History has failed us, but no matter.

A comprehensive yet well written historical fiction is a reader’s delight! We have found the history of the World Wars, African-Americans, Europeans, the Holocaust, a decent enough proportion on the Middle East accessible to us and have appreciated being able to better understand the complexity of their pasts. Still, we hold much less awareness about the stories of a people that seem so far away from the rest of the world. Like Min Jin Lee’s story of four generations of a Korean family who since the annexing of their country by Japan in 1910 have continued to find their identities misplaced by legal and social discrimination. Born in Seoul, the Korean American author of the 500 paged novel, Pachinko, thought she knew the story of her heritage – in what she initially approached from the narrow angle of historical victims.

She first got the idea of venturing into the tales of Koreans in 1989, following several unpublished stories while studying and practicing law. It was not until 2007 when Pachinko began to intimately come to life because Min Jin Lee got the opportunity to live in Japan for four years. While in Japan she got to authentically immerse herself into the true experiences of the Korean people – more rightfully, the people of Korean heritage. Some had intermarried, do not speak Korean, never been to Korea but still not quite given the permission to be Japanese. She began rewriting this story in 2008, looking at the history of Koreans as people with profound human experiences that the perspective of historical victims oversimplified. Each family in its uniqueness could not be cohorted into a single experience. 

This is a book that requires attentive reading and is not the typical lazy weekend read. Nonetheless, it is rich and worth the journey with the characters Jin Lee so vividly brings to life; you truly see them.

Aside from the hardships of surviving during a time of war, exile, poverty and living in congested lodges, Jin Lee also brings food to the centre of the shared experiences. The food we so much enjoy in Korean and Japanese restaurants will no longer be just a culinary pursuit but a historical one too. You will taste the great effort Sunja and her sister in law, Kyunghee, put into preparing and selling Kimchi to survive. As with the white rice we eat as a casual accompaniment to some other delicacy in a meal; an elite and ceremonial food in the early 1900s when Koreans were forced to give up rice and rely on barley as their staple food.  These are some of the historical details you will find yourself going on to explore in other literature after the seed Pachinko plants.

By meeting Hansu, we familiarise ourselves with the yakuza, a mafia that prominently operated in Japan in the mid 90s. He travelled from Osaka to Busan in Korea to conduct business as a fishmonger. While in Busan, Hansu develops a soft spot for sixteen year old Sunja – the main protagonist of the novel.

Hansu impregnates Sunja at sixteen, “When he slid his hands below her long skirt and lifted her bottom to him, she understood that this was what a man wanted from his woman. Lovemaking would make her feel alert; her body seemed to want his touch; and her lower parts accommodated the pressure of him. Sunja had believed that he would do what was good for her.” To her disappointment, she learns that he cannot marry her because he has a family in Japan.

Jin Lee, through the stories of the women in the families, brings out the additional misfortune of being subdued by the virtue of being a woman. “A woman’s life is endless work and suffering. There is suffering and then more suffering. It’s better to expect it you know. … For a woman, the man you marry will determine the quality of your life completely. A good man is a decent life, and a bad man is a cursed life – but no matter what, alway expect suffering, and just keep working hard,” an Ajumma (aunty/middle aged woman) advises Sunja at the market, where she shopped for the lodge her father, Hoonie, left to her and her mother.

Hansu however remains a strong presence in Sunja’s life to the end of the story. Sunja cannot decide if her life would have been any better had she not met Hansu, as she reflects on the  lives of her descendants: Noa (Hansu’s biological son) and Mozasu (her husband Isak’s son, a pastor who married her and by extension spared her the shame by giving her a name), and Mozasu’s son, Solomon – who all find themselves running Pachinko parlours.

Even if everyone around Solomon was convinced that Japan would never integrate the Zainichi – a derogatory term for Korean Japanese who were either migrants from the colonial era or their descendants – Solomon, in realising that he did not wish to become an American citizen after years of studying there, chooses to remain even handed by not judging the Japanese collectively. “In America everything seemed fixable but in Japan, difficult problems were to be endured. Sho ga nai. … It cannot be helped.”

The war ends, Japan modernises, South and North Korea remain estranged to each other and the Koreans in Japan remain the Zainichi, with nowhere else but Japan to call home, “All my life I have had Japanese telling me that my blood is Korean – that Koreans are violent, cunning, and deceitful criminals. All my life I had to endure this.I tried to be humble and honest as Isak Baek was; I never raised my voice,” Noa, in despair, tells his mother Sunja.

The end feels inevitable. Now in her seventies, Sunja visits the cemetery where she performs the heretic  Jesa ritual of the Korean tradition. Some things die unanswered. But whose grave was she visiting? You’ll have to read the book to find out!

Among many other awards, Pachinko, published in 2017, was a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction, a runner-up for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, winner of the Medici Book Club Prize, and a New York Times 10 Best Books of 2017. It is also being translated into 30 languages.