Sometimes I have deja vu moments like feeling that I've written about the same topic before with the same title "Pachinko," but I can't be sure and with almost 500 entries since this blog began it's time-consuming to go back and double check. But yes, pachinko........an interesting game played mostly in Japan where little balls go into a pinball-like machine and if it goes in the right hole you get more balls that represent money........I managed to lose 1000 yen playing Pachinko in about 2 minutes, not even figuring out how to play in those 2 minutes of max money-losing (still nothing compared to the amount of money that I've been losing in the stock market recently as stocks have been in free fall). The pachinko industry is sometimes associated with the yakuza, or the organized crime syndicate in Japan because of the gambling nature of the game; I once worked on a large litigation involving a Japanese billionaire with some yakuza ties through the pachinko industry, so it's a pretty big deal.
But the Pachinko I'm talking about is the 2017 novel by Min Jin Lee (I love saying the author's name because it's almost identical to MJ's name!) about a Korean family who moves to Japan during the Japanese invasion of the early 1900's, then stays in Japan and endures many hardships like racism, surviving through World War II, poverty, disease, etc., etc. It was named one of New York Times's Top 10 books of 2017 (I love those lists to identify really good writing in a world now that's watered down by Instagram feeds and social media posts), and Pachinko really checks off a lot of the qualities I seek in a good book:
1.) it's like the "Forest Gump" of Korea-Japan in the 1900's......it is historically accurate in that the characters live through many real events, so it made me understand the history of that area of the world more and feel like I was living history, not just some pretend-world where everything can fictionalized.
2.) It has great dialogue- characters are fleshed out, seem more real, through dialogue, and Lee is able to incorporate some romanized (written out in English letters) Korean and Japanese in there, I even learned some new words in both languages.
3.) Wrote about something she knew about- Lee moved with her husband to Tokyo and researched the topic of Koreans living Japan and the discrimination they received from native Japanese, how they had to hide their Korean accents and their roots; she interviewed like 30 something different people who actually lived through the times and added her own perspective as a Korean American...it really does help to write about something one knows and the characters kind of resonated that by having realistic worries about money and finding ways to put food on the table, the traditional Asian attitudes about getting a good education and avoiding "water industry" aka gray industries like prostitution and organized crime.
4.) Sudden plot twists- nothing keeps the pages turning (it's a longer book page-wise at 487, but doesn't feel that way due to the short sentences and short paragraphs moving the narrative along quickly) like those, and Lee does master the sudden climaxes, changing from the perspective of a few different characters from chapter to chapter to get the maximum character development and setup for the story. (It's like Game of Thrones where we get to understand a character from his or her point of view, then in a different chapter they are described by someone else's perspective, and then suddenly they have an accident/ pass away and it's shocking that they're ripped away from us......kind of like life I guess, which makes it so realistic).
I think the No. 1 reason I like Pachinko, though, is the insight it gives me to the history of Koreans in Japan and all Asians during the Japanese occupation times. I've mentioned before how ignorant I was before learning Japanese (and now Korean) about those countries' cultures and histories, and if nothing else I'm grateful for being exposed to those cultures, more than just the surface stereotypes that most Americans know like teriyaki, sushi, Pikachu for Japanese and KPop, Psy, Korean BBQ, and kimchi for Koreans. Pachinko just added another layer in my appreciation for those countries as well as the people of those countries, especially Koreans who had to go to Japan in the early 20th century to try to start a better life for themselves, some being forced out of their homes by the Japanese invasion, yet physically looking a lot like their occupiers the Japanese (being mistaken as Japanese or trying to act Japanese to further one's standing in life is a common theme in Pachinko) and resorting to working "dirty" jobs when in the new land while trying to learn the language as well as fit in a foreign land, or at least have their children start new lives and be able to fit in. It certainly rings true to some of what my parents had to go through moving to a new land and sacrificing themselves for their children, but it still applies in today's world of people trying to immigrate to better places. Anyway, the history of the world is not, as it turns out, just revolving around the U.S. as I was sort of induced into thinking growing up in the U.S. educational system, and Korea and Japan certainly have had a rocky, tumultuous, tenuous relationship over the years (and that's not even throwing China into the mix!), and it's good to understand where some of that angst comes from.
I would highly recommend Pachinko to anyway, but especially for those like me who are interested in history and Asian culture, or just a damn good story.
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
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