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Pachinko: Declining Popularity or a Continuing Japanese Social Problem?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 May 2025

Graham Brooks ,
Tom Ellis  and
C Lewis
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Pachinko refers to the peculiarly Japanese amusement arcade game that was supposedly modelled on the ‘Corinthian’, a US pinball machine, imported to Japan in the 1920s. Pachinko machines closely resemble pinball machines, though they are somewhat smaller and have a vertical, as opposed to horizontal, playing surface. Pachinko machines are played almost exclusively in specialist pachinko parlours, where the compactness of the machines is an important factor, as we shall see. In 2005, there were an estimated 17.1 million pachinko players, providing revenue of just over 28.7 trillion yen (US$250 billion). It is difficult to think of another developed society in which gambling is as universally accessible and widely practiced on a daily basis by such a significant portion of the adult population.

Type
Research Article
Information
Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 5 , Issue 5 , May 2007 , e12
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2007

References

Notes

1. Research carried out through funding from the GB Sasakawa Foundation and the kind assistance of the NPA.

2. Pachinko is legal in Japan, but exists illegally to some extent in other countries, e.g. Taiwan.

3. Ministry of Justice (2004) White Paper on Crime 2004: Treatment of Offenders. Tokyo: Research and Training Institute, Ministry of Justice.

4. See Langer, E. J. (1975) The illusion of control. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 32: 311-328.

5. It is worth noting that inflation during this period in Japan has been relatively flat.

6. See the website of the DSM V Prelude Project: www.dsm5.org