Book Summary: In the early 1900s, teenaged Sunja, the adored daughter of a crippled fisherman, falls for a wealthy stranger at the seashore near her home in Korea. He promises her the world, but when she discovers she is pregnant—and that her lover is married—she refuses to be bought. Instead, she accepts an offer of marriage from a gentle, sickly minister passing through on his way to Japan. But her decision to abandon her home, and to reject her son’s powerful father, sets off a dramatic saga that will echo down through the generations.
The author originally titled the book Motherland but changed it to Pachinko. I think it’s because it’s a gambling machine, it’s unpredictable and unexpected, just as life is. It’s about a life story of Korean girl Sunja who fell in love with Koh Hansu, a rich and married yakuza, ending up being pregnant. Isak Bae, a Protestant preacher who at the moment slept at her mother’s inn decided to take Sunja as his wife so that her baby could have a father and take his lastname. Sunja and Isak then migrated to Osaka, Japan. From here her life journey started.
Richly told and profoundly moving, Pachinko is a story of love, sacrifice, ambition, and loyalty. From bustling street markets to the halls of Japan’s finest universities to the pachinko parlors of the criminal underworld, Lee’s complex and passionate characters—strong, stubborn women, devoted sisters and sons, fathers shaken by moral crisis—survive and thrive against the indifferent arc of history.
My comment:
It’s a drama about how Koreans lived in Japan; How they suffered. It’s about discrimination, racism, but also about love, family life, care, searching for identity, chasing dream and building life. However, none of the character is truly lovable. But each of them has an important role in the family. This story provokes my mind: I’m not Japanese nor Korean, and I don’t know if Korean society considered/still considers that women were/are in a lower position, only fit to be in the kitchen.
This is a thought provoking novel. Wonderfully written and rich of culture.
