A four generation story that includes (i can only imagine) composite characters of people the author met in Japan. Coincidentally, I'm reading a book about Japanese internment in the US and this book provides a representation of the other side of that coin - Japanese colonialism and their abhorrent treatment of Koreans.

I keep looking for patterns or meaning. "A woman's lot is suffering" keeps coming up in almost every story. Also there was a pattern of the futility or destructiveness of being governed by things you can't control - ethnicity, being born out of wedlock, having "gangster" blood. In that way, this was a really really sad series of connected stories.