Discover

is a Japanese gaming device used for amusement and prizes and is related to pinball machines. Although originally strictly mechanical, modern pachinko machines are a cross between a pinball machine and a video slot machine.
The machines are widespread in establishments called "pachinko parlors", which also often feature a small number of slot machines. Pachinko parlors share the reputation of slot machine dens and casinos the world over — garish decoration; over-the-top architecture; a low-hanging haze of cigarette smoke; the constant din of the machines, music, and announcements; and blinding levels of illumination to keep players entranced for hours in their games.

Contents

History

Functioning

Underworld and North Korean links

Smoking

Media

Manufacturers

See also

References

External links

History

Pachinko machines were first built during the 1920s as a children's toy, then emerged as an adult pastime in Nagoya around 1930. All of Japan's pachinko parlors were closed down during World War II, but re-emerged in the late 1940s and have remained popular since then.

Functioning

Players buy metal balls which are shot into the machine, with the chance of winning more balls.
Originally, machines had a spring-loaded lever for shooting the balls individually, but modern machines use a round "throttle" that merely controls how quickly an electrically fired plunger shoots the balls onto the playfield. The balls then drop through an array of pins, and usually simply fall through to the bottom, but occasionally fall into gates that make the machine pay out more balls.
Most current machines include a slot machine component and are known as , a portmanteau of "pachinko" and "slot machine". In ''pachisuro'', big winnings are ultimately paid not from the balls falling into gates but from the slot machine matches that follow. In many modern machines the balls have nothing to do with determining winnings, which are based strictly on electronic random number generators.
The winnings are in the form of more balls, which the player may either use to keep playing or exchange for tokens or prizes such as pens or cigarette lighters. Under Japanese law, cash cannot be paid out, but there is virtually always a small exchange centre located nearby (or sometimes in a separate room from the game parlor itself) where players can conveniently exchange tokens for cash. In Japan, gambling is theoretically illegal, but from the sheer number of pachinko parlors in Japan it is clear that the activity is at least tacitly tolerated by the authorities.

Underworld and North Korean links

As a gambling activity, pachinko is widely held to have links to organized crime (specifically the Yakuza). There have also been links to the government of North Korea, which has allegedly been able to siphon funds from the sizeable population of Pyongyang-aligned ethnic Korean pachinko parlor owners in Japan.^[1] "Official" figures put the sum of remittances to North Korea from Japan at 3 billion to 10 billion yen in 2005, split between pachinko revenues and the importation of illegal methamphetamines.^[2]

Smoking

Since Japan ratified the World Health Organization (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control in 2004, many public anti-smoking laws have been passed. Recently (as of May 2006), a number of the laws have begun to be enforced. The pachinko parlor is one of the few places smokers can go where the regulations have not caught up with them. There are preliminary discussions in the Japanese Diet to extend public smoking controls to pachinko parlors; however, no legislation has been proposed.^[3]

Media

Pachinko is occasionally referred to in songs, one of the more notable ones being Pachinko by The Pogues, written by Jem Finer for their final album, Waiting for Herb.

Manufacturers

★ Aruze

★ Maruhon

★ Sega Sammy Holdings

★ Daito Giken

★ Nishijin for older machines.

See also

★ Bean machine

★ Maruhan

★ Pinball

★ Bagatelle

References

1. Lost gamble: How Japan's attempt to slow nuclear work in North Korea failed
2. Freire, Carl, The Associated Press, reported in ''The Japan Times'', December 6, 2006, p. 3.
3. A dying breed: Japan’s smokers are feeling the heat as the government slowly tackles tobacco

External links

★ Modern Japan - Entertainment - Pachinko

★ Pachinko - Japan's National Pastime

★ Pachinko Machine Repair and Service

★ How to Play Pachinko

★ Pachinko Nation - A Synopsis of a National Addiction

★ A complete Pachinko (and others type of machine) database