Min Jin Lee's "Pachinko" Portrays Japanese 20thC Dominance over Koreans

"Pachinko," by Korean American writer Min Jin Lee (b S Korea 1968) is historic fiction that follows the threads of a Korean family from 1910-1989.  Pachinko refers to pinball gambling machine.  The pachinko "gambling" operations were one of the few business Koreans were able to run.  A few Koreans prospered greatly while many gambled away their meager earnings to these tampered machines.   The gangster image of the pachinko operators were stereotypical.  So too were the Japanese negative generalization of Koreans as criminal, lazy, filthy and aggressive.  Lee's family saga is a deceptively simple overlay to the overt hatred & oppression of Japanese towards Koreans in the 20thC.  The Japanese thought Koreans were worth so little, fit only for the dity, dangerous & demeaning task.  The novel begins in a 1910 in a peasant, fishing village.  Korea has been annexed by Japan for nearly 3 decades.  The matriach of the family is Sunja.  Sunja is the daughter of an arranged marriage between 2 impoverished families.  As a young woman she encounters the older, affluent Korean, Hansu in the village's marketplace. He will steer the course of the rest of her life.  Hansu's fortune stems from racketeering & pachinkos.  He's fluent in both Korean/Japanese & able to straddle successfully both societies.  He maintains a menacing authority figure.  Sunja was easily seduced & became pregnant by Hansu whose already married.  His offer to support her & the child are ignoble & unacceptable. Sunja is married by a Korean minister as a Christian act of magnanimity.  They return as a couple to Japan.  There, Sunja gives birth to Hansu's biological son, Noa. The novel highlights the reckoning of Eastern & Western religions & philosophies.  We also learn how Koreans were forced to live every day in the presence of those who refused to acknowledge their humanity.  Hansu didn't believe in nationalism or religion.  He believed in education, money & power.  So unravels 4 generations of a Korean family suppressed by the Japanese.  Life was a constant struggle for survival.  There were dire hardships, deprivations & devastations from WWII.  Hansu comes to the rescue of Sanju & Noa countless times. The soap opera plot enfolds spaning decades, revealing the loathing, oppression & maltreatment of Koreans by the Japanese.  Discrimination & persecution persisted after WWII Japan despite Japan no longer reigning Korea. Returning to an embattled Korea was not a safe option.  Koreans born & living in Japan were required to register as foreigners & remained subject to deportation.  Despite Noa's education & ethical behavior "He was a Korean, after all, and no matter how appealing his personality, unfortunately he belonged to a cunning and willy tribe."