The Calligrapher's Daughter (54 page)

I thought of my own identity, and now saw that my father, by not naming me, had unwittingly accorded me enormous freedom. In the cemetery with Dongsaeng when I was newly betrothed, I remembered how he’d despaired, saying, “My life planned for all this before I was born.” Unlike my brother, my identity had been less encumbered. Without having to confine my dreams to the destiny outlined in one’s name and the expectations bestowed during one’s naming, I was left free to embrace the natural turns of my character and to determine my own future, drawing from the deepest well of unnamed possibilities. Yes, I was the calligrapher’s daughter, the daughter of the woman from Nah-jin, and I had grown to embody the singularity of my name, Najin.

I remembered Emperor Sunjong, Empress Yun and Princess Deokhye, and how they had to the extent possible maintained their responsibilities of royal blood amid compounding difficulties and death, until the gates of the last palace had clanged shut behind them. I thought of Imo’s generosity and devotion to duty, the constancy of my mother’s great faith in Jesus and the intensity of my father’s insistence on tradition. Along with their never-spoken love of family and country, these were the ways they had held on to hope. As for me, I realized it wasn’t the answers I was seeking all those years that mattered as much as the act of seeking itself. It was incredible, this human capacity for learning, for hope, for love, that persisted like the box of light in my cell, the waters that flowed in my dream. It was beyond my understanding. Tears came as I surrendered to this wonderment of being.

During our first private time together by the willows near the pond, Calvin had said, “And what do you think is the answer to your question?” It wasn’t for him to forgive or reject my struggle of faith, but for me to accept it, to embrace it rather than deny or pretend. There were discussions we’d have about God’s plan and the price of salvation through Jesus, but I was here at this moment, asking, and that was what was true. Who better than a minister-husband to explore this with? “Keep your mind open,” Teacher Yee had said. “Keep your heart open,” my mother had said.

I heard my husband remove his coat and shoes at the makeshift door. I stood to close the window and to look at him fully when he entered. It
strengthened me to see his solid form fill the doorway, to see his gently receding hairline that made his handsome forehead even higher, to have been gifted the beauty of his patience and loyalty over so many years. His eyes glowed in the lamplight and I saw my calm features reflected in his. “Yuhbo,” we said almost simultaneously, and he gestured with the smile I recognized from our first days together that I should speak first.

I accepted his outstretched hand and we sat not quite facing each other. “Yuhbo,” I said, “Since you’ve been home, there’s much I’ve wanted to tell you.”

The moon swelled as the evening advanced. Its silvery light shone through the clear glass windows and diffused the shadows between us.

WHILE
THE
C
ALLIGRAPHER
’
S
D
AUGHTER
IS A WORK OF FICTION, IT TAKES place in a country whose antiquity, often alluded to in the novel, might be unfamiliar to some readers. Korea is one of the oldest unified nation-states in history and is also one of the most homogeneous societies in the world. Two of Korea’s dynasties, including the most recent Joseon Dynasty
*
(1392–1910), are among the longest sustained monarchies in world history. Graced with peace, reformation and enlightenment, these monarchies also suffered strife: royal filicide, internecine coups, attempted rebellions, factionalism, invasions and oppression. It is the
extraordinary longevity of Korean political, ethnic and cultural continuity that remains a wellspring of the nation’s proud identity.

Korea’s legendary origin is remarkably pinpointed to a specific day more than 4,300 years ago, October 3, 2333 BCE, and is a mythic saga of a heavenly visitation to a she-bear on a mountain who ultimately gives birth to Korea’s first king, Dangun. In the years leading to the Japanese occupation, the Dangun legend rose to importance as newspapers pitted Korea’s ancient heavenly heritage against the Japanese emperor’s relatively recent divine pedigree in a contest of primacy. But until the modern age, neither country disputed the supremacy and longevity of China.

In all of East Asia, China was regarded as the center of the civilized world. Those who were friends were like little brothers who, in exchange for loyalty, symbolic tributes and trade, benefited from Chinese military protection and advances in culture and civilization. Those who were enemies, like the Mongols and the Manchus, were considered barbarians.

Clearly China had a profound influence on the Korean peninsula, but over the centuries Korea transformed those influences into its own distinct advances in literature, art, ceramics, printing, philosophy, astronomy, medicine and scholarship. Korea invented movable metal type (c. 1230) more than two hundred years before Gutenberg. The world’s first self-striking water clock was constructed in 1434 at the dawn of the Joseon Dynasty, followed by the invention of new sundials, the precision rain gauge and several other astronomical and horological devices in Korea’s golden age of science (King Sejong’s reign, 1412–50). The most significant invention under King Sejong was the Korean phonetic alphabet, simple enough to be learned by all classes, yet so comprehensive it is still used today. In terms of philosophy, the establishment of Confucianism in the Joseon Dynasty as state policy, religion and social norm was so transformative it has been distinguished as
Neo-
Confucianism by historians. Also, Korea is the only nation in the world where Christianity first took root without the presence of priests or missionaries, but exclusively as a result of the written word—Bibles, translated into Chinese by Jesuits, that a Korean scholar-official brought home from a diplomatic trip to Beijing in 1631.

In contrast to Korea’s brotherly friendship with China, Korea and Japan shared a long-standing acrimony, exacerbated over the centuries by
repeated Japanese pirate raids and the brutal Hideyoshi Invasions in 1592–98. China came to Korea’s defense, and that conflict ended in stalemate, but not before Korean Admiral Yi Sun-sin invented the world’s first ironclad ship, the famous turtle ship, and used inventive explosive shells and mobile rocket launchers to repel the Japanese fleet.

The Hideyoshi Invasions initiated an era of wholesale change in the old East Asian order. Japan’s samurai tradition gave way to the Tokugawa shogunate and the beginning of the Edo or modern period of stability (1603–1867) in that country. China’s great Ming Empire fell to the Manchus, a tribal people from Manchuria, who founded the Qing Dynasty, China’s last empire. These key changes fostered Korea’s isolationist policies, and being geographically outside of major trade routes, it became one of the most insulated countries in the world. When the turbulent political climate ebbed in East Asia in the seventeenth century, friendly relations were reestablished, but the animosity between Korea and Japan, and China and Japan was never forgotten.

The 1800s brought wave after wave of Westerners pounding Asia’s shores—Prussians, French, Russians, the British and Americans—an influx that signaled the fall of the Joseon Dynasty. All but Prussia gained footholds in East Asian territory or trade. In particular, a U.S.-forced trade agreement with Japan yielded a new Meiji government (1868) so eager to adopt Western ways that when Japan made its next annual trade tour to Korea, the Korean ministers were shocked to see the Japanese diplomats’ radical change in dress and attitude.

This international influx led to four wars, China’s Boxer Rebellion, and numerous treaties in the latter half of the nineteenth century. In this climate, King Gojong acceded to the throne in 1864 at age twelve. Power devolved to his father, known as the Daewongun, a staunch isolationist. Two years later, Gojong married a fifteen-year-old from the powerful Min clan, which favored modernization and relations with Japan. Bitter power struggles between Queen Min and the Daewongun resulted in waffling policy extremes of isolationism versus Western enlightenment, plus land reform, hefty taxes, growing ideological foment, a major peasant uprising (the Donghak Rebellion) and, overall, a vulnerable Korea. Using gunboat diplomacy, Japan forced Korea’s doors open in 1875 to exclusive trade, and Japanese advisers and military flooded into the Korean court.

Four nations decided the fate of Korea in 1905 without once giving the Yi monarchy or the Korean people an opportunity to voice a single plea for independence. Russia had invaded Manchuria in 1900 and mustered for China, spurring the Russo-Japan War. To protect its interests in China, Great Britain allied with Japan and in turn acknowledged Japan’s interests in Korea. Both England and America believed Japanese control over Korea was an effective preventative against Russian expansion. President Theodore Roosevelt also saw Japan’s domination of Korea as quid pro quo for U.S. control of the Philippines. And finally, in the American-engineered 1905 Treaty of Portsmouth that ended the Russo-Japan War, Russia pledged not to intercede with Japan’s interests in Korea.

Japan moved quickly. In November 1905 a Japanese statesman, backed by troops, commanded the Korean prime minister to sign the Protectorate Treaty (also called the Treaty of 1905), giving Japan “protective” control over all government offices excluding the new Korean emperorship. The prime minister refused and was dragged from the palace. Someone was dispatched to find the official seal, which was then affixed to the treaty by Japanese hands and considered accepted.

As Japan’s interests began to spread beyond Korea’s borders, dealing with Emperor Gojong’s diplomatic attempts to regain Korea’s independence and quelching the frequent student protests and popular insurgencies grew burdensome. In 1907 Japan coerced Gojong to abdicate to his son, Sunjong. Then on August 22, 1910, Sunjong was forced to sign the Treaty of Annexation, which made Korea a colony of Japan and ended the long autonomy of the Korean nation. Less than a month later, at the dawn of the thirty-five-year era of the Japanese occupation of Korea, Najin was born.

With the exception of personal and family names, most Korean words in this book are spelled using the Revised Romanization of Korean system. Because the vowel combinations used in this system might be unfamiliar to readers, nonstandard spelling has been applied to the following words:
abbuh-nim, ahsee, oppa, umma-nim, unnee
and
yuhbo
.