SJCM, you read my question right – I was wondering how the acceptance (or not) of Korean/Japanese unions compared to the acceptance of mixed marriages of other races. Good point about Harry and Meghan. But even with the haters, their marriage seems to be a step further than Japan has progressed. I don’t think the Japanese are ready to have one of Emperor Akihito’s grandchildren marry someone of Korean descent.
@Caraid, I agree. I thought it was a great first line for the book – really set the tone for what was to come.
It’s funny because I remember very well seeing a lot of teens in Japan even 12 years ago being non-conforming by dying their hair blond. There have been a number of stories in this country about public schools in the south forbidding dreadlocks or braids for African-American kids.
What seems curious to me is that for so many Korean-Japanese of the second generation no one could tell that they weren’t Japanese except by their names.
For all our issues, I’m glad we live in a country that at least pays lip service to the idea of diversity and has always incorporated many different cultures.
^ Min Jin Lee’s novel is so relevant to current issues in the US and around the world regarding immigration issues.
@doschicos thanks for those links. Shocking and enlightening about current discrimination issues going on. Thank goodness Abe won the election with 18
Million votes compared to Koike’s 9 Million ( had to Google this)
Did Min Jin Lee mention the massacre of thousands of Koreans after the 1923 Tyoko Earthquake? @doschicos articles mentioned this pivotal event and I don’t remember this in the book?
“Min Jin Lee’s novel is so relevant to current issues in the US and around the world regarding immigration issues.”
Yes. One of the articles I linked was about a politician in Japan. Populism and populist leaders are gaining political ground in many countries across the globe. I would imagine a country like Japan, given its history and current policies would be especially ripe for it.
No reference to the 1923 massacre in the book that I remember. In fact, my reading of the article I linked is the first time I’ve ever heard about it. The novel just glossed over the whole “comfort women” issue as well, only eluding to it a few times.
^I’m getting the impression, after listening to several you tube interviews with Min Jin Lee, that her goal was to not portray the Koreans as victims because she said the people she interviewed don’t see themselves that way.
Min Jin Lee’s husband is half Japenese.
How could she write a book about Koreans in Japan and not include this important event? Mmmmmmmm
Apparently, Koreans were used as forced labor in the Japanese Mines? Was this discussed?
@doschicos comfort women barely addressed. mmmmmmmmmm
And, she considers herself a historian ? Mmmmmmmmmm!!!
Japan is so different than the United States. We are a nation of immigrants. Japan has always been a closed society. They don’t like anyone that isn’t Japanese – at least anyone who wants to move to Japan. Also, the Japanese were very late to acknowledging many of their brutal actions. There are those who still diminish or deny that Japan had anything to do with comfort women.
Japan still has not apologized for the comfort women (aka sex slaves) issue much less many, many other things. (I was surprised that Min Jin Lee did not use the term comfort women because it was obvious that was what had happened to the two women who worked for Sunja’s mother. Perhaps her husband being Japanese was part of that issue. I actually had an interesting avoidance of the whole topic today when I was talking about the book to my SIL whose mother was Japanese (and comes from Hiroshima). They feel that was the US did with the bomb was so heinous they really don’t want to discuss what Japan did. My SIL was soooo not interested in talking about anything to do with Japan and Korea - it was interesting because this is so not like her normal self - and she was an English lit major as wel.
Re the 1923 massacre, Sunja and Isak don’t move to Japan until 1933, so I’m going to give Min Jin Lee a break, as the event pre-dated her characters’ story by a decade. I suppose a reference to it would have been appropriate, but that would have made the book even longer.
@Mary13 No one would have wanted that book to be longer, but after reading 500 pages about the Korean/ Japanese strife, and no mention about a pivotal event, I feel a bit cheated. I still like the book, but if she had written about America’s Jim Crow South and not mentioned lynchings I would feel the same way. A bit Disappointed? A wee bit skeptical?
I do applaud her efforts to shine light on the Korean/Japanese issues.
I don’t recall the use of the term “comfort women” either, but there is a passage that is direct (I found it using Google Books):
“At the market, I hear that the girls who went to work in factories were taken somewhere else, and they had to do terrible, terrible things with Japanese soldiers.” Yangjin paused, still confounded. “Do you think this can be true?” Sunja has heard the same stories, and Hansu had warned her on more than one occasion of the Korean recruiters, working for the Japanese army, falsely promising jobs, but she didn’t want her mother to worry any more.
I’ve been reading about “comfort women.” So horrible! It’s incredible how cruel human beings can be to each other.
@mathmom, you mentioned that Min Jin Lee did not even use the term “comfort women,” but here’s the problem I think she would have had as a writer: There is no overarching narrator who puts things into historical perspective for us. Lee chooses to let incidents unfold through the eyes of her characters in “real time,” i.e., as they are experiencing them in the era in which they are living.
Consequently, the characters are uncertain about the fates of Dokhee and Bokhee. There are no facts available–only rumors:
My dad was a World War II veteran. He seldom spoke about his experiences, but he did tell me once that he and his comrades knew almost nothing (during the war) about the atrocities inflicted on the Jews by Hitler or the devastation caused by the atomic bomb. The scope of such tragedies was inconceivable to him, and very little information filtered down to the troops. News traveled slowly back then, and the full extent of what took place only became clear—and then only gradually—in the years following the war.
This sort of ignorance played a part in the story of comfort women as well:
I didn’t love Pachinko, but I can’t fault the author for failing to recount historical incidents that her characters would have had no knowledge of at the time. A separate novel about Dokhee and Bokhee could delve into that particular horrifying and shameful episode of history – but it would be a very hard story to read.
I agree with others who said Hansu is NOT a romantic character.
Nevertheless, I was struck by how much he did to save the family in difficult times. Sure, Sunja had her kimchi cart in the market, & was bringing in a little money, but it was getting more and more difficult to find cabbages and other vegetables to ferment. Hansu arranges the job in the restaurant kitchen, and now there is a steady supply of (black market) vegetables, steady income, and the kids can hang out there too.
Hansu gets the family out of Osaka before the American bombing starts. To sidestep the possibility that Yoseb’s stubbornness prevents them from fleeing the city, Hansu arranges for Yoseb to land a high paying job in Nagasaki.
Hansu makes sure the plot that Yoseb’s house sits on (which Yoseb owns) is registered with the government. It allows the family to return to Osaka after the war and rebuild the house there so they have somewhere to live.
Hansu makes all the arrangements for the family to work for their room and board at the farm where they will be safe from the bombing. He knows Sunja will not object to having to labor. She is used to it, she is problem solver, and she is practical —traits that he admires in her.
Hansu fetches Yangjin from Korea and brings her to Sunja at the farm and they are re-united after many years. Would mother and daughter have ever seen each other again had it not been for Hansu?
And, that’s on 2/3 of what he did for the family. But still, NOT romantic.
@Midwest67: Hansu swoops in to save the day each and every time it needs to be saved. That bothered me. I started thinking of him as a deus ex machina character. I’d rather have seen Isak and Sunja navigate life as Koreans in Japan and succeed or not. You mentioned you came away with fairy tale impressions while listening to the audio. It stems from Hansu, Sunja’s fairy godmother albeit in yakuza form.
@Midwest67, thanks for list. I admit I had a selective memory where Hansu was concerned because I disliked him so. Another example: One of the reasons Sunja falls in love with Hansu in the first place is because he saves her from the boys who are harassing her. With another sort of man, that would be a dashing gesture, but with Hansu (in my opinion), it’s just part of his long game to get the innocent Sunja to submit to him.
Goro is a womanizing yakuza like Hansu, and he too is capable of using his money and clout in generous ways. In terms of being a “rescuer,” Goro is to Totoyama (the seamstress) as Hansu is to Sunja. However, I think Goro had a good heart and his motives were pure.
Was there proof given that Goro was yakuza or was that left up in the air and he was just well-connected? Unless you buy that all pachinko owners were yakuza as some characters thought in the book, usually the Japanese who looked down on Koreans as gangsters.
@Mary13 you make a good point that they are just discussing rumors. I suppose she could have let us know their fates, but I think it’s more realistic that we and the characters just don’t know what happened to them.
It is a good point however the author chose to craft the novel the way she did. She could have chose to focus the plot and characters in a way that it was addressed in more than a cursory way.
