Names don't matter

This work is particularly unusual to the extent that only relatively minor characters have proper names. The main character begins in the story as an unknown year-old baby boy. His father was a resistance movement leader who was imprisoned, recently released and just freed from parole. He and his young wife flee Korea for Manchuria in the dead of winter. They are both Christian emigrants known by friends, family and associates that have no name at the beginning of the story. Ironically, these Koreans fleeing Japanese domination and occupation were named by the Japanese when the father registered his new family name as "Iwamoto." Paradoxically, on that day grandfather, father and son visit their ancestors' gravesite to apologize for losing the name that remained unstated.

The reader knows these characters by their familial role relationships. Specifically, there is a nuclear family comprised of father and mother...