@Midwest67 good summary of “bad blood” themes
I know when @ignatius read this book, she had many “eye rolling back” moments in disbelief. My moment of disbelief, when I gasped aloud, was when I read this line
I was not happy the author delivered such a Fate to Noa.
@mary13’s question about bad blood, nature vs nurture, made me realize Noa had to die. Noa was Min Jin Lee’s most important second generation character who could have broken through the discrimination barrier.
Despite having the good fortune of loving parents, intelligence, educational opportunity his shame in his Korean heritage overwhelmed him.
Noa’s shocking, abrupt, “gasp” inducing fate, sums up Pachinko’s theme- Japanese discrimination of Koreans (different blood)
Noa was the only character who attempted to asssimilate, or pass as a Japanese. Yes, “bad blood” totally mattered.
I finally got around to reading the interview with Min Jin Lee in the back of my book, and I wish I’d done it sooner. She explained many of her writing choices and answered some of the discussion questions.
Here are some of Lee’s comments that are relevant to what @SouthJerseyChessMom posted above about Noa:
On why she titled the novel Pachinko, Lee says (in part):
Thinking about it - that’s a weird thought - that you killed off a character for symbolic reasons, but then were sad about it.
Noa’s death disturbed me I think because it seemed pointless. His family would be shamed either way, but now they are without support. It seemed like a very cowardly thing to do.
Yes! And Sunja wonders if she should have warned Noa about how to tolerate suffering in life. Those are all my words; not sure what the book says.
But I remember it as another reference to how hard women’s lives are, and Sunja wondering if sons needed to be taught that.
Something along those lines.
Here it is, @Midwest67:
Ran across this while looking up something else. It’s kind of off-topic–Pachinko is not a short story!–but I think some of it applies to writing as a whole, and number six in particular caught my eye:
@mary13 I hadn’t read that interview !
My library book has the cover with a depiction of Pachinko game, a butterfly and spread eagle insignia ( Japan?), and doesn’t have the interview at the end of the book.
You must have a copy with A Korean woman in traditional dress, a flowing river of life reaching down to Sunja and her two children? I like that cover so much more, because this was Sunja Saga, and that cover portrays the main character, the “scarlet O hara”, of this Korean story.
Regarding Sunja’s thought ** “did mothers fail but not telling their sons that suffering would come ?**”, seemed ridiculous to me at first, regarding Noa. Unlike Solomon, Noa’s childhood was not cushy, and why would she blame herself, for her son’s selfishness!
But, after reading the interview you quoted at the end of the book, I found this about Lee’s life. Her empathy and interest in the working class, the struggles of those in the lower rung of society, which Noa did not endure. He enjoyed a plush apartment at the premier University.
https://www.grandcentralpublishing.com/2018/01/21/pachinko-reading-group-guide/
I’ve been thinking a lot about Noa’s death. Many of us have commented on how it seemed out-of-character, selfish, shocking, incomprehensible. But isn’t that often the way with suicide? The topic is certainly in the news these days, what with Kate Spade’s suicide, and now Anthony Bourdain’s. Those deaths coincided with a study released by the Center for Disease Control–you may have seen it today on the cover of the New York Times or heard about it on NPR. In the past two decades, suicide rates have increased by 25% in the U.S.–30-50% in certain states–with no link to any particular mental health diagnosis.
A psychologist in the New York Times article said that there are certain key risk factors that, if known, can lead to prediction of suicide with over 90% accuracy. One of those risk factors is gun ownership.
Which brings me back to Noa. Japan has a high suicide rate and most of those (71%) are by men. So Noa already had one cultural strike against him. He shot himself just after seeing his mother–a moment of despair that might have passed if he didn’t have the means to end it. He didn’t have other more obvious risk factors (engaging in risky behavior, substance abuse, etc.). This led me to look up how common gun ownership is in Japan. Rare.
Is having Noa die by gunshot a flaw in the book? Maybe in terms of cultural/historical accuracy. But I no longer think it is a flaw in terms of the plot. Noa’s death is the point at which many of us gasped or set aside the book or lost interest in the story. And now I’m thinking that kind of response may have been Lee’s object. We all know it’s a terribly hard way to lose someone. On some level, we don’t want to revisit such tragedy in fiction when exposed to it too often in real life.
More on suicide in Japan, for those interested: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2017/05/30/national/social-issues/preventive-efforts-seen-helping-2016-saw-another-decline-suicides-japan-21897/#.WxqACC_MwWo
(From another article, I learned that hanging oneself or stepping in front of a train are the most common methods for men to commit suicide in Japan. For Japanese women, it’s drowning or overdosing on medication. This might be a painful subject for some and I apologize for that, but it’s a subject that’s worth discussing openly.)
I know this is a long post–maybe a TLDR 
--but I’m headed off to work now and won’t bother you for a while.
@SouthJerseyChessMom, yes, that is the edition of the book that I have. I intend to quote a little more from Lee’s interview later.
I didn’t mind that Noa committed suicide, it was the way it was treated in the book that bothered me. Just dropped in our laps without any lead up and just as quickly forgotten when the author moved the story along.
“Is having Noa die by gunshot a flaw in the book?”
What year in the timeline was Noa’s suicide by gun?
Japan has a very long history of suicide as it relates to honor and shame. Harikari. Seppuku. Very few Japanese are Christian so there isn’t the same historical stigma about it being a sin as there is in Western culture, I would speculate.
One does wonder how he got that gun. 
I agree though that suicides often do seem to come out of the blue for those around them - and the response by those grieving the loss can be both anger and sorrow. Suicides may be going down in Japan, but they are going up in the US. 
Those Vonnegut quotes are great, I’m still laughing at the idea of cockroaches eating the end of a story.
I agree that Sunja learned to suffer, but mostly the women seemed better at putting up with suffering then the men. The men die young, or become cranky invalids unless of course they get involved in Pachinko.
It seems all (most?) of us were shocked by Noa’s suicide. Do you think someone reading the story who is Japanese would be shocked?
Firearms account for approx 50% of suicides in the USA. In Japan, guns aren’t even in the top 6 due to gun restrictions. Guns seem to be somewhat less controlled/scarce in 1978, the year Noa committed suicide, but I still think it is a flaw in the novel.
From my reading, it sounds like the recent decline in suicide rates in Japan are at least partially due to an active suicide prevention campaign by the government. Japan’s rates are still on the higher side.
No, I really don’t – not when you consider cultural history of the Japanese, and the stats mentioned above.
The women in Pachinko are often viewed as a commodity, where beauty increases their value. And yes, it almost goes without saying that “this emphasis on female beauty is reflected in present-day culture.”
I definitely noticed how often Lee described the physical attributes of the women in the book–their beautiful eyelashes, glossy hair, shapely breasts, and so on. Much is made of Kyunghee’s beauty, same with Hana, and Hansu’s wife, and a number of other female characters. Lee explains (this is an excerpt of a much longer answer):
The constant focus on appearances and the descriptions of them (triangle face, round face, etc.) irked the feminist in me.
Both Korean and Japanese culture is very beauty/appearance conscious from what I understand from friends who have visited/lived there. Our culture is as well, but it is more obvious in those countries. LOTS of plastic surgery. Caucasian features are highly valued there as well.
I wasn’t sure what to make of the repetitive comments about Sunja’s sun-damaged and labor-damaged aging body.
And, then Lee tosses in that part where, years later, Hansu is getting aroused by the sight of her.
It always seemed a bit odd to me as the traditional Korean dress definitely doesn’t reveal much! Not sure what she would have been wearing later when Hansu still thought she was sexy.
^ Maybe that was supposed to indicate true love — that Hansu sees Sunja’s inner beauty and responds accordingly. (I still don’t like him though :-q .)
More awkward, subpar writing, IMO, leading to a lack of clarity. I’ll contrast the writing style with an author whose writing style I really like, Ann Patchett. One of my favorite books from 2017 was Commonwealth. Wonderful character development, great descriptions. She used a omniscient narrator but and moved through time but her writing style is descriptive, rich, and clear. And she only needed 2/3 of the pages.
Ann Patchett is terrific. The CC book club read State of Wonder.
I think that speaks to the point Lee was trying to get across – that women can be desirable despite their clothing or physical appearance. Genuine sexiness lies in strength of character and comes from within–at least in an ideal world (which obviously we don’t live in). Lee says:
Sunja was wearing a black wool coat when Hansu had his…romantic feelings. :). Sunja might have been gratified to know how he was feeling: “Despite everything, she wanted him to desire her a little–this knowledge was embarrassing” (p. 352).