KAWASAKI, Japan - The shrill voice of one old woman with humped shoulders still leaves a distant but lasting memory. When I was an elementary and junior-high-school student in the late 1970s and the early 1980s, I frequently visited my ethnic-Korean friends after school. One day, on the way to a Korean friend's house, an old woman just down the way suddenly snarled at me, saying, “Ilbon ka!” I was stunned. Later I found that what she meant by those few words was something like “Hey, Japanese!” or “Are you Japanese?” (Ilbon means “Japan” in Korean, and ka is an interrogative in Japanese.) She had expressed her deep distrust of all Japanese nationals, even of a boy like me. I was definitely intimidated. As can be readily understood, the older the Koreans, the more distrustful they were. Today I understand why.