The Possibilities of "Pachinko"

Minor spoilers ahead.

Based on the novel by Min Jin Lee, "Pachinko" traces the lives of a Korean family, beginning with their matriarch, Sunja (Kim Min-ha), who spends her girlhood in Japanese occupied Busan in the 1920s, and eventually emigrates to Japan, where she meets with discrimination and hardship.  We also spend time in 1989, where Sunja's grandson Solomon Baek (Jin Ha) works in America as a banking executive, and travels back to Japan to help close a business deal and further his career.  Jimmi Simpson is the only white actor in the cast, playing Solomon's boss in the Tokyo office.

In 1989 we also meet Solomon's father Mozasu (Soji Arai), who runs a successful pachinko parlor, and his girlfriend Etsuko (Kaho Minami).  Sunja is played by You Yuh-jung as an elderly woman.  We only learn about the family's history gradually, often watching it unfold through Sunja's experiences in the 1930s.  For instance, Sunja has a complicated past involving relationships with both the rich merchant Hansu (Lee Min-ho) and Isak (Steve Sanghyun Noh), a sickly Christian minister, and it's not clear how things played out with the three of them until late in the season.  Even then, many lingering questions suggest that the family carries many more secrets that we're just beginning to explore.   

Created by Soo Hugh, and directed by Kogonada and Justin Chon, "Pachinko" is one of the most unlikely things  to have come out of the American media ecosystem in a while.  This is a show with an almost fully Asian cast, where almost all the dialogue is in Korean and Japanese.  It's also a period piece, primarily concerned with the depiction of the Korean immigrant experience as it relates to the Zainichi Korean community in Japan.  That is a lot of hurdles for a western audience to clear, and I'm thrilled that Apple+ not only got this made, but made with such high production values and a real commitment to its quality.  The show has done well enough that a second season has already been greenlit.   

There's a complexity to "Pachinko" that I appreciate very much.  A major theme of the show is dealing with the struggles of past generations impacting the present.  While "Pachinko" honors Sunja and her struggle to persevere through decades of upheaval, it also spends a roughly equal amount of time with Solomon, trying to grapple with his cultural displacement and how to do right by his family while securing his own idea of success.  The older immigrant characters marvel over changing times and standards, recognizing that they now have more power, but also understanding that the old biases and prejudices will never really go away.  I like the series' sympathetic treatment of the female characters in particular, who come from an era where they were often overlooked and undervalued, but became the cornerstones of their families.  

I couldn't help comparing "Pachinko" to "Tokyo Vice," the crime series on HBO Max about an American expat exploring the Japanese underworld.  I enjoyed it, but was plagued with lingering worries about the show's authenticity because it was coming from a very western POV, despite featuring Japanese characters and the Japanese language so prominently.  I didn't have any of these qualms about "Pachinko" whatsoever.  Sunja is the main character without question, and the show's creators - many of them members of the Korean diaspora - are clearly very invested in doing her story justice.  One of the little details I love about the series is the way it plays with language, going so far as to subtitle Korean and Japanese dialogue in different colors so that Western viewers can appreciate how characters are blending and switching between the two.

I feel that I should caution that "Pachinko" is a very Eastern story, full of family melodrama, specific cultural expectations, and different frames of reference.  Sunja lives through a lot of social upheaval, and tragedy dogs her throughout her life.  Readers of the book should also be cautioned that "Pachinko" has been planned to run for four seasons, and there have been some significant narrative changes.  While the first, eight-episode season ends at a satisfying place, there's clearly much more of the story that's been saved for future installments.  And it thrills me that there will be future installments.  

If a once difficult show  like "Pachinko" can get made, and made this well, the sky really might be the limit.  

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