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
Sunja returns to Osaka from Mozasu’s and Solomon’s house when Yangjin develops stomach cancer. Kyunghee has been nursing Yangjin ever since Yoseb died. One afternoon the three women watch Yangjin’s favorite TV show, Other Lands, in which a woman interviews Japanese expatriates around the world. Yangjin and Kyunghee are big fans of the interviewer, Higuchi, who’s rumored to have Korean blood.
All the women in the family have now spent decades living in Japan without a nationality that’s unequivocally theirs. Watching the TV show together is an expression of that common bond, and also an indication of how much their lives have transformed since the turn of the century in Korea.
Themes
In this episode of Other Lands, Higuchi interviews an old woman whose parents had immigrated to Colombia from Japan. Reflecting on her difficult life, the woman remarks, “A woman’s lot is to suffer.” She has never been to Japan, but her greatest goal in life is to be a good Japanese woman.
The refrain about women’s suffering is cross-cultural and echoes across time and continents. Sunja and the other women have a certain affinity with the woman featured on the show; although they’ve all lived in Korea, they still feel cultural pressure to be “model” Koreans in a foreign culture that doesn’t really want them.
Themes
After the show, Kyunghee and Yangjin repeat the proverb about women’s suffering. Sunja feels disgusted. She has heard this saying all her life, but she’d suffered for Noa, and it wasn’t enough. Yangjin senses that Sunja is thinking about Noa. She tells Sunja that Sunja brought suffering on herself by being with Hansu. She says that Mozasu has been more blessed in his life because he came from “better blood.” Later, Yangjin wants to tell Sunja she’s sorry, but she feels too weak to speak.
Sunja is fed up with the command to “suffer” that she’s heard from other women all her life. She wonders if the suffering ever ends and if it really achieves anything. She’s hurt when Yangjin effectively blames her for Noa’s death and attributes Mozasu’s success to his superior blood. These ideas appear fatalistic and fruitless to her.
Themes
