This piece revisits Ōe Kenzaburō’s own account of watching a North Korea repatriation drama on his wedding night, examining how the episode has been interpreted and cited in later debates.

2016-04-10

Readers are already aware that I have long described the internet as the greatest library in history—and the fastest one ever created.
Today, a supplementary text appeared in response to an essay by Masayuki Takayama that was released to the world.
What follows is one of the answers posted by participants to a Yahoo question concerning Okinawa Notes.
(Posted on November 29, 2007)

“Send him back to North Korea.”
The reason given is that Ōe Kenzaburō was a man who, on the night of his wedding, watched television and cried, saying, “I have no North Korea to return to.”

“Ōe Kenzaburō: ‘I Have No Korea to Return To.’”
After returning home late at night following the wedding ceremony, I casually noticed the television set and turned on the switch; images appeared.
Thirty minutes later, leaving my bride alone, I was in tears, overwhelmed with emotion.
It was a drama starring Chieko Higashiyama about repatriation to North Korea: one day, an elderly and beautiful Korean woman suddenly dresses herself in white Korean clothing and proposes to her son’s family that she alone return to Korea.
At that moment, as I thought, “What a cruel story,” and as I considered that I myself had no Korea to return to—because I am Japanese—my emotional balance collapsed.

(“My Television Experience,” Ōe Kenzaburō, Gunzō, March 1961)

This, it is said, is what Ōe Kenzaburō thought on his wedding night.
To some, such thinking appears markedly different from that of ordinary people.
Even now, the claim concludes, it is not too late to send Ōe Kenzaburō back to the “North Korea to which he ought to return.”