Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Pachinko, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Survival and Family
Imperialism, Resistance, and Compromise
Identity, Blood, and Contamination
Love, Motherhood, and Women’s Choices
Summary
Analysis
In 1949, after everyone has resettled in Osaka, Hansu gives Kim Changho the job of collecting fees from merchants in the market by the train station. In exchange for these fees, Hansu and his men give the store owners protection and support. Most owners consider such payments “just one more cost of doing business.” Changho gets this particular job because he’s so pleasant-looking and polite, “the clean wrapper for a filthy deed.”
In postwar Japan, Korean merchants take it in stride to pay off gangsters—it’s a necessary compromise in order to maintain their livelihoods in an environment where they’re already disadvantaged. If they don’t comply, they’ll have to deal with someone far less pleasant than Kim Changho.
Themes
One night Hansu takes Changho out for a drink. He tells him that he knows Changho has feelings for Kyunghee. Changho has been living with Yoseb, Kyunghee, and Sunja. Hansu is worried that Changho is too attached to Kyunghee, though. Changho admits that he’s been thinking of moving to North Korea. Hansu tells him he doesn’t care if he attends socialist meetings, but he mustn’t believe the lies about “returning to the motherland.” Anyway, whether Changho returns to the North or the South, he’ll be hated for having lived in Japan.
After working together and then living for years in even closer proximity, Changho has developed strong feelings for the unattainable Kyunghee. He’s started going to socialist meetings to try to escape his feelings, but Hansu argues that returning to Korea—now divided between the Russians and the Americans—would be foolish, because no matter who’s in charge, his longtime residence in Japan will cause him to be looked upon with suspicion, as contaminated. Koreans in Japan don’t have a homeland.
Themes
Hansu goes on to say that Changho must always think about “promoting [his] own interests,” never those of the group. He tells Changho that “[t]here’s no such thing as a benevolent leader.” “For people like us, home doesn’t exist,” he adds. At least in Japan, one knows what to expect. When someone has enough to eat, it’s natural for him to start thinking about ideas, like patriotism or communism; but the people in charge exploit those who believe in their ideas too much. Nothing will fix Korea, so it’s far better, Hansu argues, to focus on something he can have, like Kyunghee. For the time being, he pays for an expensive Korean prostitute for Changho.
Hansu imparts something of his own outlook to his protégé, Changho. He argues that looking to leaders is always a mistake; people should only look out for themselves, because nobody else will. When someone no longer has to fight for daily survival, they have leisure to pursue ideologies, but this makes them vulnerable to exploitation by leaders who don’t really care about them or their ideas. It’s better to dispense with such things altogether and focus on what’s actually attainable.
Themes
Yoseb and Kyunghee’s old house in Osaka had been destroyed in the bombing. When they returned from the countryside, Hansu’s lawyer made sure that Yoseb’s property rights were respected, and his construction company rebuilt their house to be bigger and sturdier.
The family accepts Hansu’s help in regaining and improving their home without, apparently, raising objections about the questionable connections. Yoseb, despite his hatred of Hansu, knows his position otherwise is helpless. Like the marketplace merchants who accept the protection racket, the family accepts a measure of compromise in order to get by.
Themes
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The prostitute doesn’t distract Changho from his feelings for Kyunghee; he can’t stop thinking about her. The next day, he walks Kyunghee home from the market. She tells Changho that Yoseb, who’s always angry nowadays, keeps arguing with Sunja about the boys’ schooling. He thinks they should attend the neighborhood Korean school so they can be prepared to move back to their homeland. Sunja knows they can’t return, and anyway, Noa has ambitions of going to Waseda University. Changho longs to comfort Kyunghee in her distress, knowing his own situation is impossible; he can’t be with her, and he can’t stop loving her.
Yoseb, embittered by his sufferings, clings to the fantasy that a return to Korea is possible. Sunja knows their best hope is to continue making a life in Japan, where her boys now have roots and ambitions. As an outsider, Changho is a safe person for Kyunghee to confide in, but it’s painful for him, since he knows she can never be his.
Themes
