“Pachinko still has the same bad, old image as horse racing,” Ms. Motoi said. “Most my friends would rather play on the net at home.”
OTBs should be taking the Japan Cup.
You should be able to cash an OTB ticket at any OTB
NY State the New Detroit of Atlantic City Japan
Pachinko Hopes for a Comeback
CreditKo Sasaki for The New York Times
NAGOYA,
Japan — Part pinball and part roulette, with the lure of quick cash
winnings and little silver balls ricocheting off pins and bumpers, the
Japanese game of pachinko once seemed a permanent feature of the
nation’s postwar landscape, its arcade-style sounds and lights providing
a blinking, cacophonous backdrop to life in Japan during the boom
years.
In
recent years, though, one pachinko hall after another has shut its
doors as legions of loyal fans aged and passed away, the industry was
tainted by mob ties and — perhaps the biggest turnoff for Japanese youth
— the game acquired the musty scent of an artifact of their parents’
generation.
Now, like Japan itself, pachinko is attempting a comeback.
With
new halls that are bigger, cleaner, more luxurious and friendlier than
ever, the pachinko industry is trying to reinvent itself by appealing to
new customers, mainly younger Japanese who grew up playing video and
computer games, and by cleaning up its image, much as casino operators
made Las Vegas more family friendly by driving out the mob.
The
most ambitious of these new stores opened in April here in the central
industrial city of Nagoya: the $100 million Zent Nagoya Kita, billed as
the biggest pachinko parlor in Japan with more than 1,200 machines.
On
a recent weekday afternoon, a deafening roar filled the cavernous
parlor as mostly middle-aged and older men sat smoking cigarettes and
shooting the little silver balls, machine gun-style, through thickets of
metal pins in what looked like vertical pinball machines without
flippers. They used dials to adjust the balls’ trajectories and drop
them into strategically positioned holes; the more balls go in, the
bigger the prize.
Pachinko
machines were originally simple mechanical affairs, but now they are
fitted with flashy, sometimes outlandish electronics to appeal to the
digital-gaming generation. Those in Zent Nagoya Kita have liquid-crystal
displays that show images from Hollywood movies, animated chorus lines
of dancing sea turtles and smiling whales or clips of one of Japan’s
teenage starlets disrobing into a bikini.
A
staff of deeply bowing young women dressed like flight attendants work
the floor, greeting patrons and handing out prizes. Another feature less
visible to visitors: cameras at every entrance that use
face-recognition software to spot known gangsters, who are then asked to
leave.
“The
only way for pachinko to survive is to step out of the shadows and
become a respectable member of society,” said Tetsuya Makino, a former
pachinko hall worker who is now director of the Pachinko Museum in
suburban Tokyo.
But
to appeal to Japan’s shrinking population of young people, many say the
industry must do more to shed its reputation as a haven for yakuza
gangsters and North Korean sympathizers, and modernize the game itself
to attract tech-savvy youth who prefer online alternatives. And they say
pachinko must do this quickly, before the arrival of casino and
resort-operating companies that may soon enter Japan if full-fledged
gambling is legalized.
But
just as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has vowed to restore growth in Japan,
there are many who see hope for a revival of pachinko, which first took
off after Japan’s defeat in World War II using ball bearings from
destroyed armament plants. The game offered a rare source of
entertainment for a prostrated nation, and then during the heady decades
of postwar economic rebirth, it flourished as a socially tolerated form
of gambling for Japan’s hard-toiling office and factory workers.
Still,
according to Mr. Makino and others, pachinko has long been seen as
operating on the social margins because most of the original hall
operators were Koreans who had immigrated after Japan colonized their
homeland in the early 20th century. With most doors shut by
discrimination, pachinko provided one of the few avenues for economic
advancement for the ethnic minority. Even today, about three-quarters of
pachinko hall owners are ethnic Koreans.
The
game also acquired an outlaw image from the yakuza, Japan’s large
organized crime syndicates, which were drawn to the industry by a legal
subterfuge that permitted pachinko to thrive despite laws prohibiting
gambling. The police turned a blind eye as patrons received prizes like
cigarette cartons or tiny pieces of gold, which they could take to a
small window in a nearby building and exchange for money. Pachinko hall
owners were legally barred from operating the cash windows, which often
fell under the control of organized crime.
The
game’s image also suffered because some of the hall owners sent their
earnings back to families in what is now North Korea, turning pachinko
into a source of hard currency for that isolated nation. During
pachinko’s peak in the 1990s, hundreds of millions of dollars may have
flowed into North Korea every year, though the industry says recent
economic sanctions have largely cut off that financing.
Despite
the image problems, pachinko remains a huge business, with $180 billion
in sales last year. Japan’s 12,000 pachinko halls are ubiquitous, found
in front of most train stations and even in the most remote rural
villages, where the glow of their lights can be seen for miles at night.
But the industry is also clearly in crisis. From a peak of 30 million
in the early 1990s, the number of people who report having played
pachinko at least once during the preceding year fell to barely more
than 10 million last year, according to the Japan Productivity Center, a
market research company based in Tokyo.
To
combat the decline, Yoshio Tsuzuki, the president of Zent Company,
which owns Zent Nagoya Kita, borrowed an idea from Mr. Abe’s growth
policies by saying the industry must do more to appeal to women, which
Mr. Tsuzuki called the largest untapped pool of potential new customers.
To
lure more women, the parlor features a smoke-free, women-only lounge,
and luxurious bathrooms with tall mirrors, designer wallpaper and
chandeliers. Besides the game hall, there is a miniature shopping mall,
with a convenience store, ramen noodle restaurant, coffee shop,
laundromat, flower shop, children’s day care center, wine cellar and
even a small art gallery.
“We
are hoping that people who have never done pachinko before might come
here to do their laundry, use the day care for their children, eat a
bowl of ramen, admire a painting — and maybe also stay to give pachinko a
try,” said Mr. Tsuzuki, 40, whose father founded Zent Company.
He
said about a fifth of the store’s patrons were women, about twice the
industry average. However, on a recent night, only a few young women
could be seen. One of them, Rina Motoi, 26, who had come with a friend
after getting off her job at a bank, said that while she felt
comfortable in this store, pachinko as a whole still seemed shady.
“Pachinko
still has the same bad, old image as horse racing,” Ms. Motoi said.
“Most my friends would rather play on the net at home.”
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