Pachinko: National Book Award Finalist

Pachinko was a very lucky read. I randomly bought it and didn’t think much of it.
As soon as I read the first line I couldn’t put it down anymore. It’s been many years that I read a 500 page book so quickly (full time job, children, household…). I took every single second possible to keep reading.
This is so carefully thought out. A beautifully written saga that follows a family over 5 generations in the war times of Korea and Japan. I never really thought about the war over there (being Austrian we are very caught up in our own dark history) – this book opened my eyes so much – the characters are so deep and the author is most obviously very smart and careful in writing this incredible book!
This is an absolute 10/10 and more!

I originally watched some episodes of the Pachinko dramatization on Apple TV. Because of the excellent acting and engaging script, I became quickly engrossed in the production. After learning the story would be released in 4 seasons, I was dismayed knowing I would be at the edge of my seat for the next four years yearning to know what happens to these characters. Wishing to spare myself this misery, I looked up the book, Pachinko, upon which the drama was based, bought my copy from Amazon Kindle and read it cover to cover in two days. Being a slow reader and being that Pachinko is not a light read, I got through that book very fast simply because almost from the first page, I could not put it down.

Generally, I’m not a fan of family sagas, but I have recently begun watching Korean dramas with subtitles. While enjoying the dramas, I have become interested in Korean history and culture, so reading this book, written by Korean American author, Min Jin Lee, was an opportunity to acquaint myself with Korean culture from the lens of someone raised in a Korean household, but who also has lived and been educated in the United States.

I was grateful that, unlike the movie, the story in this book runs along in a sequential timeline with very little time-shifting. Lee presents this story in a universal, omnipresent point of view, so one gets the story from multiple viewpoints, not only from major characters, but from some minor ones as well. The writing is so skillfully executed, the narrative runs seamlessly along. The writing is also immersive with just enough description to set the scenes. Through this evocative writing, I could feel the closeness of life in Sunja’s childhood boarding house while appreciating the freedom and beauty of the black rocks by the seashore where Sunja and her companions washed clothes and where she spent time with her lover, Koh Hansu. A week after finishing this book I can still close my eyes and feel the poverty of Osaka where Sunju and her family eked out a living, all crowded in a small, rickety dwelling, held down and oppressed for being Koreans by their Japanese overlords.

The strongest part of the story were the characters, all thoughtfully written and fleshed out. Sunja was a plain, uneducated peasant girl whose great intelligence, wisdom, loyalty, faith and well-honed instincts helped lay the foundations for her family’s survival during rough times and later for their great prosperity despite the prejudice they were forced to endure. Her two loves, Koh Hansu and Isak, different as two men could be, protected her and her family in their own way. Her son, Noa, witnessed the hardships of the World War II in his younger years, but because of his great intelligence and because of the secret presence of his wealthy, natural father, he was spared many of the dangers and deprivations other Korean children faced. Growing up and being educated alongside Japanese children, he came to be greatly conflicted between his Japanese education and his Korean heritage. His younger brother, Mozasu, lacked the patience for education, yet he was diligent and street-smart and made a success of his life running and eventually owning pachinko parlors. Koh Hansu was probably the most tragic of the characters Lee highlights. He is a gifted Korean, born into poverty who found success by selling his soul to his Japanese overlords. He has married into a wealthy Japanese family, even been adopted by his father-in-law, yet he has little respect for his Japanese family. He loved the Korean peasant girl, Sunja, but she refused to become his mistress and went on to pursue her own life. Though Sunja is only one among many lovers, he remains haunted by her throughout his life. She gave birth to his only son, but she also touched his heart in a way no other human being could. Though Koh is a much feared and corrupt Yakuza in later years, he still goes out of his way to show kindness to Sunja and her family. Also of interest are the couple Yeseb and his beautiful wife, Kyunghee. Yeseb struggles with a feeling of inferiority towards his younger brother, Isak, who he believes is too idealistic and fragile for this word. He is a protective older brother hemmed in by traditional, paternalistic ideals that prove costly in the foreign world of Imperial Japan where his family is forced to exist under difficult and almost impossible conditions. He works multiple jobs and still isn’t able to make enough to support his family, yet he refuses to let his wife work outside the home. Later he becomes disabled and is forced to become dependent upon others, including his wife, for care. The most beautiful thing about this extended family is these individuals have their share of conflict, resentments, and misunderstandings, but throughout their lives, they are completely devoted to each other. When trouble threatens from the outside or when one family member is in need, each one of them comes through for the other.

The book starts in Korea during the early part of the twentieth century during the Japanese occupation. In Korea, Sunja and her family, as well as other Koreans, are regarded with suspicion by their Japanese overlords. Not only do the Japanese exploit them and take the best land and sea can produce, but they regard and treat the native Koreans as innately inferior. The attitudes don’t change after World War II during occupied Japan or even as late as the 1980’s when the book ends. Koreans living in Japan or even born there are still regarded legally and socially as foreigners. Returning to Korea, as many of these individuals desired to do after the war, was problematic as well, and even downright deadly. Families and individuals from the north of Korea, had to return to a part of Korea run by the Communists. There were individuals in the book who returned and were never heard from again. The south of Korea was run by a dictator most of the time and beset by chaos and corruption, as well as the Korean war. Sunja and her family were trapped in Japan by these circumstances, but Japan, first Osaka and then Yokohama, became their home. Here they were able to start and run businesses and earn a living. Being Koreans, they might never be fully accepted in their community, but here they found a life. They weren’t shunned by all Japanese. Lee introduces her readers to Japanese individuals touched by this family, but all of them have one thing in common: because of circumstances or past actions or mistakes, they have been marginalized by their Japanese countrymen. There is Mozasu’s girlfriend, Etsuko, who was divorced by her husband because of infidelity. In her disgrace she had to leave her community in Hokkaido and move to another town. Mozasu’s first employer had an autistic son and was also marginalized. Noa’s first serious girlfriend, Akiko, who doesn’t fit in with her Japanese peers, is a precocious Japanese girl from a wealthy family, who is fascinated by Noa’s Korean heritage. When Akiko, through her ignorance and thoughtlessness, interferes and unwittingly forces an explosive family issue, Noa freezes her totally out of his life.

I never heard the name Pachinko until I watched some of the drama on my streaming service. As the book explains, it is a popular game in Japan that is a cross between pinball and slot machines. Winners appear to win by chance and thereby have hope for a good outcome, but the owners set the machines and allow some wins so that other less fortunate people will be drawn in. Winners are those who happen to play during the time of day the pins are loose and ready to yield the winnings. I suppose life can be looked upon as a game of Pachinko. Pachinko was one of the few avenues where Korean individuals could make their fortunes in post-war Japan. It was not considered respectable enough for good Japanese people to be a part of, even though the Japanese loved to play it. Both of Sunja’s sons end up making a living running Pachinko.

This book presented a window into, what are to me, two foreign cultures, Korean and Japanese. Sunja’s extended family is made up of aristocrats from the north of Korea as well as peasants from the south. Sunja’s youth was grounded in Confucian, old world Korean ideals, but as time passed, she and her family were introduced to Christianity, the values of Imperial Japan, post-war commercialism, and globalization. The values of her Korean childhood such as loyalty, morality, revereance for family and work ethic remained in Sunja and were passed on to subsequent generations of her family. What stood out to me was the great influence of Christianity and how its message of forgiveness and loving grace impacted this family and tempered the harsher aspects of their traditional Korean ideals. Unlike many modern authors dealing with Christian characters, Lee presented the clergy in a balanced and realistic way, neither lionizing them nor demeaning them.

All of Lee’s characters were carefully nuanced and believable. Individuals like Sunja, Isak, Noa, Solomon, and Hansu came alive to me and continue to haunt me nearly a week since I finished the book. I was truly sad to come to the end of book. It was a beautiful read, one of the best books I’ve read in the past three or four years. I highly recommend it!

The American novelist Min Jin Lee’s “Pachinko” (2017) is a lengthy family saga of a Korean family extending from the years 1910 through 1989. The early part of the story (1910 — 1933) is set in a small, poor fishing village in Korea while most of the rest of the book is set in Japan.

The novel tries to be both broad and particular. The broad theme explores the relationship between the Koreans and Japan. Japan had made Korea a colony in the early part of the 20th century. Lee’s book shows how the Japanese have always tended to look down on the Koreans and to treat them patronizingly and to deny them social, economic, and legal opportunity. This was the case when Japan took control of Korea, and it continued, and apparently still continues, with respect to the many Koreans who lived in Japan. Most Americans, including myself, probably know little about Korean and Japanese history. To fill this gap in understanding, this book is highly worthwhile. It shows some history from the responses of Koreans to the situation in which they see themselves. The book covers the colonial relationship, the years leading up to WW II and the War itself, culminating in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Korean War, and the rebuilding of Japan in the following years.

The book is also a family saga with a large cast of characters. In common with many historians and novelists, Lee tried to focus on ordinary individuals rather than on leaders and on affairs of state. She covers the struggling early history of the family in Korea and then its fortunes in Japan. In the long family saga and the depiction of the many characters, the novel is less convincing than in its overall depiction of Koreans and Japan. The book includes some highly effective scenes and characterizations as well as some that work less well. The most effective parts of the book are the earliest as the author sets the stage and introduces her characters. The scenes set in Korea are highly convincing as are most of the scenes in Japan through the end of WW II. The book deteriorates markedly in its latter sections. The book tends to introduce and to discuss important characters late in the story and these characters and their issues are much less interesting that the characters and situations introduced early in the novel. As an example, the title of the book is derived from a Japanese game of chance played on a pinball machine. Koreans, denied legitimate employment opportunities in Japan, tended to gravitate to operating Pachincko parlors. Several people in this story do so. The game of Pachincko is not introduced until about the mid-way point in the novel and has little to do with what came before. The book’s late focus on the game and on some less than distinguished latter characters is anti-climactic to the earlier part of the novel. Some of the sexual focus of the latter part of the book also seems distracting and unrelated to the family saga or to the story of Koreans and Japan.

The writing style of the book is largely effective but mixed. I found the work flowed well, but the author has a tendency to be didactic and to interject some awkwardly long and preaching discussions into the voices of her characters. The author focuses more on women than on men and on the strengths of many of the women as they work outside for many years in the markets and try to be a support to their families. The book does not deprecate men or male sexuality. Many of the male characters receive sympathetic portrayals.

In an interview given for the paperback edition of “Pachinko” the author describes her subjects as “history, war, economics, class, sex, gender, and religion”. She describes her themes as “forgiveness, loss, desire, aspiration, failure, duty, and faith.” Her descriptions are accurate. She has much to say about all of these matters, but her discussions often get muddled and lost in this overly-long and less than focused novel.

The religious themes of the book are strong with a favorable portrayal of Christianity in Japan during a time when it was largely unwelcome. I was surprised that the book didn’t give a fuller treatment of Buddhism which has many adherents in both Korea and Japan. A main theme of the story alludes to the Biblical prophet Hosea who marries a prostitute. The Bible story and the related story of some of the main characters are well told and integrated.

The love of literature and of learning also form important, well-told parts of this saga. The length and content of the book parallel some of the long British Victorian novels. One of the book’s major characters is a lover of literature with aspirations to become a professor. The book draws parallels between the aspirations of this character and Victorian writers including Dickens and George Elliot. These scenes were effectively done, as were the religious scenes. They tended to get lost in the long flow of the novel and in its more rambling, less effective themes and moments.

Many of the reader reviews of this novel capture and assess in varied ways its strengths and weaknesses. For the most part, I enjoyed this novel for its portrayal of a history that I hadn’t known much about before and that rewards reflection. I also enjoyed much of the story and many of the characters, especially in the earlier part of the book. The virtues of this book were strong enough to make the book worthwhile even though it was over-long, diffuse, and deteriorated in its later sections.

Robin Friedman

I haven’t even finished this but even with the small amount I have remaining I can tell you it’s a wonderful story that I didn’t want to put down. I want to know what happens so much. It’s well written and interesting. I do not like sad stories or ones about war so for me to get so involved in this meant it was really good and had more substance than just sad war torn characters. I just have to read to the end now! Bye.