Pokies and Slot Machine Information

Slot machines Japanese style - pachinko

April 24, 2006 on 9:56 pm | In Slot machine articles online |

Slot machines as such are illegal in Japan. At least slot machines as most people understand them. Instead the Japanese play a different style of pseudo gambling game - pachinko.

Players frequent what are sometimes huge venues, absolutely stuffed with pachinko machines. Once there, they purchase small metal balls and insert them into the machines. At the end of play the idea is to have more of the balls out of the machine than were put in. As with other gambling games, more often than not this won’t be the case.

Its against the law in Japan to award a cash payout, so instead of cash prizes, players are given tokens or trinkets of specific value. Some of these prizes awarded can be exchanged or ’sold’ for cash at adjacent or nearby centres. The cash cannot be given at the venue itself, though in practice these centres are not far from the pachinko venues.

The net effect is that players can end up with more cash than they started with - just as you might playing real slot machines. The process is just a little more complicated. The turnover on pachinko machines is quite incredible:

“pachinko … takes in 30 trillion yen a year — more than Japan’s automobile manufacturers”

Japan Times Article

There used to be extensive involvement by organised criminal elements in the pachinko process. This has been cleaned up in recent years, but changing the system to a more conventional slot machines/casino style operation is being met with resistance:

“The people who oppose legalized gaming in Japan say that it will stimulate underworld criminal activity and lead to the deterioration of public morals”

The public morals argument is a little farfetched, as even in pachinko parlours an entry age limit of 18 applies. The secondary argument about the likely involvement of organised crime in casinos is also quite specious - most first world countries are able to control the probity of casino operations.