It took me several months before I put my name on the wait list for a copy of National Book Award Finalist title Pachinko by Min Jin Lee. And once I received it, I left it sitting for about a week before I checked it and then another week before I cracked the cover. I'm not sure what the reluctance was--maybe because like my book club that decried no more World War II books I was finally saturated, too. Once I finally opened the book, I found the story compelling and quickly read about half the book in a few evenings. But then I stalled out just as Koh Hansu-san moves the family to a farm outside Osaka just as the Allied bombings begin to level Japanese cities. I binge watched all 6 seasons of Orphan Black before I reluctantly picked up the book again. Again once I got back into it, I was able to finish it in a few nights--pressured by a looming due date.
Overall, I found it mostly interesting in that rounded out my understanding of the ethnic Korean experience in Japan. I think that it would likely be an eye opener for people not familiar with the long and troubled animosity between Japan and the divided Koreas--the people on both sides and those tragically that remain caught in the middle. Pachinko spans 5 generations over the course of 70 years. It is an epic telling of a family whose history is guided by the fortunes and misfortunes of a capricious fate that binds them together and rends them asunder. In the narrative's wake there is an alarming number of widows, widowers and might as well be that by page 300 it becomes almost comical (of the blackest sort) if not tedious.
As I was reading, I ran the book through my own knowledge and experiences in Japan. The horrors of imperialist superiority and war-time atrocities are the blackest but not only stains on Japan's inglorious history with Korea. For the outsider, the history, policies and realities of being ethnic Korean is not immediately evident. And perhaps because I am an American from the South I found the tensions more subtle than I was accustomed to, it took me longer to discern and understand.
I never heard any Japanese national that I knew ever express any negative views or racism toward Koreans--ethnic or otherwise. As far as I could tell, ethnic Koreans in my orbit were treated the same by their classmates as other students as I was often unaware that they were Korean. That isn't to say that I do not doubt that racism exists and is pervasive in Japan. I rarely hear racist rhetoric in my daily life in the US mainly because I do not surround myself with people with such limited views and generally shut down any conversations that do steer in that direction.
Pachinko the novel connects the Pachinko game with ethnic Koreans and the Yakazu (mob). This was something completely new to me. In the 7 years that I lived in Japan, I never once made this connection that Koreans were in the Pachinko business or that they were mobsters. Pachinko and the yakuza, yep that is true. Pachinko is pervasive, every town has more than one parlor. Although legally, you could not (and it may still be true) win money playing Pachinko, reality is another story. The way it worked was that when you were finished you would take your collected ball and exchange them for something small--cigarettes, candy, etc. You would then exit the parlor and go to a nearby kiosk--at the kiosk you would exchange your non-monetary winnings for cold hard yen. One evening when we were all out of town, my bosses and I decided to go to a Pachinko parlor--the first and only time I went. Kunie and I lost our money quickly but her husband Goji made up for our losses and treated us to dinner and drinks later. In the novel, there is much talk about changing the pins daily to effect the pay outs on machines. Goji told me that he was generally able to read the old machines (not the digitals ones that were making an entrance) and could reliable break even if not ahead. I had an English friend harassed and threatened in front of me by the Yakuza because he was winning too much money at Pachinko. Later he was roughed up and his apartment broken into when he didn't desist. Goji unlike Brad understood the balance needed to avoid the Yakuza radar.
It is the laws and policies that I gradually became aware of during my years as an expat. Here are my stories.
During my second year in Japan, we were having a family dinner at my employer's parent's house when there was a knock on the door. The local police were making their rounds telling all the residents to be on the look out for wet people and if we saw someone wet we should contact the police immediately. What? I queried. This was the first of many lessons to come. We were living on the Western coast of Japan just across the sea from Korea. A wet person was most likely be a Korean--most likely North Korean--making an illegal entry into Japan. Whenever there is a Korean ghost boat story on the news,
that night always comes back to me.
About a year later, I had a young student come to me with his passport and a visa application for the US. I was shocked because he had a green passport and not the red one that I was used to seeing. Gradually I understood that it was a Korean passport and not a Japanese one. Being naive I asked Kenji if he was born in Korea, no he said he was born in Japan. Why I asked did he have a Korean passport. My parents are Korean he answered. Your parents were born in Korea? No, they were born in Japan. Oh, I see (although I didn't) and decided it was best to get on with assisting with the visa application. Later I asked my employers about the passport and if they knew that Kenji was Korean. They told me that they didn't know although suspected because Kenji's last name was Kanemura (Gold Village). Gold in
Japanese can be pronounced kin or kane--kin is close to Kim a common Korean surname so many ethnic Koreans have the gold kanji in their family name. They added that most likely Kenji's grandparents had come to Japan during the war. Unlike the US where being American is a birthright, Japan had no such laws so that was why my student who spoke no Korean and had never been to Korea did not have a Japanese passport and had to out himself to his American teacher because he needed help with a visa application.
Each time I lived in Japan, I had to get my foreign ID card that included my thumbprint. I was mandated to carry by ID card around at all times and if asked, I was required to show it to any official. I didn't mind as I was a foreign national living in Japan on a work visa. It wasn't until I went to renew my card and stood in line behind an ethnic Korean, foreigners like me were not the only ones required to maintain and carry their foreign ID card. Gradually I came to understand how debasing the foreign ID card was. To be told every few years that you are a foreigner and you will never belong, your fingerprints are on file so you better be good, with the intimation that at any time your life can be revoked and sent to a place you have never been and do not speak the language is cruel to say the least. It is not lost on me that in my own country, our Dreamers live a similar tragic reality.
When I lived in Japan, my apartments were provided by the schools I worked for. I paid the rent but my employers were the guarantors. This was perfect for me as an expat who never had any real intentions of living in Japan long term. When I lived in Hiroshima, one of my students wanted to move out from her parent's house. She had key money and the deposit saved up but she didn't have a guarantor so she couldn't move out until she found one and that was taking longer than she had anticipated. What do you mean--you're Japanese can't you just rent an apartment? No, she told me she couldn't just rent an apartment--she was Korean and even when she found a guarantor she would then have to find an apartment that would rent to a Korean.
Pachinko's strength is that it illuminates the systematic discrimination that has not really improved significantly for the descendants of Koreans who were primarily brought to Japan as forced labor. Although Pachinko focuses on the ethnic Korean plight in Japan, the narrative illuminates immigration issues and policies not only in Japan but also the US and beyond.