Beyond “Us” and “Them”: A book review of <Pachinko>

by Elizabeth Im

Each of us have a unique narrative, but none are independent.

Whether it be our parents, our culture, our friends, or the social media, we inherit parts of our surroundings. Even the small details of our lives (such as, how did our parents meet? where did they grow up? how did their parents meet? why do we, or do we not, have siblings?) have, with no doubt, influenced each of our being. However, understanding the context of one’s narrative is difficult: we often take our views for granted, forgetting to question what influenced our thoughts and attitudes. Min Jin Lee, however, understands the powerful influence of our collective history on individual lives. In Lee’s book, Pachinko, this importance of dependent context is addressed through a story of four generations over a span of 70 years, telling a multi-perspective history in an incredible feat.

There’s no doubt that World War II, the Japanese annexation of Korea, and the Korean War have critically formed Pachinko’s background. However, the wars and global politics remain in the background: a milieu. Instead of teaching us the macro-narrative, Pachinko delicately considers the diverse micro-narratives. While Pachinko is, in a way, a war story, Min Jin Lee did not bluntly write about bloody frontlines or its graphic details to narrate the brutal history. Instead, she focused on telling human conflicts that have been subconsciously—but critically—influenced by the violence. Take the example of Tetsuo, a 12-year old boy who committed suicide (III.7). Haruki, a detective in charge of the case, visits Tetstuo’s house to investigate what drove the young boy to take his own life. The answer, he learns, is in Tetsuo’s yearbook. At a first glance, the yearbook seems normal. A closer observation, however, reveals scribbles of cruel words written behind the flyleaf: “Die”, “Koreans are trouble makers and pigs. Get the hell out. Why are you here anyways?”, “If you kill yourself, our high school next year will have one less filthy Korean”.

Although this is the first time the readers read this story in Pachinko, it is not the first time Min Jin Lee wrote about this. The author first heard this tragic story many years ago, while she was still an undergraduate at Yale, during a guest lecture series. The lecturer that afternoon was an American missionary who told about a boy who was bullied in Japan because of his Korean background. Like Tetsuo, the boy jumped of a building, and died. “I would not forget this [story]”, Lee wrote; indeed, this death became the inspiration for many of her works.

In Pachinko, particularly, the event is retold in Yokohama, March 1976. It takes place 31 years after the end of World War II—or 31 years after the end of Japanese annexation of Korea. The twelve-year-old classmates of Tetsuo, all so young and naïve, hold a surprisingly deep anger in their words. How could these children, born decades after the historical conflict, never having lived through a day of the WWII or Japanese annexation of Korea, have such strong hatred toward another classmate, just because of his background? Unable to understand, Tetsuo’s mother tells Haruki, “It was not because he was a Korean. That sort of thing was from long ago. Things are better now. We know many kindhearted Japanese”. Indeed, rationally, Tetsuo’s background should not matter. As Haruki finds out during his conversation, Tetsuo was a third generation Korean-Japanese, his parents also born in Japan. Despite their roots, they have lived in Japan all their lives. They were Japanese more than they were Korean. Then, why does his background matter?

“It doesn’t. It shouldn’t,” Haruki answers.

In the end, Pachinko does not give a clear verdict. Tetsuo’s story finishes without a clear answer, nor does the story blame anyone. However, what we read is enough to understand an important message: the violence and hatred brewed through a war does not go away the moment the physical war ends—it continues years after, from one generation to the next. Perhaps the right question to ask is, why are grudges held on to for decades? How do we learn to accept others and refuse to participate in a pointless othering? Young children reflect their parents’ attitudes and thoughts; the hatred Tetsuo’s classmates shown are ultimately the saturation of their parents’ and their grandparents’ hatred. There was no rational for Tetsuo’s classmate’s hatred. It was just the way the children were taught by their previous generations. Like a mirror, the children reflect what they observe. Only when they grow up to reject ideas, and the irrational bias planted in them, can they slowly change themselves. Only with an awareness of our narrative, context, and history, can we change the society we are part of and, eventually, the next generations.

Reading this story about the death of a young boy can easily make us point fingers at the “Japanese people” because it is easy to use one event to characterize the whole people. However, Pachinko does not let its readers do that—and this is what makes the book even more significant. Min Jin Lee, while providing the readers with the vivid catastrophe Koreans, Korean-Japanese, and other refugees of war, experience, Lee does not lump all Japanese as the sole perpetrators. There is no “bad group”, she argues. The book makes it clear that there are bad people who happen to be Japanese; just the same, there are bad people who happen to be Korean, Italian, American and so on.

For example, when Solomon was framed by his boss, Kazu, in a business deal and then fired, he was mad at Kazu as an individual but did not blame the entire Japanese people. “Kazu was a shit, but so what?” Solomon asks. “[Kazu] was one bad guy, and he was Japanese[…] Even if there were a hundred bad Japanese, if there was one good one, [Solomon] refused to make a blanket statement.” This viewpoint is incredibly important. It is true that Kazu used Solomon’s background to make him an east target. However, Solomon refused to fall for the slippery slope fallacy; instead he remembers Etsuko’s kindness and Hana’s vulnerability. Pachinko tells us, one individual should not become a representation of everyone else in their “group”.

Despite the history, despite the background, despite the root, Min Jin Lee highlights that it is important we approach everyone with a fresh set of eyes and give them the fair opportunity they deserve. And to do so, it is (again) necessary to understand our background, which will then allow us to identify what created the bias we have in the first place.

Pachinko’s eye-level descriptions of individual lives effectively communicates the tragedy of hateful prejudice and violence toward another human being, through the perspective of more than 20 characters. No matter their background—whether they are Korean, Japanese or American—they have a particular point of view that drive them to take certain actions. Pachinko embraces these diverse perspectives in history through a human narrative, not just presenting mere numbers or a single line of summary in a textbook. Although each of the characters hold different views, the readers are able to sympathize with all of them because Min Jin Lee never lets us forget—beyond the boundaries of “us” and “them”—they are human.