Love, Motherhood, and Women’s Choices Theme Analysis

History has failed us, but no matter. […]

In 1910, when Hoonie was twenty-seven years old, Japan annexed Korea. The fisherman and his wife, thrifty and hardy peasants, refused to be distracted by the country’s incompetent aristocrats and corrupt rulers, who had lost their nation to thieves. When the rent for their house was raised again, the couple moved out of their bedroom and slept in the anteroom near the kitchen to increase the number of lodgers.

“Sunja-ya, a woman’s life is endless work and suffering. There is suffering and then more suffering. It’s better to expect it, you know. You’re becoming a woman now, so you should be told this. For a woman, the man you marry will determine the quality of your life completely. A good man is a decent life, and a bad man is a cursed life—but no matter what, always expect suffering, and just keep working hard. No one will take care of a poor woman—just ourselves.”

“The widow told me about her daughter only yesterday. And last night before my evening prayers, it occurred to me that this is what I can do for them: Give the woman and child my name. What is my name to me? It’s only a matter of grace that I was born a male who could enter my descendants in a family registry. If the young woman was abandoned by a scoundrel, it’s hardly her fault, and certainly, even if the man is not a bad person, the unborn child is innocent. Why should he suffer so? He would be ostracized. […] Maybe my life can be significant—not on a grand scale like my brother, but to a few people. Maybe I can help this young woman and her child. And they will be helping me, because I will have a family of my own—a great blessing no matter how you look at it.”

Sunja cried out, “Kimchi! Delicious Kimchi! Kimchi! Delicious kimchi! Oishi desu! Oishi kimchi!”

This sound, the sound of her own voice, felt familiar, not because it was her own voice but because it reminded her of all the times she’d gone to the market as a girl—first with her father, later by herself as a young woman, then as a lover yearning for the gaze of her beloved. The chorus of women hawking had always been with her, and now she’d joined them. “Kimchi! Kimchi! Homemade kimchi! The most delicious kimchi in Ikaino! More tasty than your grandmother’s! Oishi desu, oishi!'' She tried to sound cheerful, because back home, she had always frequented the nicest ajummas. When the passersby glanced in her direction, she bowed and smiled at them. ''Oishi! Oishi!”

“How did I know that you needed work? How did I know where Noa goes to school, that his math teacher is a Korean who pretends to be Japanese, that your husband died because he didn’t get out of prison in time, and that you’re alone in this world. How did I know how to keep my family safe? It’s my job to know what others don’t. How did you know to make kimchi and sell it on a street corner to earn money? You knew because you wanted to live. I want to live, too, and if I want to live, I have to know things others don’t. Now, I’m telling you something valuable. I’m telling you something so you can save your sons’ lives. Don’t waste this information. The world can go to hell, but you need to protect your sons.”

“Yakuza are the filthiest people in Japan. They are thugs; they are common criminals. They frighten shopkeepers; they sell drugs; they control prostitution; and they hurt innocent people. All the worst Koreans are members of these gangs. I took money for my education from a yakuza, and you thought this was acceptable? I will never be able to wash this dirt from my name. You can’t be very bright,” he said. “How can you make something clean from something dirty? And now, you have made me dirty,” Noa said quietly, as if he was learning this as he was saying it to her. “All my life, I have had Japanese telling me that my blood is Korean— that Koreans are angry, violent, cunning, and deceitful criminals. All my life, I had to endure this. I tried to be as honest and humble as Baek Isak was; I never raised my voice. But this blood, my blood is Korean, and now I learn that my blood is yakuza blood. I can never change this, no matter what I do. It would have been better if I were never born. How could you have ruined my life? How could you be so imprudent? A foolish mother and a criminal father. I am cursed.”

He believed that she’d been foolish for refusing to be his wife in Korea. What did it matter that he had a marriage in Japan? He would have taken excellent care of her and Noa. They would have had other children. She would never have had to work in an open market or in a restaurant kitchen. Nevertheless, he had to admire her for not taking his money the way any young girl did these days. In Tokyo, it was possible for a man to buy a girl for a bottle of French perfume or a pair of shoes from Italy.

The marriage was a stable one, and eight years passed quickly. The couple did not quarrel. Noa did not love Risa in the way he had his college girlfriend, but that was a good thing, he thought. Never again, he swore, would he be that vulnerable to another person. Noa remained careful around his new family. Though he valued his wife and children as a kind of second chance, in no way did he see his current life as a rebirth. Noa carried the story of his life as a Korean like a dark, heavy rock within him. Not a day passed when he didn’t fear being discovered.

Why did her family think pachinko was so terrible? Her father, a traveling salesman, had sold expensive life insurance policies to isolated housewives who couldn’t afford them, and Mozasu created spaces where grown men and women could play pinball for money. Both men had made money from chance and fear and loneliness. Every morning, Mozasu and his men tinkered with the machines to fix the outcomes—there could only be a few winners and a lot of losers. And yet we played on, because we had hope that we might be the lucky ones. How could you get angry at the ones who wanted to be in the game? Etsuko had failed in this important way—she had not taught her children to hope, to believe in the perhaps absurd possibility that they might win. Pachinko was a foolish game, but life was not.

“Go-saeng,” Yangjin said out loud. “A woman’s lot is to suffer.”

“Yes, go-saeng.” Kyunghee nodded, repeating the word for suffering.

All her life, Sunja had heard this sentiment from other women, that they must suffer—suffer as a girl, suffer as a wife, suffer as a mother, die suffering. Go-saeng—the word made her sick. What else was there besides this? She had suffered to create a better life for Noa, and yet it was not enough. Should she have taught her son to suffer the humiliation that she’d drunk like water? In the end, he had refused to suffer the conditions of his birth.

[…]

Noa had been a sensitive child who had believed that if he followed all the rules and was the best, then somehow the hostile world would change its mind. His death may have been her fault for having allowed him to believe in such cruel ideals.

“Japan will never change. […] The zainichi can’t leave, nee? But it’s not just you. Japan will never take people like my mother back into society again; it will never take back people like me. And we’re Japanese! I’m diseased. I got this from some Japanese guy who owned an old trading company. He’s dead now. But nobody cares. The doctors here, even, they just want me to go away. So listen, Solomon, you should stay here and not go back to the States, and you should take over your papa’s business. Become so rich that you can do whatever you want. But, my beautiful Solomon, they’re never going to think we’re okay. Do you know what I mean?” Hana stared at him. “Do what I tell you to do.”