Pachinko is one of those novels that I felt I should have read a while ago. It had been recommended to me so many times, by so many different friends I was curious how I would finally react once I read it. It’s a meaty book that made it perfect for my 2022 holiday break, lasting me all the way to the new year. Unsurprisingly, I fell in love. Note: spoilers ahead!
Min Jin Lee’s multigenerational tale spans decades of one family while covering the Korean experience in Japan, particularly of the Zainichi, ethnic Koreans who live in Japan as permanent residents yet do not qualify for citizenship. The novel primarily follows Sunja, who provides most of the perspective in the book, but it begins with her parents’ story and winds through the perspectives of many branches of her family. By doing so, the book emphasizes how small an individual sits within history while looming large within the story of a family.
It’s an ambitious book that examines the lives of ordinary people within historical moments. Although war is often the setting, the heart of the book is how each character deals with their lot while striving for more. “History has failed us, but no matter,” the novel begins. And truly this is the central point.
“No one is clean. Living makes you dirty.”
Pachinko, Min Jin Lee
Like many multigenerational novels, the perspectives shift between various characters, but Lee refrained from stating the name of each family member in the chapter heading as is often the trend. The result is a story that simply flows across the years rather than cutting sharply back and forth. Chapters shift into the perspective of characters introduced previously, adding not just their POV of the situation but naturally moving the story down the generational line via children, spouses, in-laws, and other close relations who become bound to the family by circumstance. This pacing drives the story forward in a way that left me often reading into the wee hours of the morning after swearing I would read just one more chapter. What happens next becomes the view of new generation.
Pachinko is a heavy story. Many themes are examined as we drift into the lives of Sunja’s in-laws, spouses, sons, and grandsons. The role of women (and how “a woman’s life is endless work and suffering” as explained to Sunja by her own mother) is examined in so many contexts. From her sister-in-law Kyunghee, whose marriage is one of devotion without passion, to her son’s wives, who are working mothers of a new generation, to the sexually liberated but deeply fragile Hana, women of all generations and how their role within a family and within a war is played out beautifully. Each one is an individual. But it isn’t only the women who suffer. Whether going to war (or not), working in “dirty” Pachinko parlours, running away, or dreaming of rebuilding a nation, the men of the novel also struggle to find their place within society and the world at large. Suffering and hope in turn become the threads binding them all together.
“He was suffering, and in a way, he could manage that; but he had caused others to suffer, and he did not know why he had to live now and recall the series of terrible choices that had not looked so terrible at the time. Was that how it was for most people?”
Pachinko, Min Jin Lee
Racism and subjugation of course are central to the story. As ethnic Koreans within Japan during the occupation years and beyond, many of the family’s financial circumstances and ability to prosper are limited by fear and disgust placed on them by Japanese society. Both the hypocrisy and blindness of racism are demonstrated well in the stories of Sunja’s sons. For Noa, her eldest son, his deep intellect and fluency in Japanese allows him to camouflage, ultimately growing to shun his Korean heritage. In the case of Mozasu, her younger son, it makes him the target of violence and limits his career opportunities, and despite his business successes, suspicion clings to him for his whole life.
As a reader, I especially enjoy any foreword, acknowledgments, and appendices that come with novels. They share so much about the author and development of a book, adding more dimension to the experience. The copy I happened to read included a reading group guide, a speech from Caroline Kennedy (former U.S. Ambassador to Japan) introducing Min Jin Lee at a festival, and an interview transcript with the author which added some wonderful context to the book. What these revealed is while Pachinko is not Lee’s debut novel, it was her first book idea which took her 30 years to put together, and frankly, it shows. She interviewed many Koreans in Japan whose lived experiences are reflected in Sunja’s family and neighbours. It is a beautiful, well-researched book to start 2023 with and I recommend it wholeheartedly if you’re determined to read more (or at all) this year!