Pachinko - Quite an Education

"Go-Saeng," is the Korean word for suffering. From her youngest days Sunja was reminded that this is a woman's lot and yes, author Min Jin Lee visits an extraordinary amount of loss and pain on this young woman. I often wonder if these kinds of well-meant warnings from elders don't set the tone for exactly the very thing we are warned about to happen.

Sunja is the much-loved only daughter of Hoonie and Yangjin, born in Yeongdo, Busan, Korea at the beginning of the twentieth century. The family runs a boarding house which, at five hundred square feet, is considered a small luxury, especially in light of the fact that Japan has annexed Korea to deleterious effect. Money is tight, food scarce, education rare.

And yet, from this sparse beginning, Lee creates a fascinating, multi-generational saga that enthralls even as it educates. I often look back at my own schooling and  marvel at the holes. The politics and intricacies of the Asian world, pre-World War II, were simply not on our teachers' radar screens.

Min Jin Lee (https://www.minjinlee.com/about/), a Yale grad with a law degree from Georgetown, lived in Tokyo for four years while researching this passion project and it shows. The flavors of the food, the look and feel of the clothing, the street sounds, and the strength and courage of the people is evident throughout this amazing book. Min's writing style has a visual quality that would render this novel ripe for moviemaking. I sat down one afternoon and read 150 pages without even noting the time!

The plot is simple and certainly not new. Naïve and protected, as much by the boarders as by her parents, Sunja is entranced by a much older man with all the time in the world to convince Sunja that she is special. Of course, he is right. But she is sixteen and he is older than her father. When she joyously tells Hansu that she is pregnant he must admit that, though he will take care of her and the baby in Korea, he cannot marry her as he has a wife and children in Japan.

To Sunja's credit, she is sensible enough to realize that her mother's reputation and livelihood will suffer if word of her shameful state was to get out. But fate intervenes in the form of Pastor Isak Baek, a young Christian missionary on his way to his first posting in Osaka. He has been recuperating at the boardinghouse, nursed by Sunja and her mother, and he is not only grateful but half in love with the troubled young girl and the idea of a family.

From the joining of these two young people readers meet generations of immigrants torn between their Korean roots and their Japanese lives. Through their experiences as outsiders, people who are considered dirty, less educated, willing to do the work that their Japanese neighbors won't (sound familiar?) we get a lesson in the history of the fraught Japanese/Korean relationship and also a deep look at what it means to assimilate, to become a productive member of a country that will always keep you at arm's length.

I loved this novel and each character in it. Though Sunja's progeny attain education, business sense, and financial comfort, Min has actually written a paeon to women's strength and fortitude. They truly do hold up half the sky, and then some. A wonderful read!