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◈ The Hunting Genius of the Japanese Colonial Era
Chapter 67
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The Fish-Salter (4)
If Sokcho was a village where drifting peddlers and seamen tangled and writhed together, then Inje township was a proper city center, one fit to be called a "town."
From the substation to the township office to the military police detachment, the Empire's power reached its hand over security, administration, and the military all at once. And when it came to the economy, there was no fledgling marketplace like a five-day market here, but a permanent public market.
That was because Inje township sat on good ground.
It was perched right at the Hapgang junction, where no fewer than three freshwater streams came together. People gather along waterways, and money gathers where people are, so it could only prosper.
'Compared to Chuncheon it's nothing, mind you.'
But that, too, was simply how things were.
Chuncheon was closer to both Gyeongseong and Kaesong, and it had more places where the freshwater streams merged besides. Inje didn't have a single point of advantage; Chuncheon was a flat-out superior version of it in every way.
Even in later days, after Sokcho Harbor flourished and the Misiryeong tunnel opened and Inje gained the advantage of a direct link to the East Sea, Inje and Chuncheon always sat in a lopsided relationship, one above the other. So in this era, what more was there to say?
'It was just a place that lived off being a garrison's defense district...'
While Han San was sunk in the nostalgia of his past life, Chuk Hong-cheol struck up a conversation.
"Boss, is it really all right for me and the Grand Marshal and the Chairman to sleep in a place like this? Fellows like the three of us ought to just bed down in some empty house or hideout, like always..."
Even so, it was a respectable inn room in a city center worthy of the name. The Chuk Brothers had lived their whole lives discriminated against as butchers, and now they were fugitives because of their late turn to social activism, so they seemed thoroughly unsettled at the thought of staying somewhere like this.
Han San snorted a laugh.
"Loosen up, all of you. We'll be going to Chuncheon and Gyeongseong before long too, so this is nothing. Think of it as an employee benefit. An employee benefit."
"Boss...!"
At that bit of comfort, the Chuk Brothers' eyes glistened.
'So he really is a conscientious bourgeois who transcends class.'
"More to the point, once you've all rinsed off quick, come over here a moment. Let's put in a little overtime."
'So a bourgeois like that can't exist in this world after all...'
"Ah, there's that face again, head crammed full of red thoughts. Let's go, I said."
Leading the sulking Chuk Brothers out of the room, Han San headed for the stable where he'd parked the ox cart.
"Fill three basins with water for me, would you."
Into the water they brought, Han San dropped salt to make brine. He'd put a different amount of salt into each, so all three batches came out at a different salinity.
Now it was time to check the mackerel salt-curing test groups.
'Let's see, Group One. The ones I caked thick.'
These were intact. But when Han San tore off a tiny bit of flesh with his fingertip and set it on his tongue, his whole face scrunched up.
'Too much, just as I thought.'
The saltiness was the lesser problem. The fish flesh had simply hardened up stiff. It had turned into the kind of side dish a miser eats.
'Group Two. The ones with the curing concentrated on the guts and gills...'
These weren't bad. The flesh was firm and springy enough.
But the timing was cutting it far too close.
'I'll have to bump the salt up a little more than this. Next, Group Three...'
The moment he lifted them, Chuk Hong-cheol clapped a hand over his nose.
"Bleh! Boss, this one smells a bit."
"It does. No need to even look at this group. Toss it."
The inspection went on after that, and in the end only six fish survived.
Even those six weren't perfect. One of them hadn't been able to withstand the jolting, maybe, and its flesh had been mashed into a paste.
But Han San nodded.
"For a first try, this is decent."
At the same time, he jotted it down in the notebook in his head.
'Readjust the salt ratio by referencing Group One and Group Two, Group Four and Group Six respectively. Shift the loading position a bit too... well, that part's pointless if I leave it for later, so lay the rice straw about forty percent higher than now, and pack both sides with something that'll cushion them...'
The memory that had sharpened over the course of his regression sorted all that data into perfect order.
"Throw out what needs throwing out. The rest I'm going to salt lightly again, so watch me and learn."
"Tch. Honest to god, what are you trying to do with mackerel... And if you were going to do this, you should've called us before we washed up."
"Now, now. Don't you know about food hygiene? As for washing your bodies, you can just wash once more after this is done."
"All right, all right."
Grumbling at the unexpected overtime, the Chuk Brothers carried out the instructions faithfully. The surviving mackerel each bathed in brine of a different salinity, then dressed themselves in a thin coat of salt again and went to sleep.
Morning broke.
July 4th, 1933.
Again, Inje was a city center beyond comparison with Sokcho. It wasn't the sort of place where, like the Sokcho five-day market, you could slip a few bottles of honey to some civilian with a bit of pull, pay your respects, and have everything go smoothly.
That's right. In this era, on the dark fantasy peninsula, a [civilian market] was actually something like the [black market], that staple subject of martial arts novels.
So how did the market of light work, then?
According to the market regulations[1] the Government-General enacted in 1914, to spread out a stall in a public market you had to clear the walls of administration and security.
Riffraff couldn't break through this wall of lamentation, so the usual routine was to nervously set up an unlicensed stall in some corner, then bolt the moment a crackdown came.
But Han San had already lived through this era.
Among the [groundwork] he'd done across May and June were, of course, things bearing on exactly this.
"I'm here to file a business registration."
Han San stepped into the substation, packed with Japanese police constables, and filed. Thanks to his perfectly prepared documents and household register, and the grease he'd applied beforehand, the officer in charge stamped it without a word.
Pass.
"I've come to pay the market stall tax."
Next was the market administrator. This township office civil servant under the Government-General of Korea also looked over the documents, then grinned and issued the placard.
Pass.
"And next is..."
Han San let out a short sigh.
'The Inje Township Merchant Association.[2]'
That's right.
In the black market you could just go pay your respects to the local power broker, but in the market of light you only earned the right to go pay your respects after you'd finished all the preceding procedures!
You didn't think that just because you'd gone through the formal steps, you'd get to skip paying your respects, did you?
Maybe if you had the trait [Race: Japanese, Disregards the Customs of Colonial Natives Within the Bounds of Imperial Administrative Authority], but Han San was Korean.
Groveling to security, groveling to administration, groveling to the local gentry—an infinite-grovel-faced polyhedron of bowing, that was the way of commerce the merchants of this era's peninsula had to walk.
'Damned Japanese bastards, the lot of them. Modernization, my foot. How does it work out that the only thing that grows is the number of masters I've got to serve?'
Grumbling all the while, Han San took a small bottle of chestnut honey, portioned out separately as a gift, and a little phellinus mushroom and went to call on the head of the merchant association.
The two of them were already acquainted. Han San had been introduced through the connections of Ma Jong-sung of Cheonbo Pharmacy and Park Dong-po of Daeseong Leather, and he'd wined and dined the man here and there over the past two months.
Thanks to that hospitality, the deft handling of a seventy-four-year-old man, and the bribe he'd prepared, the merchant association head also chuckled and handed over a good spot.
Pass.
At last he could do business in the public market!
Han San and the Chuk Brothers set the cart down at a junction in the middle of the marketplace where the foot traffic crossed, and laid out a straw mat. They stood up a signboard reading [Han's Myriad Commerce], too, set where it would be easy to see.
"Right, now lay out the goods. Charcoal fire in the brazier."
Following that instruction, the special oak charcoal went onto the brazier. Han San used the brass IMCO trench lighter to light it with a stylish little flick, and once the heat built up he set a single salt-cured mackerel onto the grilling grate with a slap.
Sssssizzle!
Salty mackerel oil dripped onto the charcoal fire, making a sound that whetted the appetite. And a savory, salty, oily smell, the kind that made your mouth water, spread out across the marketplace.
"Whew, what's that smell?"
"Smells good, real good! Hey! That, that's mackerel, isn't it?"
The heads of the market-goers passing by all turned toward Han's Myriad Commerce in unison. They'd bitten the bait clean.
Watching it, Chuk Hong-cheol wore the look of a man who finally understood.
"You raised all that fuss over mackerel, and it turns out you brought it to draw people's eyes?"
Fanning the mackerel over the brazier, Han San snorted a laugh.
"Something like that. But going to all this trouble for that—doesn't it strike you as a lot of effort?"
"Huh? It does, it really does... Are you after something else again, boss?"
"Don't be in such a hurry. If there is, you'll find out soon enough."
Han San said it as he handed the fan and tongs to Chuk Hong-cheol.
"Tch. Now I'm curious."
Chuk Hong-cheol naturally passed the fan and tongs along again, and through labor exploitation in keeping with the class hierarchy, Chuk Jun-ha and Chuk Hyeong-don took over mackerel-grilling duty.
As a certain novelist of a later age put it, capitalism was the sharpest thing of all. No matter how deeply a man slept, hearing the song of the bird that drank capital would jolt him bolt awake.
The smell of grilling mackerel was just as sharp.
The elderly merchant selling dry goods in the spot directly to Han San's left cleared his throat.
"Er, ahem. Young man. As you can see, I sell cloth here, and I'm worried the smell might soak into the fabric if we're not careful..."
Han San instantly activated grovel-face.
"Aigo, yes, sir. My apologies. Hey, Hong-cheol-ajae! Stretch that bamboo screen we brought along right across that side, would you!"
"No, there's no need to go that far..."
"Of course there's need, absolutely! I'm being a nuisance to you. Ah, here, just take this for your health. We may end up doing business side by side again down the road, so I'm counting on your goodwill."
Han San held out, again, a small bottle of chestnut honey and a little phellinus mushroom. These too were sharp enough articles.
"Heh, well. All right. I'm counting on you too, young fellow."
And so the dry goods seller in the left-hand spot became a bird that drank chestnut honey and phellinus mushroom, smiling and letting it slide.
Of course, not everyone could become that kind of bird. Even an eagle worked at a nepotistic family firm where only brothers could get hired, didn't it?
The general-goods seller in the right-hand spot let fly a string of curses out of nowhere.
"Hey, you damn little pissant! Just put out the charcoal fire, dammit!"
The smile vanished from Han San's face, which had been treating the old dry goods seller on his left so amiably. He released grovel-face at once, stood, and looked down at the general-goods seller on his right.
"I'd rather not, though."
At those plain words, the general-goods seller's eyeballs bulged like they'd pop out.
"Wh-what, you brat!? This snot-nosed little bastard, what? You'd rather not?"
"When did I say 'I won't'? I said 'I'd rather not.' Are your ears not working so well?"
"You, you bare-skinned little thunderbolt! Hey! You, I've never seen your face before! You damn kid, you figure this whole Inje turf is some kind of joke, do you!? If you don't pack up and clear out right now, I'll call people over and—"
"Go ahead and call them. You sure talk a lot. Jun-ha-ajae! Turn the fanning that way, would you."
Chuk Jun-ha fanned the smoke over toward the general-goods seller. Doused in mackerel smoke and turned savory himself, the general-goods seller ground his teeth.
"You confounded wretch! Fine! We'll see about this! Hey, Chil-seong! Run and fetch your uncles!"
At the venom-soaked bellow of the general-goods seller, a small child darted off at a run.
A little later, four broad-shouldered bruisers came barreling over, shoulders thrown back. Following security, administration, and the local gentry, here was the last wall of lamentation blocking fledgling merchants—the market toughs.
The general-goods seller cried out in triumph and shouted to the market toughs.
"Aigo, you've come! Look! Look at what that son of a bitch is doing! Where does a first-timer get off sitting there puffing smoke! What if a fire breaks out! Go on, beat him good and proper!"
The general-goods seller was beside himself with glee. He could practically already see it—Han San seized by the collar and sprawled on the ground, the cart smashed to pieces.
The three brutish-looking fellows lined up behind them could surely throw a punch, sure, but if a brawl turned the place into chaos and broke all the goods, that whole day's business would be done for.
The Chuk Brothers seemed to think along similar lines, and their faces twisted into a scowl. They'd clenched their fists and were about to step forward.
Then the head of the market toughs strode up, planted himself in front of Han San, and snapped into a sharp ninety-degree bow.
"I pay you my deepest respects, Han San hyung-nim!"
In a voice truly steeped in earnestness, the head of the market toughs went on.
"I've heard a powerful lot about you from Sundae-hyung and Malja-noona! I didn't know it was today you'd be coming out to the marketplace, so I'm late paying my respects, that I am!"
"There now. You went to a lot of trouble, coming out in this heat."
Han San received the greeting calmly, still sitting cross-legged.
And the general-goods seller froze, eyes wide and staring.
[1] The Market Regulations (시장규칙) of 1914 were a set of ordinances issued by the Government-General of Chōsen that brought all Korean markets under colonial administrative control, requiring official licensing and taxation of every stall.
[2] Merchant associations (상인조합) were trade guilds through which established local merchants collectively regulated commerce in their district. In the colonial era they often served as an unofficial fourth checkpoint — after police, township office, and formal licensing — that newcomers had to negotiate with gifts and deference.
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