“History has failed us, but no matter.” Laced with tragedy and defiance, these words open Min Jin Lee’s acclaimed sophomore novel. A sprawling, epic drama that stretches across four generations of a single-family, “Pachinko” examines — with tenderness and wrenching specificity — the lives of the ethnic Koreans of Japan, who have long been relegated to the margins of history. Breathing cinematic life into Lee’s sweeping tale is the new Apple TV series of the same name, which faithfully touches upon the novel’s themes of identity, acceptance, and survival: the story of a family tree shaken by the capricious hands of fate and the wounds of intergenerational trauma. It’s also one of the best new shows of 2022.
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“Pachinko” begins at the turn of the century in 1910, as Korea falls under Japanese colonization. A young woman, Yangjin (Jeong In-ji), marries a cleft-palated fisherman and gives birth to a daughter, Sunja (Kim Min-ha). Their only surviving child, Sunja, grows to adolescence in the family’s fishing village boarding house near Busan. Illiterate and shy, the 16-year old is quickly enchanted by Koh Hansu (Lee Min-ho), a suave, well-dressed gangster from Osaka. For Sunja, their illicit relationship topples the dominoes of a life filled with hardship, eventually leading her to escape her home — and the shame of her doomed romance — as a pastor’s wife in Japan. Spanning the entwined destinies of 20th Century Korea and Japan, from World War II to the Korean War to the Japanese bubble economy period, “Pachinko” finds its parallel story taking place in the late 1980s. Sunja, now an old woman (“Minari” star Youn Yuh-jung, in a quiet but powerful performance), grapples with the past as her grandson Solomon (Jin Ha from “Devs”) — an investment banker — returns to Tokyo to navigate a lucrative deal he is uniquely suited to close.
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For those familiar with Lee’s novel, the first thing you might notice is the series’ altered structure, artfully wrested from its source material’s deliberate procession through history. Where the book was divided into three sections, each covering a period of 20-plus years, the series — written by showrunner Soo Hugh and co-directed by Justin Chon (“Blue Bayou,” “Gook“) and Kogonada (“After Yang,” “Columbus”) — wisely and poetically remixes the narrative for its new visual medium: Solomon’s story, which puts him on a collision course with his family’s fraught history and his station in Japanese society, is interspersed with flashbacks to Sunja’s own life in Japan as a “forever foreigner.” Echoes from the past, and the burdens and sacrifices of the generations before, are juxtaposed with the present to form both resounding clashes and meaningful reflections. As the narratives collide and ping off of each other, “Pachinko” begins to resemble its namesake, a popular game in Japan that is the cross between pinball and a slot machine. As the shiny metal balls cascade randomly down a labyrinth of brass pins, they imitate the human experience: we can lay claim to our lot in life all we want, but nothing can stop the fickle whims of destiny.
“Pachinko,” on its surface, tackles the various inequities of the perpetual outsider— or as the Japanese call it, zainichi — experience. Racism and prejudice against Koreans in Japan reverberate throughout the entire century: harassment, social immobility, and violence lurk around every corner. But within the series’ specific and forgotten expanse of history, it also asks a universal question: Who gets to tell our stories? Whose tales are etched into the written record? Whose experiences — due to disenfranchisement, prejudice, and illiteracy — evaporate into the aether? Sunja’s winding narrative and Solomon’s modern-day anchor are symbolic of an erased people, different attitudes bound by fate, and the narratives simple, repeating throughline of hope and survival.
Solomon, returning from abroad to his father’s pachinko parlor in Osaka, thumbs his nose at the thriving business, one of the very few ways the ethnic Koreans in Japan can accumulate any sort of wealth. Representing a less-wounded generation of zainichi, dulled by years in America and England, he balances the wariness of his own status with naive optimism: Solomon may be Korean by blood, but he still also sees himself as Japanese and believes in the inherent goodness of those around him. It’s a worldview that is quickly shaken. Solomon’s story is contrasted with the series’ keystone, his grandmother Sunja. Newcomer Kim Min-ha, who plays Sunja from adolescence into adulthood, is the series’ shining star; it’s a remarkable turn that actively pulls hope from cruelty and heartbreak. “Pachinko” is a heavy show full of hard-to-stomach racism, shattering goodbyes, and grim twists of fate, but through Kim’s resilient and hopeful performance, it never feels as bleak as it should. Instead, Sunja’s hardships are worn more visibly on a tender Youn Yuh-jung, where a full life as an outsider occupies every line in the craquelure of her features. In one poignant scene, an older Sunja reminisces of one of her lowest points: when her new sister-in-law Kyunghee unwittingly washes the scent off her clothes in the laundry, and with it the last, preserved connection to a mother she’ll never see again and a homeland she’ll never revisit. Her precious tether wiped away in an instant, Sunja collapses into tears, devastated: “When does it go away? This ache. When does it stop?” Kyunghee empathetically replies, “It doesn’t. But you’ll learn to endure it.”
“Pachinko” is a groundbreaking, stunning, Asian-led production. Easily one of the best-looking narratives on Apple TV, the series weaves a meticulously wrought tapestry woven from the fabric of a scattered history. Reaching across decades, the series’ grandiose scope — fully realized with awe-inspiring costuming and production design — is filled in with minute details loaded with meaning. Even the simple act of a fisherman’s wife buying rice speaks volumes of a stratified society and the impact of colonization. The first season out of a planned four, many of the book’s threads, plotlines, and even characters are yet to be explored, but where “Pachinko” already shines most is as a voice for the voiceless. The novel, and the series, is an education through the drama of heartache and perseverance, slowly peeling back layers of a hidden history and the hopes, dreams, and miseries of a forgotten people. How are their stories unearthed? “Pachinko” gives a simple, repeated answer: “They endured.” [A]