Pachinko's epic diasporic storytelling feels very Canadian

When Jin Ha was in Toronto last year, shooting the second season of the multigenerational saga Pachinko, he had a driver of Punjabi-Canadian descent. 

"We had talked about Punjabi history," says the actor who plays Solomon in the AppleTV+ series. "He was telling me this epic tale about princes and queens. After he had seen [Pachinko's first season], he was like, 'I started watching your show and It made me immediately think about my grandparents, how they were displaced and why they eventually came to Canada.'"

That's the magic of Pachinko, a show that on so many occasions felt like it was burrowing deep into my soul. The epic, romantic and often gut-wrenching series is about a family who come from a very specific community known as Zainichi — the Koreans displaced to Japan before the second world war. But, as Jin Ha elaborates, the show forges an intimate connection with any audience that has "experiences with immigration or forced displacement."

"The way we know that the show works on a cellular level is if after watching it you want to call home," says Pachinko's creator Soo Hugh, "whatever home means to you."

I'm speaking, in separate interviews over Zoom, with Hugh, Ha and the latter's co-stars Minha Kim and Lee Minho. During these conversations, I venture to call Pachinko very Canadian, if not on paper, at least spiritually. 

Sure, the series is set in Korea, Japan and New York. It's made with Silicon Valley money (consider the lush budget for its sensual aesthetics a rounding error at Apple). It's created by a Korean-American showrunner (Hugh); adapted from a novel written by Harlem-based author Min Jin Lee; and is led by Korean actors like Kim and Minho (the latter a K-drama phenomenon who has his own Madame Tussauds wax figure). But there's something to be said about its diasporic storytelling. 

Pachinko's characters — whether a Wall Street-type in the 80s like Solomon or a migrant in 1940's Japan like his grandmother Sunja — cling to or grapple with their heritage and identity, while never quite feeling settled wherever they are. These characters and their journeys feel part of our cultural fabric, even if they never set foot in Canada.

"I do think it's a Canadian show," says Hugh, generously entertaining these sentiments. She points out that the show is shot in Korea and Canada — half the first season in Vancouver, and half the second in Toronto. "And it wasn't just for the tax incentives," jokes Ha, before speaking on the way Toronto's diversity creates the perfect ecosystem for a show like Pachinko.

"Our cast and crew, who [are] from Toronto, they were phenomenal," Hugh continues. "Their stamp is on this show."

If at this point, you're screaming, "but what the hell is this show actually about," we won't leave you hanging any longer. 

Pachinko largely centres around Sunja, the matriarch played during her younger years by Kim — who gives an achingly beautiful performance — and in her latter years by Minari's Oscar-winner Yuh-Jung Youn. The series begins before Sunja's even born — with her parents struggling to have a child in Japan-occupied Korea — and then continues quickly over the years as she deals with romance, passion and betrayal in Korea before moving to Osaka, where her husband is jailed as a political prisoner.

The show's Godfather Part II style time-jumping structure, where Sunja's arc in the 40s and 50s plays out alongside her grandson Solomon's story, has met with fair criticism for departing from the novel's chronology. I get it. It can be frustrating to cut away from the younger Sunja — who in the second season is surviving colonization, the second world war, Nagasaki and the Korean War alongside her sons — to Solomon as he's brokering love and real estate deals with his family's legacy casting a shadow over his moves. 

But that framing, where Sunja's story is told as if in rear view from Solomon's more contemporary perspective, is also key to Pachinko's appeal. The series makes an epic romantic history feel especially intimate, as it intricately draws the links between these seismic events from the last century and the anxieties we sit with today. 

Also key to Pachinko's appeal, as Ha explains, is how it tells the stories that our own grandparents are often too humble or modest to share about those times.

"There will always be something lost or something secret," says Ha. "Each generation has their own trials and tribulations or experiences that will never be shared with anybody else. But with the luxury of something like this TV show, we can actually experience and share so much of the really significant life-changing moments that to them might just feel [insignificant]. 'Oh it was just that day that I chose to pawn this watch; or that's the day I chose to try to sell alcohol to make enough money for my kids.' Unbeknownst to them, it changed the course of their entire family's history."

In Pachinko's second season, war and devastation are the backdrop to Sunja's struggle. She's in Osaka, raising her kids and growing her kimchi and noodle stand, which becomes a local destination for the Zainichi community, who deal with a very nuanced type of racism and oppression, given Japan's colonial history. There's a warmth to the noodles they don't feel elsewhere.

"It feels like they're in their hometown again," says Kim, adding that she can relate to finding the comfort of home and cultural identity in a dish. The Seoul-based actress, who speaks as softly and gingerly as her character, connects it to her own experience feeling homesick while spending nearly half a year in Toronto shooting Pachinko. 

"I missed Korea a lot. I miss my family. They have great restaurants in Toronto. There's a Chinatown and a Koreatown. Whenever I go to the Korean restaurant, it feels like I'm at home. And through that personal experience, I think I attached more to the [show's] subject."

Kim also says that through Pachinko she connected to the idea of living her own life as though she were living for her parents. That's a sentiment that I'm sure all kids, but especially immigrant kids, will find relatable, or unbearable— the expectation that we have to live up to our parents' sacrifices. It's something that Kim says she struggled with but grew to appreciate while making the show. 

Season two is at its most devastating and emotionally complex when grappling with the sacrifices Sunja makes for her children and the way her son Noa (played ever so gently as a young adult by Tae Ju Kang) struggles to receive them. For the sake of his mother, who had it hard enough, Noa tries but fails to not feel burdened both by what Sunja does for him and the hopes she has for him. Their tender but ultimately mournful exchanges are among the heaviest in a show that rarely lets up when it comes to the heartache.

That's why Pachinko's opening title sequence, an even more bouncy and joyous dance number in its second season, is such an addictive reprieve. Kim, dressed in a white hanbok (a traditional Korean dress), joins the entire cast in rocking out to The Grass Roots song "Wait A Million Years." It's the only time we get to see the whole cast together, and happy, as if for a moment the weight of Pachinko's storytelling is lifted.

"There's always this bright side," says Kim. "We got to try hard not to lose that."

Pachinko season two premieres on AppleTV+ on August 23, with new episodes released every Friday.