Here we are at the season’s end. Can you believe that more than five years have passed since the first episode? For a few chapters, we were placed firmly in two time periods: 1945 and 1989. However, time has flown by since the end of the war, and Pachinko’s second season concludes in 1951, in the first timeline, and in 1989 in the second. It’s been a very, very long summer for Solomon.
For the past eight weeks, I’ve been thinking of the show as a tragedy, in the sense that it’s our heroes’ own fates that stand in their way, and also because it’s so sad. The Baek family’s only priority was — and could only be — to survive. Coming out of the war alive, things got better just enough to let some life in: Noa could go to school, and they could throw a party, and Sunja could have low-stakes chit-chatter with a regular at the noodle stall and fantasize about one day opening her own restaurant. But, as she reminds Kyunghee this week, it’s not like things are suddenly good. Kim Changho is gone, Yoseb is scarred, and money is still tight, especially with the cost of keeping Noa at Waseda.
I’ve been moved by the way life endures in the face of adversity in this story, and I think it’s safe to assume that we have all been so swept up by tragedy that we’ve forgotten that, along the way, choices were made. Or maybe “made†is not the right word; choices presented themselves, and our women — mostly them — saw no other option but to give in. They had to follow Hansu into the countryside because the alternative was to perish in Osaka; Kyunghee had to sacrifice real love because the alternative was to inflict further suffering on a person who had already suffered the worst; Naomi had to let herself be swooned by Solomon because … no good reason actually, just bad judgment.
The finale is all about the consequences of those choices and sets the show up for a potential third season. The downside to the always-affirming idea that life goes on is that, indeed, it does — and it catches up to you, sparing none of Isak’s mercy.
1951
It’s been a whole year since Noa has been at Waseda, and our timid young man has come out of his shell. Still polite and quiet, a year in college has nevertheless boosted his confidence: he argues, a little hubristically in that classic first-year way, that Tolstoy is a failure and is praised by his teacher as a model student. His position in class leads directly into a make-out session back of the building with Akiko Nakazono — his new, fiery girlfriend, the same girl he spotted on a soapbox condemning the American empire.
In Osaka, Mozasu displays his own talents by showing friends how to manipulate the pachinko machines. Goto-san, Sunja’s noodle stall regular and the owner of the parlor, only spares him because he loves Sunja’s cooking so much. Embarrassed by her son’s behavior, Sunja tries out a few responses: he’ll be punished, he’ll be made to focus on school. But Goto takes her by surprise when he offers a perspective on Mozasu that had apparently never occurred to anyone before: He’s not Noa. Try as he might at school, his strengths lie elsewhere. This is so obvious to Goto that he offers to hire Mozasu himself. Goto could make an honest man out of him — he is serious on the point that his is a respectable business in order to soothe Sunja, who once again and always looks concerned. She reluctantly agrees. Mozasu’s face can barely contain his excitement; he is psyched. Later, at the parlor, he briefly comes into contact with Yoshii Sr., from whom Goto instructs him to keep his distance. His grandson, little Yoshii — the very same who will embolden Solomon’s carelessness more than thirty years hence — is significantly younger than Mozasu but friendly and nice.
As if predicting this kind of encounter, Kyunghee is moralistic about Sunja’s decision to let Mozasu work in what is seen as an ignoble business, the haunt of gangsters and ne’er-do-wellers. Sunja doesn’t appreciate her sister-in-law’s condescension, particularly considering the family’s difficult financial circumstances — it’s something she might expect from Yoseb but not from Kyunghee. Yoseb overhears Sunja’s judgment shortly before going to stash away an unopened letter from Kim Changho in a box filled with others like it. He is hiding them from Kyunghee, like in The Notebook. Maybe it’s guilt from overhearing Sunja’s judgment that leads him to give them all to Kyunghee later on, with the confession that he hid them on purpose. Kyunghee’s gasp, opening them, is the gasp of a person who has been holding her breath for months. We never find out what was written in them. Third-season material?
The episode’s thematic concern with consequences sharpens into focus in the new dynamic between Hansu and Noa. The last meaningful event between them happened back in the countryside when Noa saw Hansu beating the living lights out of the farmer who had been stealing from him. That sight robbed Noa of any delusion he might have been harboring of Hansu as a fairy godfather of money and security. Noa’s refusal of financial help when he was studying to get into Waseda proved his commitment to go at it alone, and the discipline and steadfastness that resulted from this choice define his views: He lectures Akiko interminably on greed and avarice, and she, rich girl that she is, loves every second of it. To her, Noa is alluring because he is exotic — not only does he come from a working-class background, but he is also Korean, which would be a big no-no for the daughter of Japan’s Foreign Undersecretary. In a way, the inviability of their being a couple mirrors the impossibility of Solomon and Naomi, except here, it’s Akiko who is the cold-hearted psycho. Noa’s ideals literally make her horny.
But he can’t take her to his room just yet. He must go to his weekly dinner appointment with a person Akiko names his “mysterious benefactor,†who, of course, is Hansu. No matter how much Noa might have been able to dodge Hansu’s influence in Osaka, in Tokyo his support is indispensable. The change has a deep impact on Noa, who becomes sharp with Akiko when she demands to meet Hansu — it’s the first time we’ve ever seen Noa use such a tone. Even during last week’s rare confrontational moment, when he joined forces with Mozasu to encourage Yoseb out of the house, he was milder. Something fundamental has shifted in Noa — he has hardened.
When Noa arrives for dinner, Hansu is in the middle of a meeting with Kurogane — an aspiring politician and now his son-in-law — who has taken a much gentler approach with Hansu after his father-in-law fell dead into the koi pond. Though Hansu stops himself from introducing Noa as his son, he does go as far as saying that he is a great thinker in the making, a student of politics. In defiance of this notion, Noa gives Kurogane his Korean name, which makes everyone uneasy. Playing one last card in the game of general discomfort, Hansu gives Kurogane a fat envelope before he leaves, which encloses some extra yen for a wedding gift.
When Noa sits down for his banquet with Hansu across one of those comically long tables historically used to signify a lack of intimacy, he is direct. He intends to be a teacher, not a politician. Noa’s love of literature moves Hansu — he even reads everything Noa is assigned at school so that he can keep up — but thinks it’s folly to get a degree in it (raise your hand if you feel personally victimized by Koh Hansu). Just as they’re about to get into it, the doorbell rings. When Akiko walks in, Noa looks as though he’s staring at the actual devil, horns and spit and all. Introducing herself, Akiko takes an easy tone with Hansu, who recognizes her name; Noa remains literally speechless.
Not so later, when they get home. Noa rips into Akiko for her disrespect, for which she does not feel bad at all. Realizing that no amount of explanation will ever be enough to a person who feels entitled to everything, he tells her in no uncertain terms that he doesn’t want to see her anymore. She provokes him: Is it because she knows that Hansu is his father? Though by this point in the episode, I’d understood that something was different about Noa, I didn’t buy that he would grab her wrists or choke her against the wall, even as a reaction to her question. It felt like a huge swing for a character whose defining characteristic has been gentleness. It’s not that I don’t believe he could be possessed by rage — unlike his saintly aunt Kyunghee or father Isak, he is only human — but that he would grab Akiko by the neck felt totally alien.
It’s too easy to use violence to corroborate Hansu’s point that the same blood that runs through his veins runs through Noa’s, too. For an episode so preoccupied with consequence — of keeping secrets, for example, or of compromising your ideals for security — Noa’s actions don’t feel as though they come from Noa himself. Rather, they feel like the product of a rudimentary suggestion that violence can be genetically inherited. Could there have been other, more inventive ways of showing what parts of Hansu Noa might have absorbed in the time they’ve spent together? Noa is as mad at himself for being the son of such a “foul man,†as he puts it later, as he is at the fact that this origin has been kept from him. But if aggression was a real, dormant part of him, why wouldn’t the same rage overtake him when, at school, he was interminably derided from being Korean? Why would he forgive and befriend his own bully?
When Hansu confirms Akiko’s hunch, Noa’s eyes bulge cartoonishly. The only explanation must be that Hansu forced himself on Sunja or somehow took advantage of her, but Hansu shrugs off the hypothesis, instead advising Noa to look forward like he did that day at the farm when Noa saw him employing his fists. Using the same deranged expression he put on to intimidate a barely alive Yoseb, Hansu takes his son’s face in his hands and declares: “You are mine.†He looks almost relieved to have the truth out in the open, but he is also clearly delusional: There is no way a knowing Noa will let himself be used as a pawn for his diabolical schemes.
Instead, Noa goes home to Osaka. He (bravely) resists the temptation to get loaded at a bar on the way to his house, where he finds Sunja outside. She is startled to see him and starts immediately worrying that something is wrong. He reassures her that everything is okay; he just misses her. His constant reassurances that things are fine can’t dispel her mother’s intuition that something is deeply, very, extremely wrong, but he leaves before she can convince him to stay. A couple of seconds after he is gone, it dawns on her. She runs after him, desperately calling out his name, but it’s too late — he’s gone.
And he is gone gone. Not even Hansu’s men have been able to locate him yet, though they are on the case. “I’ll find him no matter what,†Hansu promises, but Sunja doesn’t look soothed. She is characteristically already blaming herself: if she hadn’t forced Noa to go to Waseda when didn’t want to, none of this would have happened. She recognizes her son’s mercy at seeing her one last time before he left, but it’s not nearly enough to bring her comfort. When she gets home, she collapses on her bed, spent from despair, sadness, anger. It sucks that we have landed here again, just when things seemed like they were about to change.
For his part, Hansu is not handling it very well, either. At one of his bars, he is literally hitting women. Looking like he’s about to cry, he stares at his trembling hands in classic villainous what-have-I-done sorrow. It strikes me that, had Kim Changho stayed, he might have been uniquely helpful in this situation: Having known both sides of the Baek family’s tortured coin and been more of an older brother than a father, Noa might’ve actually listened to him. At this point, sadly, it doesn’t matter. Noa has already found himself all the way in Nagano, where, assuming a new Japanese identity as Minato Ogawa, he has sold the gold watch Hansu gave him and found a job at a pachinko parlor.
1989Â
In his own pachinko parlor, decades later, Mozasu gets a notice from the bank that his loan has been paid off in full. Upon further investigation, he discovers the author behind this good deed: one Solomon Baek. Mozasu follows him to a conference where Solomon skillfully reassures potential investors for the golf course project that the real estate crash is just a rumor; Japan will soon surpass the United States as the world’s biggest economy, and they will all be able to celebrate over nine holes and a nice bottle of bubbly. Mozasu watches his son from the back of the room much like Solomon once watched Abe, and Solomon sees him, but he leaves before they can speak to each other.
The person Mozasu intends to speak with, in fact, is Yoshii; he orders him to stay away from his son. Though the scene with their younger selves interacting succeeds this one, it’s clear from their conversation that they know each other all too well. As of yet, we don’t know what happened between them, but we know it’s juicy: “I never wanted your grandfather’s love,†Mozasu tells Yoshii, a statement that reeks of catastrophe. If he once heeded the ethos of his father and brother in the face of a second conflict, Mozasu won’t spare Yoshii any mercy. “You know what I’m capable of,†he threatens. This whole thing really took me aback. Our Mozasu? Our one beacon of light-heartedness, humor, harmless mischief and fun? Do you mean to tell me that Solomon’s psycho streak doesn’t come from some sort of familial osmosis that ingrained Hansu’s evil vision of the world through the generations but directly from the source? What the hell!
And as if that wasn’t enough, the relationship between Sunja and Kato had to get ruined, too. On their next date, Sunja tells Kato about what the P.I. uncovered about his past. To his credit, Kato doesn’t flinch in the face of the truth. Remorsefully, he confesses: “I am a murderer.†He tries to explain himself, talking about the hardship he went through as a soldier and the effective brainwashing that is an essential part of wartime strategy. “We were barely human,†he tells her. For what it’s worth, he is way more willing to openly discuss his murderous actions than someone like Hansu, who would rationalize them, or Mozasu, who hides them — at least he owns up to them. But his mistake is having tried to forget the past as much as he could. This is not only inexcusable in Sunja’s mind but also impossible. She has suffered from the past more than anyone else, and the idea that it could be willed away is offensive to her Herculean effort to endure it. She hands him a wrapped book, wishes him well, bows from the waist, and leaves. When she gets home, she throws away all the potted plants they had worked on together. You might as well kill a puppy in front of me.
Solomon, meanwhile, is celebrating the budding success of his golf course venture with Tom, who has left Shiffley’s to work directly for Yoshii, having decided to be honest about the fact his family probably doesn’t want to see him anyway. Solomon doesn’t feel the slightest pity for Abe, who is sure to get ruined by the imminent bubble burst. At least, not until later, when he hears on the news that Abe’s body has been found, dead, in Chubu Sangaku National Park, where it fell from a cliff. He committed suicide. The only possible thing to say to Solomon at this juncture is: Happy now?! But that is ungenerous. I’m hoping in the next season, if it comes, he will try to right at least some of the wrongs he has inflicted in the name of vengeance.
“Why do some people get to survive and others don’t?†Sunja asks Mozasu at the dinner table. It’s just the two of them now (and Solomon, who lives a little far away). Perhaps it’s always been them, providing the family with a united front of courage — that trait they have in spades. The question is whether that courage can save them — it hasn’t always. Sometimes, it hasn’t been enough.
Pinball Thoughts
• It was perhaps too telling that what Noa so despised in Tolstoy’s discussed work (War and Peace?) was that it lacked a depiction of the struggle for survival, an experience also missing from the lives of many of his colleagues at the bougie Waseda. It’s a point well taken, but it speaks too explicitly to the emotional core of the show. Writing this recap and considering Pachinko at large, I got to wondering about the definition of a tragedy. In his Poetics, Aristotle argued that a tragedy’s events arouse “pity and fear, wherewith to accomplish catharsis of such emotions.†We connect with a tragedy because we live in fear and pity; the practice is literally ancient. But I’ll leave you all with a suggested reading and a reflection. In her essay “The Case Against the Trauma Plot,†the literary critic Parul Sehgal writes:
“How to account for trauma’s creep? Take your corners. Modern life is inherently traumatic. No, we’re just better at spotting it, having become more attentive to human suffering in all its gradations. Unless we’re worse at it — more prone to perceive everything as injury. In a world infatuated with victimhood, has trauma emerged as a passport to status — our red badge of courage? The question itself might offend: perhaps it’s grotesque to argue about the symbolic value attributed to suffering when so little restitution or remedy is available. So many laborious debates, all set aside when it’s time to be entertained.â€