Pachinko Recap: Kept Promises

After gunning it last week, Pachinko took its foot off the pedal for “Chapter Fourteen.” Almost ten minutes shorter than “Thirteen,” the episode feels like an interlude –– some new information is revealed, but it’s done slowly, so that the main emotional beats of the chapter remain more or less the same throughout its run time. Perhaps for the first time this season, the events in both timelines are evenly paced: Solomon’s story moves along at the same clip as Sunja and her family’s.

I’m afraid I’m losing the thread on Solomon’s Abe-san plotline, which is getting stretched pretty thin across the season. Solomon’s thirst for revenge is compelling, particularly if we think of it as a reaction, however conscious, against his grandfather Isak’s ethos of mercy. Where Isak was all grace, Hansu was aggression, and the show suggests that one of these approaches is more durable than the other and that cynicism is a reliable companion to survival. All that said, this stuff about the loan and Abe and the Korean landowner –– which is the show’s own stipulation; Solomon doesn’t get nearly as much air time in the novel –– is getting convoluted. Why does Naomi suddenly have so much power at Shiffley’s when Solomon once got through to her by pointing out she would never rise to the top of the firm? What incentive would the firm have to call in the loan and lose Abe’s business? Why is Tom willing to further damage his reputation for Solomon, whom he never really believed in the first place? Has anyone heard from Abe after Solomon leaked the news of the buried bones? What is going on?

1950

At the noodle stall, Yangjin, Kyunghee, and Sunja are all anxiously waiting for the results of Noa’s Waseda University entrance exam. Kyunghee is agonizing; Yangjin is confident; Sunja wants everyone to stop talking about it because it’s making her nervous. Much of the pressure put on Noa to go to school comes from the notion that by expanding his world, he will be expanding theirs, too. In fact, the attempt to broaden the constraints of your life is the central theme of “Chapter Fourteen:” Is it possible? Is it desirable?

Kim Changho might have been asking himself the same questions as he watches, enthralled and a little bit scared, an organizer speaking at a Koran revolutionary rally. He has that look of someone whose life is on the verge of changing. Enlightenment can be scary like that, and maybe later, when he’s beating up someone who looks extremely not happy to see him, he’s thinking of other things he might do with his life. When he delivers to Hansu whatever box of money he had to punch out of someone, it seems that way: he doesn’t want to stay. Sensing that Kim might be getting fanciful thoughts, Hansu promises that he has a lot more in store for him than “just being his fists,” and offers him a girl as a peace offering, which is the kind of yikes move Hansu is wont to pull. Kim takes the girl but doesn’t look convinced. When he gets home, a carefully arranged tray of food awaits him. He bites an apple Call Me By Your Name style –– Kyunghee can feel the sudden erotic charge from her room, where she lies wide awake.

The next day, the results of Waseda’s entrance exam come out. Noa is back in the big exam hall, which is crowded with students, looking at a list of numbers posted on a bulletin board. We don’t know what Noa’s number is, so the tension is effectively heightened here –– when he finally finds the number he was looking for, he allows himself the slightest hint of a smile, almost imperceptible. He is characteristically quiet and subdued, the opposite of his little brother Mozasu, who runs into the market crying out “Long live Korea!” All of Noa’s carefully contained emotion comes spilling out in his family members, who celebrate him later over dinner. They look at Waseda’s brochure together, and everyone is happy –– until Noa reads that there is an additional 2,400 yen fee for extra costs. The family’s joyful tone turns hushed. Yangjin suggests they seek out Hansu’s help, but Sunja and Noa don’t want to. Noa proposes getting a job near the school, but Sunja doesn’t want him overworked again. She tells her son not to worry: she will figure something out without Hansu’s help.

Later that night, an idea strikes her. With leftover sugar, she makes candy, hoping that it’ll sell well enough to open a second stall near the bus stop. Yangjin asks about the restaurant, and Sunja looks sad. Though it’s dark in the kitchen and we only see her in profile, we can tell that she is swallowing a knot in her throat from the force with which she manipulates the taffy. Maybe in a few years, when Noa is done with school, the restaurant dream will come to pass. Awake in bed, Noa listens to the house’s movement.

Meanwhile, Hansu is having his own problems. A suited man asks for his mercy: it’s a bit unclear what it was exactly that he did, but the purpose of the scene is to tell us that there is another family in the black markets that is trying to take over business from Hansu. The name of this usurper? Yoshii Isamu. Hansu tasks Kim with finding out everything there is to know about this man. The more intricate Pachinko’s plots get, the more present this kind of instrumental scene becomes. What the man did, or what exactly Hansu does, for that matter, or who the other family connected to Hansu is, or even what black markets we’re talking about is less important than knowing Hansu is scary and powerful enough to make some guy rat on a new potential enemy. This is the same type of vagueness that ails Solomon’s own storyline with Yoshii decades later. The granularity of a character’s behavior is one of the great indicators of who they are, and sometimes this show misses those cues.

Consider the heavy-handed exposition of that scene in contrast to Yoseb watching quietly as Kyunghee washes Kim’s bloodied shirt. From where he is, Yoseb can’t hear what they say to each other –– but he can see the way Kyunghee takes Kim’s shirt back after he pulls it from her, the way she holds Kim’s hand softly when she sees the gashes on his knuckles. Even the dialogue between Hansu and his father-in-law in the following scene has a more deft subtext. Whatever Hansu’s opinions, his father-in-law will go ahead with his support for Kurogane-san, the aspiring politician. More than that, in order to cement his loyalty, Kurogane will marry Keiko –– one of Hansu’s daughters, much in the same way Hansu’s own devotion was bought. When Hansu objects, his father-in-law puts him in his place swiftly: he has never meddled with Hansu’s hidden family life or touched his only “true” son, and he’s not in the mood to reconsider this generosity.

Speaking of Noa: after having spent possibly the entire night considering Waseda’s financial cost to his family, he comes downstairs in the morning to announce that he simply won’t attend. He doesn’t want to crush Sunja’s restaurant dream, and he doesn’t feel it’s right to leave his mother to bear the weight of the family by herself. Sunja looks at him like he’s actually crazy, which, of course, he is –– by going to university and securing a first-class education, he has the opportunity to lift the whole family out of poverty, relieving the burden once and for all. When Sunja later tells Hansu about Noa’s idea not to go, Hansu becomes righteous: it’s not a choice; it’s a mandate. Tae Jun Kang, playing Noa, does a good job infusing their argument with a subtle but palpable fear: it might well be that what is making Noa nervous and scared is moving so far away from his family, a feeling that has afflicted many an incoming first-year student.

But Sunja has other ideas about what might be on Noa’s mind. She picks him up from work to take him to the tofu stall. Noa looks all offended by the idea that he would want to stay because of the tofu girl, but Sunja takes the opportunity to explain why his duty to his family is to leave rather than to stay. Once again, being trapped in a small world is a fate that preoccupies Sunja –– Isak’s faith helped expand her world by introducing the notion of Heaven, and by taking her to Japan, too. But Osaka, their neighborhood, is not it: this can’t be, is not, Noa’s heaven. Besides, she promised Isak that Noa and Mozasu would thrive, no matter what, and she can’t break that promise.

1989

So, given Sunja’s spiel about the smallness of her world, how delightful it is to see her world still expanding, even in older age. To this viewer’s immense pleasure, when “Chapter Fourteen” opens, Sunja and Kato are drinking margaritas. All the food in this show looks good, but to watch Sunja try guacamole on a tortilla chip for the first time is just life affirming. Alluding to the spirit of trying new things, Kato calls their date an adventure –– and he intends to pay for it, even if he has to charge the bill to his credit card. Pachinko has repeatedly put its characters through the wringer, but for all of its heavy emotional cues, I was perhaps the most moved by Sunja and Kato’s date. It captures the kind of mundane but life-changing moment that bursts the world wide open once you start loving someone. Drinking a marg and eating a burrito with a man who makes you laugh, and makes you feel wanted, or like your life is beginning again, is simultaneously a small thing and the core of human experience.

Not everyone is having such a good day, though. In another departure from the book, in which Mozasu is untouchably rich, here he gets a notice from the bank that his payments are late. Sunja brings him some lunch at the parlor and coyly tells him about her “date” before proceeding to tipsily wipe down surfaces. At first, Mozasu looks amused, but when he later finds a wrapped present Sunja bought at a leather goods store with a card addressed to Kato Tatsumi, he sort of freaks out. Mozasu gets the private investigator he had hired to find Hana on the phone, asking to find out everything about this guy, a mirror to Hansu’s own request earlier in the episode. But I can already see holes in Mozasu’s plan. For one thing, this P.I. never did find Hana last season –– it was because of Solomon that they found her. What’s more, he offers the P.I. more money for a faster report, though it really doesn’t seem like he has the disposable income to spend on spying on his mother’s rare, rare happiness right now.

The day is definitely the worst for Solomon, who gets an unexpected visit from one of Yoshii’s guys, Sugihara, at his apartment. He has come to deliver some pictures of Naomi with a man: her other boyfriend, Kunizane Tsuyoshi. Solomon might have thought Yoshii had cut ties with the yakuza world for good, but Sugihara warns him not to be so naive. Yoshii is obviously not afraid to do what he has to do in order to come out on top, and he will not tolerate being compromised or screwed over –– and he really, really wants that golf course, Solomon’s cursed and completely unnecessary idea. Though Sugihara came at Yoshii’s request to deliver a message, his warning might be born out of sympathy for Solomon: his parents also came to Japan from Korea just before the war, and he knows survival doesn’t always look pretty.

Solomon calls Naomi right away, and asks to see her tonight, as Sugihara had advised. She brushes him off, saying she’ll see him on the weekend. Not convinced, Solomon follows her into a fancy-looking restaurant, where she has dinner with the Kunizane family. Solomon catches her gaze in the dining room’s mirror, and she looks surprised, then remorseful –– but ultimately she looks away and carries on with the meal. To Solomon, this is what makes the whole thing unforgivable.

He tells her as much later, in his apartment. Naomi explains that her family has always banked on her marriage to Tsuyoshi. The subtext here is that their union is a consolidation of power, much in the same way Keiko’s marriage to Kurogane is. For Naomi, considering acting against her parents’ wishes, no matter how she feels, is impossible; it would be a sacrifice tantamount to losing everything. Maybe, Solomon sadly says, “if you weren’t you and I weren’t me.” I have to admit something here. For the past two weeks, I’ve been saying that Solomon was sure to mess up this relationship, and now look: Naomi was the one to take the first misstep. I stand corrected!

Or I would, were it not for what Solomon does next. He asks Naomi to call in Abe’s loan. He just won’t let go of this, though Naomi asks him to try. She is too afraid of the repercussions for her own career –– people would know that she had a hand in Abe’s destruction, which would damage her reputation –– so she will stop Solomon’s rampage if it comes down to it. On the phone with Tom later, Solomon suggests that if Naomi won’t budge, they will have to “get rid of her.” For a second, I thought this meant Solomon had totally lost it and wanted to put a hit on his ex-girlfriend, but all he means is they should accuse her of financial impropriety so she will be fired and sent away like Tom was from the United States. He looks hurt as he says this, but he says it anyway, and I don’t think there is a more powerful bonding agent between two men than anger at a woman. My question for Solomon is: Why don’t you focus on getting a job?