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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 six months of working at Goro’s pachinko parlor, Mozasu learns more than in all his years of school. He loves his job. Goro is teaching him how to subtly manipulate the pins in the pachinko machines in order to affect the machine’s payout. Goro is so good at this that customers are drawn back again and again, simultaneously encouraged and frustrated by the machines’ patterns. He’s teaching Mozasu the same art.
Mozasu finally finds an environment in which he thrives. The game of pachinko, or pinball, has a certain resonance with the Korean experience in Japan—one can discern enough of a pattern to think there’s a greater plan at work and keep coming back hopefully, yet there’s enough of an element of chance to repeatedly thwart one’s hopes, too.
Themes
One day Goro decides that Mozasu needs nicer clothes, so he takes him to the small shop run by Haruki’s mother, Totoyama. To Mozasu’s amazement, Goro tells Totoyama that Mozasu is going to be his new foreman and needs uniforms. Totoyama has to leave the room to soothe her son, Daisuke, who’s disabled and speaks like a small child even though he’s nearly grown. Mozasu notices Goro looking troubled, and Goro gives Totoyama a generous wad of cash. Totoyama protests the excessive payment, but after the men leave, she sits down and weeps with relief—she’ll be able to afford both food and rent this month.
Totoyama is clearly struggling, having to care for a son with profound needs while struggling to cover basic necessities. Goro displays a genuinely compassionate side when he overpays Totoyama—suggesting the complicated relationship that men like him occupy within their communities. Perhaps he responds to Totoyama’s plight because of his own outcast status.
Themes
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