Sugihara is a student in a Japanese high school, but he's not Japanese. Born, raised, and educated in Japan, he is still Korean, a citizen of South Korea, and legally a resident alien. This places some legal restrictions on him; it also makes him a target of bullying and prejudice.
He has had to become a fighter, while keeping his eyes on the prize of passing the entrance exams for a Japanese university. When he meets and falls in love with a Japanese girl named Sakurai, they bond over classical music and foreign films.
But she doesn't know he's Korean, until, after a personal tragedy in his own life, he finally tells her.
Anti-Korean prejudice runs deep in Japan, and it's not clear that Sakurai will be able to overcome it in herself, or even want to.
This is a short novel, and a novel of first love, but it is so much more than that. It captures, effectively and without a heavy hand, the complexities of being a foreigner in the only country Sugihara knows, the ways it has affected his parents, especially his father, and both the bonds and the conflicts in his relationship with his father.
I found it both enjoyable and enlightening. Recommended.
I bought this audiobook.
No comments:
Post a Comment