Min Lee - Pachinko

Like all Japanese mothers, Risa volunteered at the children’s schools and did everything else she could to make sure that her four children were well and safe. Having so many little constituents kept her from having to involve herself with those outside her family. If her father’s death had expelled her from the tribe of ordinary middle-class people, she had effectively reproduced her own tribe.

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. The only thing he continued to do from before was to read his English-language novels. After marrying, he no longer ate at the employees’ cafeteria. Now he allowed himself lunch at an inexpensive restaurant where he ate alone. Over lunch, for thirty minutes a day, he reread Dickens, Trollope, or Goethe, and he remembered who he was inside.

It was spring when the twin girls turned seven, and the family went to Matsumoto Castle for a Sunday picnic. Risa had planned the outing to cheer up her mother, who seemed to be retreating further into herself. The children were overjoyed, since they would get ice cream on the way home.

The doctor’s widow, Iwamura-san, had never been a competent woman; in fact, she was often helpless. She had remained childishly pretty — soft, pale cheeks, naturally red lips, and dyed black hair. She wore simple beige smocks and cardigans, closed only on the top button. Her expression was perpetually one of a small child who had been disappointed by her birthday present. That said, she was hardly ignorant. She had been a doctor’s wife, and though his death had destroyed her cherished social ambitions, she had not relinquished her wishes for her only child. It was bad enough that her daughter worked in pachinko, but now she had married a man who worked in the sordid business, cementing her caste in life. On her initial meeting with Nobuo Ban, she had guessed that there was something unusual about his past, since he had no family. No doubt, he was foreign. She felt suspicious of his character; however, there was also something so sad beneath his fine manners that reminded her of her dear husband, that the widow felt compelled to overlook his background as long as no one ever found out.

A sparse crowd was forming in front of Matsumoto-jo. A famous docent, popular with the locals, was about to lecture about Japan’s oldest existing castle. The old man with wispy white eyebrows and a slight hunch had brought an easel with him and was setting up his poster-sized photographs and visual aids. Noa’s third child, who had barely eaten anything except for half a rice ball, bolted from his seat and darted toward the guide. Risa was packing up the empty bento boxes and asked Noa to stand near Koichi, a tiny six-year-old boy with a remarkably well-shaped face and head. He had no fear of strangers and would talk to anyone. Once, at the market, he told the greengrocer that his mother had burned the eggplant the week before. Adults enjoyed talking with Koichi.

“ Sumimasen, sumimasen !” the boy shouted, pushing his little body through the group listening carefully to the guide’s introduction to the castle’s history.

The crowd parted to let the boy stand in the front. The guide smiled at Koichi and continued.

The boy’s mouth was open a little, and he listened intently while his father stood in the back.

The guide turned to the next image on the easel. In the old black-and-white photograph, the castle leaned dramatically as if the edifice might collapse. The crowd gasped politely at the famous image. Tourists and children who had never seen it before looked at the image closely.

“When this magnificent castle started to list this much, everyone remembered Tada Kasuke’s curse!” The guide widened his heavy-lidded eyes for emphasis.

The adults from the region nodded in recognition. There wasn’t a soul in Nagano who didn’t know about the seventeenth-century Matsumoto headman who’d led the Jokyo Uprising against unfair taxes and was executed with twenty-seven others, including his two young sons.

“What is a curse?” Koichi asked.

Noa frowned, because the child had been reminded repeatedly that he must not blurt out questions whenever he wished.

“A curse?” the guide said, then paused silently for dramatic effect.

“A curse is a terrible, terrible thing. And a curse with moral power is the worst! Tada Kasuke was unfairly persecuted when he was just trying to save all the good people of Nagano from the exploitation of those who lived in this castle! At his death, Tada Kasuke uttered a curse against the greedy Mizuno clan!” The guide grew visibly impassioned by his own speech.

Koichi wanted to ask another question, but his twin sisters, who were now standing by him, pinched the little bit of flesh around his right elbow. Koichi had to learn not to talk so much, they thought; policing him was a family effort.

“Almost two hundred years after Tada Kasuke’s death, the ruling clan tried everything in their power to appease the spirit of the martyr to lift the curse. It must have worked, because the castle structure is straight again!” The guide raised both arms dramatically and gestured toward the building behind him. The crowd laughed.

Koichi stared at the poster-sized image of the listing castle. “How? How do you reverse a curse?” Koichi asked, unable to control himself.

His sister Ume stepped on his foot, but Koichi did not care.

“To appease the spirits, the ruling clan proclaimed that Tada Kasuke was a martyr and gave him an afterlife name. They had a statue built. Ultimately, the truth must be acknowledged!”

Koichi opened his mouth again, but this time Noa walked over and picked up his son gently and carried him back to his mother, who was seated with her mother on a bench. Even though he was in kindergarten, Koichi still loved to be picked up. The crowd smiled.

“Papa, that was so interesting, nee ?”

“ Hai ,” Noa replied. When he held the boy, he always recalled Mozasu, who would fall asleep easily in his arms, his round head resting on Noa’s shoulder.

“Can I put a curse on someone?” Koichi asked.

“What? Who do you want to put a curse on?”

“Umeko. She stepped on my foot on purpose.”

“That’s not very nice, but it doesn’t warrant a curse, nee ?”

“But I can reverse a curse if I want.”

“Oh, it isn’t so easy to do so, Koichi-chan. And what would you do if someone put a curse on you?”

“ Soo nee .” Koichi sobered at the thought of this, then broke into a smile when he saw his mother, whom he loved more than anyone. Risa was knitting a sweater as she chatted with her mother. The picnic bags rested at her feet.

The Ban family walked around the castle grounds, and when the children grew bored, Noa took them to eat ice cream, as he had promised.

Yokohama, July 1974

Haruki Totoyama married Ayame, the foreman of his mother’s uniform shop, because his mother had wanted him to do so. It turned out to be a wise decision. When his mother was diagnosed with stomach cancer and could no longer manage the shop or take care of Haruki’s brother, Daisuke, Ayame knew exactly what to do. For two years, Ayame managed the business ably, nursed her ailing mother-in-law, and took good care of Daisuke. When Totoyama-san finally died after a great deal of suffering, Haruki asked his exhausted wife what he should do with his mother’s shop, and Ayame’s answer surprised him.