Pachinko

A game studies perspective

Abstract

Like the film critic Donald Richie, most Westerners visitors to Japan who notice pachinko are overwhelmed by it. Roland Barthes, in his book on Japan, Empire of Signs, devotes a short chapter to this “collective and solitary game.” (Barthes, 1982, p. 27) Once you notice pachinko you discover parlours everywhere occupying the prime real-estate at the intersections of major thoroughfares in Japanese cities. These parlours have large and glittery entrances inviting you into a space of play unlike the arcades. You are assaulted by the noise of thousands of steel balls falling through pins, and the grey smell of cigarettes burning in the small ashtrays at each console. You walk down rows of brightly decorated vertical consoles, careful not to trip on the trays of shiny balls won by players, and young aides greet you politely while you try to figure out this popular game. What you may not know is that pachinko is the most popular game in Japan and yet it is rarely discussed in game studies there or even in the Japanese literature around game culture. It is the most popular of a small number of licensed gambling games.[1] It is a game apart, both economically and culturally, which makes it worth exploring. This paper will look at pachinko from a game studies perspective, by which we mean as a game. We will explain why we are taking a game studies perspective, discuss how pachinko works, outline its history, its cultural context, economics and the aesthetics of pachinko. At the end we will return to the oriental strangeness of pachinko as a site to explore some of the dangers of cross-cultural game studies.