A Brief History of Pachinko: The Children’s Game That Became a Billion-Dollar Industry in Japan
Once a candy-store game, pachinko parlors attract millions of adults daily.
If you’ve never been to Japan, you’ve certainly never heard of “pachinko”(パチンコ). If you’ve ever been to Japan, it’s impossible not to know the word.
Today, the pachinko industry makes $200 billion per year. That’s more than 30 times what is spent in Las Vegas and Macau combined each year. Pachinko parlors only exist in Japan but have grown to be a large part of the culture. So much so that it now accounts for 4% of the Japanese GDP.
So how can this 90-year-old industry have grown so much without ever succeeding abroad? It’s the story of a foreign game adapting to the times and becoming part of the Japanese culture.
What is pachinko?
In simple terms, pachinko machines are complex pinball games. Pachinko parlors are filled with these loud machines that you can hear from far away. The noise coming from each is beyond imagination, as you can observe in this short video below. Even before doors open, it feels like we’re inside already.
