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Finishing Pachinko

 After reading Pachinko, I believe there are many things important lessons and meanings embedded for the readers. Themes such as family, identity, and women's struggle come up very often. However, there is one piece of symbolism in this book that I'd like to focus on, and it's in the name of the novel. The Japanese pinball game, pachinko, comes up numerous times throughout the novel. Sunja's boys find employment there. It is seen as a haven of job opportunities for disadvantaged Koreans in Japan. This is because these jobs at the gambling locations are not particularly sought after. Gambling is often seen as an evil in our modern-day American society because of the false hope it provides customers which cause them to put more money down than they should. In Pachinko, it symbolizes the false, temporary hope provided to Korean people in a hostile Japanese society. Betting in the game of pachinko provides temporary success and lots of highs and lows. Korean people experienced these feelings often while trying to integrate into Japanese society.

Comments

  1. HeatherLMarch 19, 2023 at 2:29 PM

    Hey James! I agree that Pachinko and what it represents is one of the primary themes of the novel. I interpreted Pachinko as a symbol of a lack of control over one's own life experience. I wonder if Lee is trying to communicate that when social injustices exist, the communities they affect never actually have a chance at 'winning' and overcoming those conditions.

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  2. Noah English 11H BlogMarch 19, 2023 at 9:07 PM

    I agree that the Pachinko game is a good symbol for Lee to use. It really represents the hope many Koreans lived with, while also showing the unfairness of those games (which represents Koreans in Japanese society). They show the hope to overcome poverty, but the unlikeliness of that and how out of their control success is.

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  3. John SawyerMarch 20, 2023 at 5:20 PM

    Hey James, I appreciate you taking a look into the actual name of the book and what it represents. Obviously, it has very surface-level meanings throughout the book, but Lee wants us to draw a deeper meaning from the game as well. I like your analysis of this deeper meaning. I think you really get at how this game symbolizes a false hope that many people may have had in Japan. The majority of these people, like you said, are likely meant to be Koreans.

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