An Aesthetic that Delves Deep into the Heart of History

Another Unmistakably Korean Novel by Jung Chan

Through a deep, unflinching examination of power, violence, and the resilience of human dignity amidst suffering, Jung presents his tenth novel The Bird With No Feet. The novel revisits pivotal moments of 20th-century violence—such as the Nanjing Massacre, Hiroshima bombing, Japanese military's forced sexual slavery, and the Cultural Revolution during Imperial Rule—prompting readers to reflect on the essence of genuine salvation for humanity. Within the framework of history’s grand narrative, fact and fiction intertwine around the fictional protagonist Wei Ke-shing. Real-life figures, including Leslie Cheung, Chen Kaige, Iris Chang, and Choi Seung-hee, emerge—sometimes in intricate realism, sometimes in hazy, dreamlike scenes. Unyielding in their individual quests, each character bears their own questions, and through “becoming but a shadow or figure out of a dream,” they embody what the book’s foreword (written by Kim Yeon-su) describes as their “beautiful collapse,” ironically resurrecting buried skeletons of history. This novel is the culmination of Jung Chan’s nearly forty years of relentless inquiries into hidden truths and the stark nature of suffering.

For True Salvation We Need Hard Questions

Fact and Fiction Intermingling as if a Dream

The novel begins when “I,” a correspondent stationed in Beijing, hears news of the film star Leslie Cheung’s suicide. Through a close acquaintance Wei Ke-shing, whom “I” had met at the Nanjing Massacre Symposium, he discovers that Wei was well connected with Cheung and Chen Kaige, the director of Farewell My Concubine. Known to “I” only as an insightful, unorthodox historian, Wei Ke-shing was actually a musician who, in his youth, had performed in the legendary Beijing opera singer Mei Lanfang’s shows. Wei had inspired and befriended Cheung during the challenging filming of Farewell My Concubine. As the spectral nature of Wei’s story gradually comes to light, “I” is drawn deeper into the somber shadows cast by history upon his and others’ lives.

The title A Bird with No Feet also echoes a famous line by Leslie Cheung in the film Days of Being Wild, alluding to Cheung’s ardous life and the dark fate of the novel’s characters, always drifting as if strapped to the wind, unable to find a place to rest. Wei Ke-shing, born just after the Nanjing Massacre and orphaned early on, learns music from a blind musician and wanders across China without a place to call home. His relentless exploration of evil, along with inescapable despair, highlights not only his personal sorrow but also the dark legacy of 20th-century violence. Chen Kaige, like his protagonists in Farewell My Concubine, endured the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution, during which he was forced, as a young Red Guard, to publicly denounce his artist father. He recalls to “I” the pain of this experience, which conflicted with his early lessons in art and freedom, imparted by Wei's beautiful music.

The novel, which begins with the seemingly unreal death of Leslie Cheung, encounters a major turning point with the news of another central character, Iris Chang’s suicide. Iris Chang, the author of The Rape of Nanking, was a Chinese-American historian who, along with Wei Ke-shing, was devoted to exposing the truth of the Nanjing Massacre to the world, with a vision of healing both victims and perpetrators. However, she succumbed to depression due to harassment and threats from Japanese right-wing forces. Wei Ke-shing and “I” commemorate Iris Chang and reflect once more on the nature of violence and the possibility of redemption. Meanwhile, “I’s” great-aunt, a victim of the Japanese military sexual slavery system, was taken to a comfort station in Nanjing as a child and returned to live alone. Despite her horrific trauma, she strives to live a free and complete life, refusing to "bow down again to the history of perpetrators" (p. 131) in her "tightly bound life." The characters in the novel, while swept up by the violence of war and oppression of power, continuously confront and question history. Each bear witness to the inescapable tragedies of history while attempting to live beyond its oppressive grasp. Featured prominently are art forms like Chinese opera, Korean pansori, and Japanese Noh, which symbolize the characters’ intense pursuit of life. These forms of art, embodied by figures such as Mei Lanfang and Choi Seung-hee, are vividly portrayed as ways the characters seek to complete and adorn their lives.

“If we cannot understand evil,

we cannot understand those who commit it.”

As with Jung Chan’s intense inquiries, The Bird with No Feet takes an unconventional approach to viewing history. The novel expresses profound anger and futility in the face of violent history while also calmly analyzing the essence of incomprehensible evil. At its core is the Nanjing Massacre, which, according to Wei Ke-shing, is the most “perplexing” event in 20th-century history. Wei Ke-shing identifies the source of this perplexity as the Japanese emperor. “If the barbarity of Auschwitz was for the purity of the Aryan race, then the barbarity of the Nanjing Massacre was for the sake of a single man. The Japanese worshipped as a god a man who enjoyed rare crustaceans, Mickey Mouse, and British-style breakfasts” (p. 43). The novel begins its “understanding of evil” from the paradox that because the emperor, reigning as a transcendent being, cannot be held accountable for human sins, neither can the Japanese be held accountable. Wei Ke-shing contrasts Hiroshima, almost destroyed by the atomic bomb, as an “antithetical space to Nanjing” (p. 44), highlighting the absurdity of Japan viewing itself solely as a victim — remembering only the “sacredness of Hiroshima” (p. 45) while disregarding its responsibility for the “sin of Nanjing.” Furthermore, Wei Ke-shing and Iris Chang strive not only to analyze and critique this “perplexing” structure of evil but also to understand perpetrators and seek redemption for them alongside the victims. They emphasize that the refusal to acknowledge another as human — “thinking of a person as not a person” (p. 162) — is the root of violence, including the Nanjing Massacre. The redemption they aim for is not merely abstract or religious; it envisions concrete, transformative change.

The Bird With No Feet envisions a transformation where the perpetrator and the victim stand side by side in understanding, with the perpetrator apologizing and acknowledging their wrongdoing. However, in a reality where “the perpetrator does not confess to being a perpetrator” (p. 241), this remains a faint and distant dream. Yet, at the same time, this earnest dream, like “Zhuangzi’s butterfly that flies above the time of history, gazing down on history” (p. 240), is a beautiful vision that overcomes time and forgetfulness. Therefore, the dream depicted in The Bird With No Feet is not an illusion that vanishes with the novel’s end. By reading and sharing in this beautiful dream, we too may begin to envision a new history together.