Pachinko, Gambling Game, Symbolizes Mixture of Fortune

To go to a website with some information and about the current status of Pachinko in Japan, click here. If you want to know more about Pachinko, there’s plenty online! 

Geographically, after Japan annexed Korea in 1910, the main characters of Pachinko, by Min Jin Lee, traveled a long distance from Yeongdo, Korea to Osaka, Japan in an attempt to escape extreme poverty. Yeongdo is a long trip across South Korea from Seoul, the main city in South Korea. After the annexation, the Japanese discriminated against their Korean neighbors on a personal as well as a political basis, and the Koreans had little ability to raise money or upgrade their lifestyles from poverty. Korea and Japan are both relatively small countries, but travel between them was daunting, especially for those without much wealth. In the next generation of the story, Noa moves from Osaka to Waseda University (near Tokyo) in Japan and then hides in Nagano, Japan, a different but nearby city. Noa’s brother, Mosazu, becomes wealthy working in the Pachinko business, and his son, Solomon, goes to school in New York and then moves to independent South Korea after World War II. There is a full-circle feeling to the travels and moves among this extended family.

We discussed the poverty of the Koreans at the beginning of the book and the problems caused by the Japanese takeover of Korea. Dennis found the treatment of the Koreans “appalling” and somewhat depressing. Heather was surprised at how impoverished the Koreans were. She was reminded of a Japanese woman she had hired to help her when she was a young mother, and that the Japanese woman had spoken badly of the Koreans.  Joanne said that when groups fight, culture is the first aspect of the opposing society that people tend to attack.

Because of the fighting, there were suicides and tragedies in the story. Cindy T. noted there were abrupt deaths, and Marcia noted the suicide by Noa, which seemed to happen because Noa was successfully living in Japanese society and was “passing” as Japanese, when his clearly Korean mother visited him. Noa didn’t want his children, and possibly his brother, to suffer because of Japanese people learning they were of Korean descent. Clearly, he was also concerned about his own welfare if his origins became known.

There was some discussion about the treatment of women in both the Korean and Japanese cultures. Heather noted that everyone, including the women, expected women to suffer. Joanne told us about the “Comfort Women,” more than 100,000 Korean and other (Chinese) subjugated women who were captured to be given to men in the Japanese army during the years surrounding World War II.

Everyone enjoyed reading Pachinko, by Min Jin Lee! Fascinating, if sad, story and characters! There was some history and exotic information about Korea and Koreans, as well as Japan and Japanese history and social commentary, too.