Warning: Spoilers Ahead

After thirty years of research, Min Jin Lee released her best-selling novel Pachinko. Set in the twentieth century, Pachinko traces the journey of Sunja, a poor young girl striving for a better life by immigrating from her fishing village in Busan to a ghetto in Osaka. The novel focuses on three generations, starting with Sunja’s origins and ending with her grandson. It’s an excellently written multigenerational story that highlights the abhorrent treatment of Korean-born and Korean-living residents of Japan–including forced squalor, systemic discrimination, and overt racism. But there are points where the novel doesn’t fully live up to the weight of its title. While Lee constantly alludes to the controversial business of pachinko through the characters’ eyes, she ultimately falls short of highlighting the role of Pachinko in Korean-Japanese society. 

The Plot

At sixteen, Sunja is impregnated by an older, wealthy Korean-born fishbroker named Koh Hansu, who promises her a lavish life as his mistress in Korea. Choosing honor over prosperity, she marries a terminally-ill minister named Baek Isak to give her child a surname, moving to Osaka to live with his family. Her illegitimate child Noa is a straight arrow–a hard-working, diligent young man who receives admission into the prestigious Waseda University despite his upbringing in poverty. Although he follows the rules of Japanese society even after learning of his real father’s connection to crime syndicates–working as a bookkeeper under a false Japanese identity, marrying a quality woman, and having children–his struggle with his origins and true identity compel him to shoot himself in the head. 

Sunja’s legitimate son, Mozasu, frequently gets in trouble at school and barely makes passing grades. He drops out to work at a pachinko parlor, eventually becoming a wealthy pachinko owner himself.  His son, Solomon, attends university in the United States and moves to Tokyo to work at an investment bank. Solomon’s first major project is financing a resort, and he’s tasked with persuading an elderly Korean woman to sell the home she has lived in for decades so it can be cleared for the development. By calling in a favor from his father’s friend in the pachinko business, Solomon persuades the woman to sell her home; she passes away a few days later. The bank promptly fires Solomon because of his father’s connections to pachinko, stating that the deal will lead to negative publicity due to suspected foul play in the woman’s death. Frustrated that his attempts to conform to Japanese society have failed, Solomon decides to work for his father in the pachinko business, which Mozasu accepts after some initial resistance.

What Pachinko Gets Right: The Cycle

Let’s start with the good–Pachinko nails the Japanese mistreatment of Koreans and how it leads to the cycle of economic immobility. Though they grew up in different circumstances, Noa and Solomon’s characters mirror each other. They both work hard in school, attend prestigious universities, and take the traditional paths to achieving success. Lee drops a critical dose of irony with Noa’s bookkeeping job: he’s a Korean working for a Japanese man at a pachinko parlor. Despite pachinko’s reputation as a dirty business, the owner has no qualms about participating in it. But he does express disdain for hiring Koreans, thanking his lucky stars that Noa’s pseudonym is a nice Japanese name and not one of those dirty Korean names, as he puts it. According to the Japanese characters, the problem with pachinko is not the nature of the business itself, but the people running it–as Lee points out throughout the book. 

Solomon’s story reinforces this point as he’s forced to renew his papers every three years so that he doesn’t get deported from the only home he’s ever known (Japan) to a country where he’s never been (Korea). His a-ha moment comes when he loses his job, a sign that no matter how diligently he works to assimilate to Japanese society, he will only be seen for what he is–a Korean. Lee seamlessly weaves in a full-circle ending by having the book’s shining example of morality turn to the dark side with his transition into pachinko, since it’s apparently the only industry to which his people have been relegated. Mozasu’s quick acquiescence to his son’s request only emphasizes this anti-Korean sentiment.

A Key Miss: The Role of Pachinko

About halfway through the book, I had to look up pachinko since Lee had not explained the term. Pachinko is a Japanese pinball machine, with an immediate non-cash payout to avoid government scrutiny for gambling. It’s seen as a dirty business due to mafia-esque business practices and using pachinko machines as roundabout ways to gamble. Koreans own most of the pachinko parlors in Japan, inviting the negative association between Koreans and pachinko.

Had I not learned this context, I would’ve missed the lessons from just about every single point above. Lee constantly alludes to Koreans owning pachinko parlors, most evident in Sunja’s stubbornness to keep Mozasu in school instead of letting him work at one. Readers can glean that pachinko men are looked down upon, but they’re not exactly sure why. Without external research, they don’t truly understand the cultural ramifications of owning a pachinko parlor. If pachinko was an ancillary concept in the book, I wouldn’t mind doing a little extra research to gain a deeper understanding. However, pachinko is literally the book’s title and underscores key themes in the novel. By failing to include even a brief introduction to the business itself, Lee deprives readers of understanding why the Japanese relegated Koreans to second-class citizens, even if they were born there and became productive members of society–a critical point of her novel.

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Final Thoughts

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Although it’s not in my top ten, Pachinko is a brilliant work that’s worth the read. It effectively relays historical fiction through a multigenerational narrative, leaning on its characters to drive the themes home while maintaining a compelling plot. If you’re a fan of thematic narratives, character-driven multigenerational stories, and novels that grapple with moral and identity struggles, Pachinko is definitely the book for you.