Pachinko may be a funny sounding word. Actually it is derived from the sound – “pachin-pachin” – that is made by balls as they bounce down the face of the game board toward winning or losing positions. It may be a funny-sounding game, but it produces some serious wins.
Pachinko has its origins outside of Japan. Some suggest that the game comes from Europe, but most find beginnings in the United States. The Corinthian game was played in Detroit in the early 1920s. The game was played with a board placed on an incline. Balls were shot up one side of the board and then fell downward onto circles of nails (arranged like Corinthian architecture) and bounced into winning slots or fell into a losing pool at the bottom. Players were given scores and awarded prizes for their play.
The game developed in two different directions. In the United States it graduated into the popular pinball games that were found in recreation halls across the land until computerized games replaced them in the 1960s. The Corinthian game moved to Japan, and in the 1930s parlors were developed offering play. The game board was placed upright into a vertical position to save space. Machines were also converted so that the balls could come out of the machine in increased volumes if winning placements were made.
Soon the machine was the most popular recreational game in Japan. In 1937, however, Japan commenced military action in China, and the nation assumed a wartime posture. The game was made illegal as plants making the games were converted into munition factories. The government did not want individuals to waste time at play, and many of the players were drafted for military service.
After the war the machines were made legal once again. The government now encouraged play, as the occupying armies used play as a means to distribute scarce goods to the public – cigarettes, soap, chocolate. Players “won” balls from the machine, then exchanged the balls for merchandise. No cash prizes were allowed (which is still the case). In ensuing decades the machines were refined. Shooting mechanisms enabled players to put over 100 balls a minute into play. Pachinko machines incorporated new games within the game. Slot machine–type reels were placed in the middle of the playing board. As balls went into winning areas, the reels spun, enabling greater prizes to be won if symbols could be lined up in winning combinations.
Machine operators have the opportunity to make payouts greater or smaller by moving the nails on the surface of the playing boards. Players find that when the nails are farther apart, the balls are more likely to fall into a winning position. Experienced players will look for such machines. Also, they will play on certain days when the weather may cause the nails to be loosened. Particular players may be consistent winners; however, even a very inexperienced player can achieve wins when a ball activates the slot-type reels and they end up in a jackpot position. Typically the machines pay out a maximum of balls worth about $160 for a top jackpot.
A new variation of the game called pachi-slo has been introduced. The game is essentially like the reel slot machines found in casinos all over the world. After the reels are activated, however, they may be stopped individually by the player’s pushing buttons. With a special skill the player is supposed to be able to line up symbols in winning patterns. The reels spin so fast, however, that almost all winners claim their prizes through luck. Although pachinko wins are conveyed in balls from the machine, pachi-slo machined use tokens for play, and tokens come out for winners.
With both types of machines the balls and tokens are converted by a weighing machine into tickets with winning amounts written upon them. The tickets are traded for prizes at a special booth within the parlor. Prizes popularly won include cigarettes, music tapes, and compact discs.
Well over 90 percent of the winning players, however, choose to trade tickets for small plastic plaques, which ostensibly have value in and of themselves. Usually they include small pieces of gold or silver. But no player wants the little bit of precious metal. Instead, they take the plaques to a designated money exchange booth that is usually very near the pachinko parlor. There they receive cash payments. The process of converting balls or tokens into tickets into prizes into cash costs the player about 25 percent of the prize. That is, 100 balls for play will typically cost 400 yen (about $5). If a player wins back the 100 balls, the ticket will enable him to trade the win for a prize worth 400 yen retail. The plastic plaque may be traded at the money exchange for 300 yen cash. The parlor does not really care which way the player goes. After all, the retail merchandise costs the parlor only 300 yen. The exchange booth operators may take a portion of the win when they sell the plaque, as they are a separate business. Even so, the parlor owners sometimes may have close ties to the exchange businesses.
Today there are approximately 18,000 parlors in Japan. Collectively they have 4 million machines. About 80 percent of the machines are pachinkos and the rest pachi-slos. The parlors may also have rooms with other kinds of amusement machines that give prizes. Each machine wins an average of over $5,000 per year, substantially less than the slot machines of U.S. casinos. The machines cost only about $1,000 each, however, and halls choose to have an excess of machines so that experienced players as well as others can have the opportunity to select machines for play. The United States has about one slot machine for each 400 residents, but Japan has one gaming machine for each thirty residents. And that makes for a lot of gambling.
The reluctance of Japan to embrace casino-type gambling in part derives from a feeling that gambling enterprise is closely connected to bad influences – in Japan, that might mean the Yakusa, or organized crime. There is a fear that the Yakusa has ties to the pachinko industry.
Like the democracy of Pericles and the Golden Age of Athens, citizenship privileges in Japan are for the most part reserved for people of Japanese origin. Residents with Korean or Chinese family ties may be excluded from entrance to the major corporations of the land, and for some of the time after World War II, their children were not allowed into the universities. Those with entrepreneurial spirit had to “go it alone”. These “foreign” (so considered even if native born) Japanese developed mom-and-pop retail businesses, and they also gravitated toward pachinko. At first most parlors were small and independently owned. Also, pachinko, although very popular, was considered somewhat unclean – perhaps like pool, pinball, and slot machines were in years past in the United States. The traditional Japanese did not want to associate with the business. Organized crime groups also moved into the industry, many with Korean ties. Today the police worry that some pachinko parlor funds are utilized to support drug activities and gun smuggling. There is an ongoing fear that funds are skimmed and sent to North Korea where the Communist regime uses them to purchase nuclear materials.
These suspicions have led various members of the industry to band together to form an association with the goal of cleaning up the industry as well as the image of the industry. The group is hoping that the government will revise the prize structure of the games so that players can win cash prizes directly from the machines. The police are reluctant to do so, because, as one National Police director told me during an interview in Tokyo on 10 August 1995, “we don’t want gambling in Japan”.
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