Pachinko Season 2 Episode 6 Review: Chapter Fourteen

To be fair, not a lot technically happens on Pachinko Season 2 Episode 6, “Chapter Fourteen,” a table-setting sort of hour that puts various pieces into place for future emotional confrontations as the series’ gears up for the season finale. 

It’s an episode filled with platitudes and justifications about fighting to get what you want, but for most of the series characters — read: the men — it’s about finding an excuse to be the worst version of yourself, or falling back into repeated bad patterns. 

In 1950, there’s at least a bit of good news. Noa’s aced his exams and has been accepted to Waseda University. He’ll have the chance to further his education and better his life, hopefully in a way that means he won’t have to scrimp and struggle the way Sunja and his family have. 

Noa balks when he learns that attending will cost significantly more money than the family had planned for. Sunja insists they will figure it out, but her son is skeptical that anything can be done that won’t force his mother to give up her long-held dream of a noodle restaurant of her own.

Throughout, he insists they can’t take the money for his schooling from Hansu, even when Kyunghee insists it would be a loan they’d all work to pay back. Sunja is adamant — he’s going, and they’ll find a way to cover the cost.

In many ways, Noa’s hesitancy makes sense. Not his refusal to accept assistance from Hansu, but his fear of leaving the familiar behind. He’ll not only be traveling to a far-off city, he’ll be away for years, and there’s every reason to believe that Noa that returns won’t much resemble the boy he is now. His family, their struggles, and the poverty they live in will become foreign to him, in ways both good and bad.

It’s unfortunate that Pachinko has slacked so much when it comes to exploring the fallout from Noa seeing his secret dad beat the heck out of a guy for stealing from him a couple of episodes back.

Now, Noa simply refuses to have anything to do with Hansu, which is a natural reaction, I suppose, but if it’s supposed to be the primary reason he won’t accept his help then the show’s done a very poor job of explaining that fact.

Is it because he’s realized he’s shady? Does he just hate violence? Is he upset Hansu isn’t the guy he thought he was? The addition of that moment was essentially made up for the show and it’s frustrating that it was just dropped this way. 

Hansu, for his part, isn’t having that great of a time of it either. With the American forces readying to leave Japan, those who will be left behind are already jockeying for power. Rumors are rife that another family is trying to horn its way into Hansu’s black market business, and he immediately sets increasingly unhappy and belligerent Kim to dig up more information about what’s going on.

The other family? It’s led by Yoshii Isamu, the same figure who sends a man to threaten Solomon later in this episode and who, for reasons known only to himself is real invested in building a golf course.

It’s a testament to how well-plotted this show is that this revelation somehow managed to both come out of nowhere and feel completely inevitable at the same time. Time is a flat circle, indeed.

In more ways than one, it would seem. Hansu’s father-in-law has already found the horse to which he will yoke his family’s future: The aspiring young politician named Kurogane. Hansu’s not a fan, citing the other man’s ambition.

This is why his father-in-law plans to ensure his loyalty to their family, by marrying him to Keiko, one of Hansu’s daughters in much the same way Hansu’s own loyalty was originally bought.

Hansu protests, but we all know this is the one area of his life where he has no power at all.

Honestly, I wish we’d gotten to see more than a couple of minutes of his reaction to the news that his daughter is being married off to a stranger. Some of Pachinko’s best additions to the scope of the original novel involve Hansu’s internal struggle with the man he’s forced to be versus the one he likes to believe he can become, and this crisis exists at a crucial intersection of those selves.

In the 1989 timeline, Yoshii has sent one of his (presumably many) guys to Solomon’s apartment, armed with a reminder that he really, really wants to get moving on that (idiotic) golf course idea and an envelope full of photos that suggest Naomi’s been seeing someone else on the side. 

Solomon, foolishly, seemed to think that Yoshii had left the yakuza life behind, but let’s be honest — is that the kind of life anyone ever really leaves? 

Unfortunately, it seems that the surprisingly nice hired thug wasn’t wrong about Naomi. She’s been telling Solomon she’s slammed at work, but when he follows her (a gross move in its own right don’t get me wrong!) as she leaves the office, he discovers her on a date with her other boyfriend and his family. 

Solomon looks devastated, particularly when Naomi turns away after he catches her eye across the crowded restaurant. Ouch. 

It turns out that Naomi and her date, a man named Kunizane Tsuyoshi, have been friends since childhood. Their parents are close and had always assumed the pair would marry each other. There’s an implication that this is a union about power, much the same way Hansu and his daughter’s were arranged.

And like both of them, Naomi can’t even fathom a world where she goes against her parents’ wishes, much as she might wish to. 

Solomon, unsurprisingly, burns off any audience goodwill this heartbreak might have afforded him by immediately insisting that Naomi has to call in Abe-san’s loan.

She refuses, quite rightly pointing out that it’s the sort of move that would tarnish her reputation for the rest of her life and promising to do her best to stop him. (Also, for the record, let’s remember —tanking this deal doesn’t actually benefit her in any way.)  

After Naomi leaves, Solomon immediately calls Tom, insisting that they’re going to have to get rid of Naomi. It’s probably a testament to how much this particular character has irritated me this season that my immediate assumption here was that he meant “kill her,” but no, he just wants to fake some financial fraud and get her fired. 

The swiftness with which Solomon leaps straight to destroying a woman’s life for his own benefit is genuinely disturbing. This is not the man Sunja believes you can be, kid. 

I’m sure if you asked Solomon in this moment, he’d say he was deeply hurt and really doesn’t want to be doing what he’s about to do to someone he claimed to care deeply about like five minutes ago. He’s still planning to do it anyway, though, and that’s what makes all the difference. 

Stray Thoughts and Observations

• Sunja and Kato’s date is the cutest thing I’ve ever seen, I would watch an entire episode of them just going around trying random Western restaurants. Imagine them faced with the neverending pasta bowl from Olive Garden. 
• Relatedly: Drunk Sunja is the best.
• Truly can’t believe that Adult Mosazu has had absolutely nothing to do this season and the storyline he lands when he finally gets one is secretly hiring a private investigator to dig into his mom’s new boyfriend. Child Mosazu deserves better than this. (The revelation that he’s drowning in debt is also a deliberate and sort of strange swerve—in the book, Mosazu is filthy rich from his pachinko empire.)
• Random fact: The news broadcast Solomon is watching on television mentions the arrest of Tsutomu Miyazaki, a Japanese serial killer who was responsible for the abduction and murder of at least four girls, whose bodies he dismembered after death. He was arrested in July of 1989, which is a very specific moment to ground this episode in. It’s most likely meant to let us know how close we are to the end of the year, when the Japanese stock market crash takes place. But that’s just a guess. 
• Yoseb creepily watching Kim and Kyunghee yearn over laundry and brush their hands like they’re in a Pride and Prejudice remake is…well, it’s certainly more menacing than I was expecting.
• At this point, it certainly seems like it would have to be easier (or at least a lower level of effort) for Solomon to just get literally any other job than all the hoops he’s jumping through with Tom, Abe-san, and Naomi, right?

What did you think of this episode of Pachinko? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

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