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Book 2, Chapter 16
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
It’s 1961, and Mozasu and Yumi have been dating for more than a year. They attend an English class together three nights a week. One day Mozasu is waiting outside Totoyama’s shop for Yumi when Haruki shows up. He’s been studying at the police academy, and the two haven’t seen each other in years, partly because Haruki has long had romantic feelings for Mozasu and thus tries to stay away from him.
Yumi’s and Mozasu’s English class meets in a church and is taught by John Maryman, a jovial pastor of Korean birth who was raised by American adoptive parents. Yumi looks up to him, thinking he represents a better world for Koreans. Yumi was raised by parents who were an alcoholic prostitute and a pimp, and she spent many years fending for herself and her younger sister alone. She longs to make another life in America someday.
Yumi’s experience as a Korean growing up in Japan was even more filled with deprivation and struggle than Mozasu’s. She looks to the example of John Maryman, a Korean-American, for hope that she can escape her environment and have a happier life somewhere else.
Themes
John Maryman had enjoyed a privileged childhood with loving parents in Princeton, New Jersey, but he came to Japan because he felt sorry for the impoverished Koreans who are living there without a homeland. He enjoys teaching English to Koreans so that they can have another language that isn’t Japanese.
As an outsider, Maryman sees the tenuous position Koreans occupy in Japan and the toll it takes on their sense of identity—they don’t belong either to Korea or to Japan. He hopes that speaking English can give his Korean pupils a way to distinguish themselves and achieve something on their own terms.
Themes
During class that day, John Maryman teases Mozasu in English when he notices him staring at Yumi. Mozasu replies that he can’t stop because he loves Yumi. Pastor John asks if they will get married. The class dissolves into laughter as Mozasu confidently declares that he will get Yumi to marry him. Yumi is mortified, but she can’t be angry with him.
Mozasu’s and Yumi’s relationship develops very differently than previous romantic relationships in the novel. Where Yangjin’s and Sunja’s marriages took place in contexts of dire need, Mozasu and Yumi have the freedom to date and fall in love gradually. It’s also noteworthy that this takes place while they’re studying English together—something Sunja never had the leisure to do. It also shows that their ambitions, unlike the previous generation’s, are not oriented back toward Korea.
Themes
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