From page one and line one I was instantly drawn into the world of Pachinko:
“History has failed us, but no matter.”
Pachinko follows the lineage of a Korean family as they emigrate to Japan and deal with discrimination and suffering throughout the 20th century. The story’s primary protagonist is Sunja and the plot always cycles back to her. When Sunja is found to be with child out of wedlock her family faces imminent shame but is saved when a young, sickly Christian minister volunteers to marry her and move to Japan. From there Sunja’s life is forever changed as their family grows and they all struggle with self-identity. Are they Korean or Japanese?
What amazed me about this story is that although it is fiction, it’s centered around true events. When Korea was taken as a colony by Japan in the early 1900s, the Korean people as a whole were oppressed and Koreans who moved to Japan were treated as animals. The house Sunja moves into in Japan describes these conditions and their jobs, pay, and food were no better.
“They got off at Ikaino, the ghetto where the Koreans lived…
Ikaino was a misbegotten village of sorts, comprised of mismatched, shabby houses. The shacks were uniform in their poorly built manner and flimsy materials… Matted newspapers and tar paper covered the windows from inside, and wooden shims were used to seal up the cracks. The metal used on the roof was often rusted through. The houses appeared to have been put up by the residents themselves using cheap or found materials–not much sturdier than huts or tents.… ‘This place is fit only for pigs and Koreans,’ Yoseb said, laughing.’”
I am exceedingly pleased by Min Jin Lee’s historical fiction. She includes time line events that cement the characters in a believable reality and she plugs in culture and language references that give life to the story.
I found this story to be one of redemption. Several characters are named after biblical people and there is a continuous undercurrent of the Christian faith throughout the book. It is not over the top, but it is identifiable and comforting even to the reader. I loved Isak’s (Sunja’s husband) metaphor for his marriage to a ‘harlot’ referencing the book of Hosea in the Bible. And as I read I found similar connections and themes alluding to their characters’ namesakes.
***SPOILER ON NAMES AND GENERAL PLOT POINTS***
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So Isak married a pregnant Sunja, not only recreating the story of Hosea but also showed a sacrificial and selfless nature similar to the Bible character, Isaac. I’m reminded in particular of when Abraham is commanded to sacrifice his son Isaac (as a test from God) and Isaac follows his father and does not resist. Also, Isak is the starting point of his family line in Japan (excluding his brother and sister-in-law) just as Abraham’s son was the beginning of the numberless Hebrew people (Jews).
Their first son, Noa is an echo of the Bible character Noah in that he is his family’s hope for ‘salvation.’ He is their hope for a better life and his entire family sacrifices so much to send him to school. To his mother, Sunja, he is her new beginning and when Noa dies much of her joy goes with him.
Their second son, Mozasu, the namesake of Moses from the Bible becomes the ‘savior of his people’ in a sense. Their family begins in poverty and suffering but through the help of a family friend Goro-san, Mozasu is trained in the pachinko business and later builds a pachinko empire in Japan. He raises up his family out of the slums yet is continually disdained as the Japanese believe he is a yakuza (gangster) even though he is an honest businessman. I would say that Mozasu become the second main character since much of the story revolves around him and he in turn effects many plot points.
And finally, there is Solomon. Solomon is the only child of Mozasu and is the grandchild of Sunja. He was named after the biblical Solomon who was a great king of Israel and the wisest man in human history. While, I wouldn’t argue Pachinko’s Solomon was very wise (he actually was quiet oblivious at times), he is blessed with a strong mind and is able to attend college in the United States. Like the biblical king, he too makes stupid mistakes but seeks to grow and adapt from them. He is perhaps the most compassionate and long-suffering of his close-knit family. This is best demonstrated in his relationship with Hana, his step-sister, who was a difficult person and ultimately rejected the love and kindness shown her. Yet Solomon never gave up on her and still held a place for her in his heart as she lay dying.
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And these are only part of the fundamental characters in Pachinko! Lee did an outstanding job creating beautifully broken and interweaved characters that you can’t help but empathize with. This story was very much character driven yet retained its strong historical presence.
And of course, with such effusive praise, I must include my criticism of the book as well. I found the amount of sex scenes, predominantly in the later half of the book, to be unnecessary. I do understand that they reflect the spirit of the age, approximately the 1960s onwards, yet the details I didn’t think were needed. They were not as graphic as other novels though and I did not discount my rating of Pachinko because of this.
What did affect my star rating of Pachinko were the disrupting time jumps and missing moments such as births, deaths, weddings, etc. It felt like there were also several unresolved dilemmas that staying in my head because they were not reassessed. I understand the nature of this novel to be one that requires certain time jumps (since it covers almost a century of family drama), but I had to rewind several times and try to make sense of what happened in between the chapters. Some examples are: the effects of Noa’s death on his family, Haruki’s homosexuality discovered by his wife, and the strife between Sunja and Hansu.
Also, as I was nearing the end of the book I sensed the denouement closing in, but when I got to page 485 and flipped it to continue reading, I ran into the Acknowledgements Page. I immediately flipped back thinking I must’ve missed something, but no I hadn’t. That was the end. I was a bit surprised because it hadn’t felt like The End and I still felt like Sunja wasn’t done with sorting out her thoughts and feelings. It was almost a let down because I wasn’t mentally prepared for the end.
All in all though, I was incredibly happy with this read not just because it was a historical fiction, but because it was an Asian, and specifically, Korean/Japanese story. I’ve realized through my reading history that Asian settings, characters, and cultures are my favorite within this genre. It reminded me a lot of Roots by Alex Haley and ran at the same speed as it.
Stunning. 4.25 stars
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