Pachinko: Book 2, Chapter 4 Summary & Analysis

The narrative skips forward two years. It is 1942, and Noa is eight years old. Every day he carefully dresses and grooms himself before school to look like a middle-class Japanese child, not like “the unwashed ghetto children” of Ikaino. At school, he’s a model student and speaks better Japanese than most of the native children. Privately, he no longer believes in God, and he dreams of becoming Japanese.

One spring day, Noa comes home from school and finds “a gaunt and filthy man” collapsed on the floor of his house. The man is too weak to stand, and he looks ill. Noa screams, assuming he’s a thief or a burglar, then feels bad when he sees that the man is weeping. Noa offers him a coin from his pocket. He’s shocked when the man—Isak—tells him he’s his father. Noa brings Isak some water and covers him with a blanket, then runs to the restaurant.

Noa fetches Sunja from the restaurant, and she feels sorry when she realizes she’s done nothing to prepare Noa for the possibility of his father’s return or his death. When they get home, she sees Isak’s shockingly aged, tortured appearance. She sends Noa to get Yoseb at the factory. When Isak wakes up, he tells Sunja how long he’s imagined this homecoming; “how hard it must have been for you,” he adds. Pastor Yoo and Hu both died yesterday.

At the biscuit factory Noa finds Yoseb and tells him the news. Yoseb knows he’ll be fired if he leaves work early, so he sends Noa back with the promise that he’ll hurry home as soon as he can. Noa doesn’t understand why his uncle is crying.