Pachinko: a Japanese pinball game
that is wildly popular, that spawned an economic behemoth to rival any major industry.
An industry that is dominated by ethnic Koreans in Japan. And when the Pachinko
parlours are frowned upon because of (real or imagined) links to the yakuza
gangsters, it taints all the ethnic Koreans by association. Yet they cannot
escape this spiral: they got in to this business because other avenues of
employment were not open to people of their ethnicity. Pachinko: a metaphor for
the “damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t” predicament of immigrants who are
treated as second class citizens. This metaphor is uniquely applicable in this case,
but the inescapable tragedy is that parallels abound around the world.
Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko is
a well-researched saga of immigration, exile and hyphenated identities. The
tales of Korea’s annexation by Japan and the excesses of the world wars, the
division of Korea, and the subsequent wars: these are all well-known to
students of history. But what of the stories of ordinary people caught in these
times of great upheaval?
The author has woven this novel
seamlessly into the fabric of the 20th century: starting from a humble
fishing family in Busan in the South of unified Korea, a chance encounter with a
Korean wholesale trader which ties their fortunes to a family from the North, and
a resulting immigration to Osaka. This cements the family’s identity as Korean-Japanese,
a hyphenation that proves definitive to the course of the story. Persecution and
discrimination are constant, though they change garb as generations shift; but just
as constant and is the will to survive and thrive. The female characters are found
saying more than once, “A woman’s lot is to suffer. We must suffer.” Yet, these
women are no damsels-in-distress; they in fact are the prime movers of this
tale: whether it is finding a way out of financial ruin by sheer enterprise and
dogged determination or making critical decisions whenever the men, bogged down
by the weight of tradition are found wanting. Not all of them are martyrs
either, and the book stands out in the way it deftly projects changing social
mores, building an appreciation for the rapidly evolving role of women across
generations.
This novel has a rich and
well-crafted cast of characters across four generations, covering the breadth
of ideology, religion, aptitude and aspirations. Take the case of Solomon, the son of a second-generation
Korean immigrant in Japan. His father Moazasu
rose from debilitating poverty and crushing life events, going on to build a
fortune in the Pachinko business, managing to realise a much-cherished dream of
educating his son in the United States. But does education help Solomon make a
clean break from his Pachinko-linked past, making the question of immigrant
identity a thing of the past? Even when he seems to have lost all he worked for
to petty racist stereotyping, Solomon refuses to paint all members of the
oppressor community with the same brush, even as he demands the same for his
own community.
Then there his uncle Noa, who makes
a startling realization about those who claim to accept him despite his
background and origins: “…seeing him as
only Korean—good or bad—was the same as seeing him only as a bad Korean. She
could not see his humanity, and Noa realized that this was what he wanted most
of all: to be seen as human.”
I will carry this moment of Noa’s
realization with me: isn’t this what our struggles are ultimately about? To be free
from stereotypes of gender, race, religion... To be seen as human.
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