Pachinko
Writer Min Jin Lee
Do you know the long, beautiful winter novels that make you a part of it and you don’t want to leave even if it’s gloomy and doesn’t have a glimmer of hope? It’s this novel with all these characteristics, 511 pages, extraordinarily bleak but very good and I didn’t want it to end.
The novel tells 4 generations of Korean immigrants to Japan during wartime. The novel is divided into 3 parts: Book One: Goyang / Hometown (1910_1933) Book Two: The Homeland (1936_1962) Book Three: Pachinko (1962_1989) The novel begins with a love story that seems to be dreamy and will result in something beautiful, but it does not happen. It results from the love story between the unidentified merchant and the rural girl who became pregnant, and from here the story begins. The first affected is the rural girl and her son, and of course immigration to Japan takes place. In Japan, the situation is not the best. Racism begins to appear against the Koreans as refugees, and they impede the movement of the country, which was originally determined to enter a war that it had no power to enter, but the Emperor of Japan had a different opinion. Of course, according to the novel, the Koreans were bullied by the Japanese, whether at work or in life in general, and they always found them disgusting and dirty. Japan, which was attacked from other sides, was taking out its anger on the Korean refugees. In the midst of the war and its stories, the rural life of the girl continues far from her first love, and of course she starts a family and embraces a new religion. The merchant appears in her life again and helps her, but this is not the reason that she forgives him and accepts that the problems will not end. The novel shocked me in more than one part. Things I did not expect would happen, and they literally shocked me, and I was sure with every line that the novel was exceptionally depressing, but it was distinguished by the family atmosphere that they tried to preserve despite their problems and sacrifices for each other.
P. S Pachinko is a gambling-like electronic game played in large halls in Japan.
