Aleijn Reintegrado answers “why is it called Pachinko?”

A Goodreads user asked this question about Pachinko:

why is it called Pachinko?

Aleijn Reintegrado 1. because whether you try your hardest to be good like noa did, or you don't follow the conventional life like mozasu did, or you had all the money a…more1. because whether you try your hardest to be good like noa did, or you don't follow the conventional life like mozasu did, or you had all the money and opportunity in the world like solomon did, you are still likely to end up in the pachinko parlor, where people will call you names, think ill of you, consider you a criminal. it is where many of us are destined, despite our best efforts to assimilate and live a life beyond the hatred -- we are kept in a parlor of shame, where no matter how successful or honest we are, people have things to say about us.
2. because life is luck, and the machines are against our favor, but we try anyway -- it matters the most that we still try. no matter how stacked the odds are against us, there is some random chance we're given the wildly arbitrary privilege of victory. sunja, for example, reflects towards the end of the book that her mother and sister-in-law kept saying that a woman's lot is to suffer. mostly they're right (after all, the unifying theme of the book is that women suffer in a variety of unfathomable ways), but there are also glimmers of hope, of love, of beauty and meaning and success. there is joy in the middle of, and even because of, the suffering.

"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."(less)

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