“Pachinko,” a highly acclaimed American TV series, highlights an issue in Japan that is rarely touched upon in Japanese television dramas: the struggles of ethnic Koreans in the country.

The award-winning show has provided encouragement to “zainichi” ethnic Korean artists in Japan.

It is based on a novel of the same name by Korean-American Min Jin Lee published in 2017.

The story begins in the early 20th century in Japanese-occupied Korea. It follows four generations of a family, depicting the hardships and the discrimination they face in Japan.

The novel has sold more than 1 million copies in the United States and was featured on Barack Obama’s 2019 summer reading list.

Critics have compared it to the success of Amy Tan’s “The Joy Luck Club.”

The TV drama features popular Korean actors, such as Lee Min-ho. Production costs were reportedly about $100 million (13 billion yen).

The characters speak Korean, Japanese and English in the series.

An episode of the massacre of Koreans in Japan in the aftermath of the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake appears in the TV series, although it was not included in the novel.

The series’ eight-episode first season was streamed on Apple TV+ in 2022. It has been dubbed in more than 10 languages and offers subtitles in more than 40 languages.

In January this year, “Pachinko” won the Critics’ Choice Award for Best Foreign Language Series.

Since the movie “Parasite” won several major awards in 2020, works featuring South Korean characters and themes, such as “Squid Game,” have enjoyed both critical and commercial success in the United States.

A New York Times film reviewer said “Pachinko” “has a South Korean drama-like charm.”

The success of “Pachinko” has been the topic of much discussion in South Korea. One headline said, “A Korean immigrants’ story wins an award.”

But in Japan, the series has attracted less attention.

Some ethnic Koreans in Japan pointed out problems in the drama, such as, “The Japanese language spoken by characters who were born and raised in Japan is unnatural.” Another said, “I feel that something is not quite right with the depiction of zainichi society.”

But Oh Dok-chu, 54, a zainichi person who has worked in the entertainment industry for years, said, “I have a feeling of gratitude for discovering a zainichi story.”

Oh said: “I want to bring stories like this that are made in America to our hands. I hope ‘Pachinko’ is not the end, and I hope stories like ‘Pachinko’ will be created many times.”

Lee Bong-ou, a film producer who produced the 2004 Japanese movie “Pacchigi!” about the lives of Korean-Japanese high school students, said it has been difficult in Japan to air drama programs about zainichi.

Lee hopes “Pachinko” can break the taboo.

“If it becomes popular in Japan, I hope (‘Pachinko’) can help build momentum for stories of zainichi to be made in Japan, too,” he said.

The U.S. series features some actors who are active in Japan, too, including Kaho Minami.
She plays the girlfriend of a zainichi man who operates pachinko parlors.

Minami explained her real-life experiences of being an ethnic Korean in Japan.

“I was born in Hyogo Prefecture as a third-generation zainichi,” she told The Asahi Shimbun. “I explored a lot to find out, ‘Who am I?’”

She said she ran away from home when her parents decided to become naturalized Japanese.
Being a zainichi was central to her, Minami said.

But she faced problems with her identity.

“Shortly after I debuted as an actress, I could not talk about my background because of a director’s policy that ‘it would be better not to make it public because then the image of zainichi would be ahead of everything,’” she said.

“When I read ‘Pachinko,’ … I was shocked by its dry expression that sees things from a higher point of view. I auditioned and got the role. I stayed in Canada during the shooting of the series. It was commonplace to have different cultures and different races there. ‘Zainichi’ was just a ‘Korean-Japanese.’”

She said people there did not understand the difference between Japan and South Korea and were unfamiliar with the existence of zainichi.

“I learned about who I am, and the importance of speaking on my own terms. I have mixed emotions that ‘Pachinko,’ a story of zainichi Koreans, should have been jointly produced by Japan and South Korea under normal conditions.

“But in hindsight, I hope the fact that the series was born in the United States will open up a good current in Japan,” she said.