The National Theater Concert Hall’s ninth International Theatre Festival has focused on works about the struggle for survival in the face of political differences, historical disputes, gender clashes and death.
At the Experimental Theater this weekend as part of the festival is an unusual work by a Korean born and raised in Japan, Chong Wishing, whose Children of the Ocean (海的孩子們) is a play without words about the last major battle of World War II, the US military’s struggle to capture Okinawa.
The battle began on April 1, 1945, as the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet and more than 180,000 US Army and Marine Corps troops invaded the island as part of Operation Iceberg, the plan to occupy the Ryukyu Islands ahead of the final push for the main Japanese islands. The battle lasted until June 22 and was one of the bloodiest of the war, with a huge attrition rate among US forces, Japanese Imperial Army troops and Okinawan civilians.
Photo Courtesy of Lim Young-hwan
Children of the Ocean, which premiered in 2016 on Okinawa, recounts the grieving and terrifying memories of the battle, but utilizes humor and music to reduce the horror and try to heal historical wounds with laughter.
Chong envisioned it as a requiem to children who lost their lives in wartime, but has said it is “dedicated to adults who used to be children, and children who have no time to become adults.”
Chong is the grandson of immigrants who moved from an area south of Seoul when the Korean Peninsula was under Japanese colonial rule to Japan for work. His father was 15 when the family made the move.
During World War II, his father was a second-year student at Hiroshima Teacher’s School — now known as Hiroshima University — when he was drafted into the Imperial Army and sent to the officers’ school before becoming a military policeman.
After the war, Chong’s father wanted to return to Korea with his mother and sister, but the boat carrying the family’s belongings sank and they lost everything, so he decided to stay in Japan, where he started a refuse collection and salvage business in Himeji. He built a squatters’ shack on top of the outer wall of the moat surrounding Himeji Castle, part of a shantytown of other poor Koreans and Japanese, where he raised his family of five boys.
The 61-year-old Chong graduated from what was then called the Yokohama Movie and Broadcasting College and worked for several film and theater companies as a writer and director before going freelance. He has writer and directed for film, television, theater and musicals.
His family used to be considered “Chosen,” or North Korean, in Japan, but Chong changed his nationality to “Kankoku” or South Korean, when his play Sennen no Kodoku (A Thousand Years of Solitude) was performed in South Korea, although he does not speak Korean.
He said his entire family later switched their citizenship as well, and that his father did so because he wanted to be buried there when he dies.
Chong has used his experiences growing up as a third-generation Korean in Japan, as well as his father’s wartime experiences, to create characters in his previous works, some of which focused on the lives of Koreans in Japan, including 2008’s Yakiniku Dragon (Korean Barbeque Dragon).
He has said his works focus on people considered minorities, and contradictions in society, because that is the world that he grew up in, while he attributes his use of humor to having grown up in the Kansai region, which is known for its love of comedy.
Children of the Ocean runs about 95 minutes without an intermission.
Taiwan’s English education system is being pulled apart by three opposing forces. Bilingual Nation 2030 pulls students toward English and global communication. Artificial Intelligence (AI) readiness pulls them toward digital judgment, verification and AI-mediated work. But Taiwan’s old exam culture pulls them back toward memorization, grammar drills, timed reading and correct answers. If the education system keeps using old exams to define success, it risks producing graduates who are neither genuinely bilingual nor genuinely AI-ready, but trained for tasks machines can already perform. The first force is Bilingual Nation 2030. Launched in 2018, the policy aimed to “help Taiwan’s workforce connect
It seems every few days one bumps into one of those “real man” comments in which Taiwan is urged to “face reality” or similar, and “make a deal,” with the speaker implying that soon it will be too late. “Deal” advocates always present themselves as having a superior grip on reality, and the manly ability to make the “hard choice.” Their testosterone-laden language often echoes that of Taiwan sellout advocates. Note that such commentary always specifies a process (“make a deal, work with, make progress”), never the end state of what occupation by a violent authoritarian colonialist state will entail. In
There are shadowy cabals plotting to sell out Taiwan to be annexed by China, by invasion if necessary. Fortunately, they are buffoons. In 2019, former Bamboo Union gangster and founder of the China Unification Promotion Party (CUPP), Chang An-le (張安樂, colorfully known as “White Wolf”), led a protest at the Legislative Yuan against comments made by then-premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) that in the event of an attack by China, he would never surrender, but would protect the nation by fighting to the end, even if he only had a broom. Chang had party members bring a wooden casket that they
June 1 to June 7 "If all Taiwanese were as afraid of dying as you, then what would happen?” Physician Shih Chiang-nan (施江南) reportedly said this to his wife Chen Chiao-tung (陳焦桐) after she urged him to stop intervening on behalf of Taiwanese soldiers stranded overseas after serving in the Japanese Army during World War II. Shih had clashed with high-ranking officials over the issue, engaged in several heated arguments with Taiwan governor-general Chen Yi (陳儀) and allegedly shouted at general Ko Yuan-fen (柯遠芬), chief of staff of the Taiwan Garrison Command, over
RSS