan during the Japanese occupation of the Korean Peninsula, Yang, whose Japanese name is Yan Sogiru, graduated from Osaka Prefectural Kozu High School and did odd jobs including driving a taxi after a business he pursued failed. His 1980s non-fiction work Takushi doraiba nisshi (Taxi Driver Diary), based on his experience as a cabbie, was made into the 1993 critically acclaimed film All under the Moon. He also won the 1998 Yamamoto Shugoro Prize of Japan for his semi-autobiographical novel Blood and Bones, which was also made into a film released in 2004.

About the Translator

Adhy Kim is a writer, scholar, and teacher of Asian and Asian American literature and culture.

Contents

Blood and Bones 1

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13