Akiko's Attitude

Noa's girlfriend Akiko "would always believe that he [Noa] was someone else, that he wasn't himself but some fanciful idea of a foreign person; she would always feel like she was someone special because she had condescended to be with someone everyone else hated" (307).

I thought this insight by Noa was particularly powerful and telling of Akiko's (and many other people's) attitude toward Korean people. Akiko viewed herself as "heroic" for wanting to be with Noa, even though he was Korean. In this mindset, she still views being Korean as a deficit, something negative. I think this can be enlarged to Japanese society as a whole in a lot of instances. For example, later in Noa's life, his boss at the Pachinko parlor has an idea that he is a foreigner but decides to "let it slide" because he is a good worker. This is the same mindset his eventual mother-in-law has as well. They likely believe that they are doing this out of righteousness, but the flaw in this mindset is that they are still seeing Koreans as weaker and less than.

On the other hand, I know this attitude was still progressive for the time. For the boss to even allow a "foreigner" to work with his numbers, and for his mother-in-law to be okay with her daughter marrying a non-Japanese person, they are defying the norm. Although it is not to the standard of equity we expect today, and there is definitely bias at play, I think these actions are well-intentioned and lean towards pushing in the right direction. 

I wonder if, in the rest of the novel, we will get to see a greater sense of equality or if the Korean people will always be seen as less than the Japanese. 



Comments

  1. Audrey SchroederMarch 9, 2023 at 3:24 PM

    Hey Cassi! I agree that this has been a huge theme of the book. I found it interesting to see how Akiko considered herself to be a good person for accepting Noa being Korean. I was seeing similarities between this and colonialism (something we were asked to consider in the prompt) because of the almost savior-like complex that Akiko grows while with Noa.

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  2. Jalen PaigeMarch 10, 2023 at 1:22 AM

    Hey Cassi! I think Pachinko has a lot to say about labels. Color-blindness was a popular concept, that seemed to be a solution to issues of discrimination like ones we see in the novel. However, a lot of modern thinkings suggests that noticing your identity is the only way to acknowledge this sort of discrimination. Should Noa still try to avoid being both Korean and Japanese, or should he accept his Korean identity to find more belonging and a sense of his position in society?

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  3. Monique Cov.March 10, 2023 at 10:57 AM

    Hey Cassi! I completely agree with your analysis Cassi and couldn't have said it better myself. I do wonder though, why the continuing societal views of Koreans being seen in a negative light persist when it seems like some of the Japanese don't really care all that much about Koreans? All they care about is the negative social views if people were to find out that they were Korean, not so much the Koreans themselves. Those are some interesting questions that I will keep in mind for the remainder of the book. I also wonder if Japanese still views Koreans in a negative way to this day?

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