A review of ‘Pachinko’ by Min Jin Lee
Pachinko is a mechanical slot game quite popular in Japan where you tug onto a lever and the fates decide if they are going to reward you or not. But is it really the fates that are doing this? How can we be sure that the game is not rigged in the favour of the house?
Pachinko is a multi-generational story of a family of Koreans who suffer. I am consciously not adding a qualifier to the word suffer because all that they do is suffer. They suffer during the colonisation of the peninsula by the Japanese at the turn of the 20th century, they suffer after immigrating to Japan from the Korean colonies, they suffer today being called as foreigners by Japanese despite living in Korea for 4 or more generations now. Maybe to some of us suffering is a part and parcel of our existence and we only rest when we are six feet under.
The story begins in 1893 with Hoonie, the son of a couple living a meagre life in Yeongdo by running a boarding house for fishermen, who was born with a cleft palate and limp. He marries Yangjin and the couple has a daughter Sunja who is more experiencing all that is happening in this book and through whose eyes we see the story unfold. Sunja gets pregnant with Koh Hansu a Korean who is adopted into a Japanese Yakuza family and when Sunja realises that Hansu is married she marries Isak Baek, a missionary who was on his way from Korea to Osaka and was at the boarding house. Isak Baek believed that tuberculosis would take him away one day or the other and giving his name to this child and thereby legitimising it would be his last good deed. The story becomes slightly happy for the next few pages, Isak is actually a very kind gentlemen and once he moves to Osaka along with his newly wedded wife, he is warmly welcomed by his brother Yoseb and his wife Kyunghee who are thrilled to finally have a child amongst them. It is all songs and sunsets from them for a few more pages while Noa and Mozasu, Isak and Sunja’s children grow up and go to school with Noa being a studious goodie two shoes while Mozasu is more street smart.
Once again fates determine that this family has had enough of good times and Isak Baek gets arrested for being a Christian and for not worshipping the emperor on trumped up charges. This leads the family down another downward spiral that begins with the death of Isak in police custody and with the chaos of the second world war being the crescendo of their problems. The rest of the family eventually finds out that Koh Hansu is the Noa’s biological father and Noa gives up his college and runs away into hiding because he does not want to have anything to do with the Yakuza side of his blood and is for some reason ashamed to the extent that towards the end of the story he kills himself unable to bear the burden of all his lies any longer. This death was one of the most shocking and sickening experiences for me because this man was perfectly normal and I cannot even fathom why he even pulled the trigger. This just makes it a million times scary for me. I hope this fate never befalls anyone else, be it fictional or otherwise.
Mozasu has on the other hand has had some what a better journey. He starts working at a Pachinko store as the right hand man for the owner and eventually ends up owning many Pachinko parlours himself. His son Solomon is American educated and works at a bank. Fates finally catch up with them too and Solomon gets fired for apparently being involved with the Yakuza and he finally decides to embrace his identity as a Zainichi and joins his father’s business and helps him run his Pachinko parlours.
Like a good game of Pachinko, life is often rigged in favour of those who can rig it in their favour. The house only lets you have an illusion of victory, keeping the prize just out of your reach so that you always keep coming back for more and more. Life, my friend, is no different than that.
