A supremely addictive and immersive family saga about four generations of Koreans in Japan, from the author of Free Food for Millionaires.
I enjoyed Min Jin Lee’s first novel about the Korean diaspora in the USA, and Pachinko likewise focuses on the Korean immigrant experience, this time telling a multi-generational story spanning nearly eighty years. It begins at the turn of the 20th century in a small Korean fishing village, shortly after the annexation of Korea by the Japanese. A son of a fisherman marries a 15-year-old girl; their first three children die, but the fourth, a daughter called Sunja, lives and blossoms into adolescence.
Young Sunja has a secret love affair with an older man, a well-dressed gangster in white patent leather shoes, fluent in both Korean and Japanese. When she falls pregnant, Sunja is devastated to learn that her yakuza has a wife and children in Japan, and wants to make her his Korean mistress. Sunja won’t have it, and instead accepts what seems like an offer of salvation from a sympathetic Presbyterian minister, Baek Isak, who wants to marry her and give her child a name. The couple move to Japan to live with Baek Isak’s brother and his wife in Osaka, where Sunja has to adjust to the life of zainichi, ethnic Koreans in Japan and perpetual outsiders.
I didn’t know what pachinko actually was, and rather than satisfying the need for instant gratification I decided to wait and find out the meaning of the word organically from the book. Pachinko turned out to be a Japanese version of a pinball machine, and one of the few forms of gambling not banned in Japan. It took me by surprise at first, but pachinko is an apt metaphor for the lives of the characters, bouncing around like steel balls around pins, hoping against hope that the pins have been tweaked in their favour but finding misfortune as easily as luck.
Everything I loved about Free Food for Millionaires is also present in this book: simple, down-to-earth language with an occasional unusual turn of phrase that delighted me, a sprawling cast of well-drawn characters, the unbiased third person voice that illuminates the inner lives of multiple characters in the same scene, making it easy to understand them. The downside here is that Lee can be generous almost to a fault, often devoting a single chapter to a side character whose experience offers a different perspective on identity and cultural differences, but who can then disappear from the narrative for good. Because of this, the second half of the book feels more fragmented and perhaps just a tad less satisfying, if not less engrossing.
I had some basic knowledge about Japanese imperial history in the 20th century, and Japanese culture being stubbornly insular, so the dark side of Japan as seen through the eyes of the Korean immigrants, treated as second-class citizens and experiencing prejudice, scorn and discrimination, didn’t come as a surprise. Sunja’s decision irrevocably shapes her life and the lives of her sons, Noa and Mozasu. Like any mother, she hopes that her sacrifices and hard work will create a better future for her children, but things don’t always work out for the second generation, who may feel like they don’t truly belong anywhere, the country of their parents or the country they were born in.
There’s a great deal of hardship, suffering and loss in the novel, alongside with loyalty, grit and determination. Though conditions are not favourable to the Koreans, some manage to work within the system and carve out a good life for themselves, while others succumb to shame. Of all characters, Sunja embodies resilience the most. She understandably ends up making way for the younger characters, but I still found her story the most moving, and it’s fitting that the novel’s emotional conclusion belongs to her.
I practically raced through the book, so swept away I was by Lee’s rich storytelling and vivid imagery. The only letdown for me is finding out that Min Jin Lee is not what you’d call prolific, publishing just two novels ten years apart. Novel no. 3 in 2027? Which is only two years away, scary to say.
yggdrasille.com 