It is also clear how much hope parents put in their children and how close Korean immediate families really are. In Pachinko, parents want the very best for their children, and, to that aim, will not mind sacrificing a lot. Besides, the relationship between parents and children is one of the most prominent and fascinating themes. In the context of much deprivation, including discrimination, persecution and poverty, morality has the capability to be bent, and Min Jin Lee bravely explores this topic as well. Guilt, doubt and hope all mingle in the story, and religions and different classes clash. Min Jin Lee makes historical and cultural observations throughout, and, by following the lives of the characters, we really get to know about the situation in Japan and the day-to-day hardships the characters experience as they try to adjust to their new life in a foreign country. It is absorbing right to the end, or almost right to the very end. This does not mean that the story is any less interesting, however. The plot also moves forward rather rapidly and jumps forward in time frequently. We follow different characters throughout the novel, first Sunja’s parents in Korea, then Sunja and her husband Isak in Japan, then Sunja’s children – Noa and Mozasu, and then Mozasu’s son. In Pachinko, the story starts in the 1910s and it ends in 1989, meaning that the characters in the novel experience the effects of the Japanese colonisation efforts, the Second World War and the post-war recovery. The characters’ determination to survive and succeed in conditions which are designed to make them fail will not leave the reader uninvolved. Pachinko is sustained by its vivid characters whose resilience in times of hardship is somehow both admirable and chilling.
This emotional novel is a real page-turner and this is so not only because of its fascinating story set in a particularly turbulent time period. In Japan, she meets her brother-in-law and his wife, and their life to survive begins. For example, we follow Sunja, a daughter of a cleft-lipped, club-footed man, who takes her chance to marry a missionary, Isak, and goes to Japan to give birth there to her son, whose father, Hansu, remains a powerful man in Korea. This family then faces all manner of hardship, including poverty and discrimination, in the new country. The story spans four generations, and tells of Korean immigrants who come to Japan to seek a better life in 1933. Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko had a long road to publication, almost thirty years, being first conceived as an idea by the author in 1989. “The Japanese could think what they wanted about them, but none of it would matter if they survived and succeeded”.
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