On March 25, 2022, the first American drama series invested by Apple, "Pachinko," premiered on Apple TV, setting a new record for subscription to a new drama in the same time slot on its first day.

After three episodes, it scored a perfect 100% on Rotten Tomatoes. The original novel was even selected as one of the top ten books of the year by The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Times, and People, and ranked TOP1 on the overall Amazon list in the US, TOP1 on the UK Amazon literature list, and scored 4.26 on Goodreads.

The plot revolves around four generations of Korean immigrants in Japan, spanning from the 1920s Japan-Korea disputes to the 1980s Showa dreams, covering 60 years.

What everyone loves most is the passage described in the original book: big era, small characters, the roulette of fate. Life is a gamble, and there has never been a winner.

A family, a piece of history, a story, all converge into a gamble, which is rarely known on the entire Chinese internet. The deep power struggles, Japan-Korea past, and police-criminal collusion are never mentioned. So today, let us take a look at the abyss of human nature deep in Japan—Pachinko.

Pachinko Past

Visitors to Tokyo will notice an interesting phenomenon. On the streets of Tokyo, there are shops with closed doors and the lower half of the glass covered with stickers. Passing by, you can only hear the excited music and the never-ending "bang bang" sound of metal hitting. These shops are usually located in the core areas of popular stations, no more than a 3-minute walk away, and are often connected in large areas. And this is Japan's most profitable legal business—Pachinko.

According to official records, the earliest pinball games were born during the Taisho era. The introduction was facilitated by our old friend, the leader of the railway industry, the founder of the Takarazuka Revue, and former Japanese Minister of Commerce and Industry: Kobayashi Ichizo.

In 1920, a trader approached Kobayashi, stating that during his trips to Europe and America, he saw a novel machine that was almost in every bar and was extremely popular. Seeing that your hot springs are neither hot nor popular, why not consider introducing some of these machines.

Thus, Kobayashi Ichizo introduced the then-popular pinball machines from Europe and America and placed them in the newly opened Takarazuka Hot Springs in Hyogo Prefecture, mainly targeting foreign sailors. But just having games is not enough, since our main customers are men.

There needs to be wind, wine, play, and music.

Thus, the later imperial top dance troupe, Takarazuka, was born, starting as a rural bathhouse performance team. Don't talk to me about vulgarity or crudeness. Ha, men. Some say they like elegance, some say they like art, and some say they like purity, but watching girls' long legs in a bathhouse and gambling on slot machines, these two tricks, from 8 to 80 years old, there is no one who does not like them. As Takarazuka's fame grew, so did the number of tourists, which in turn drove the popularity of pinball machines.

Some Japanese businessmen saw the business opportunity behind pinball machines and improved them, placing them in various temples and snack shops to attract customers. This is what's called the "1-game pinball machine." At that time, playing once only required one copper coin. Each time, the ball was launched from the bottom of the machine, repeatedly hit by the side paddles, and finally rolled into the corresponding hole.

Does this rule sound familiar? Yes, it's just like the 3D Pinball that comes with the Windows system. I remember similar games at the candy shops outside my school when I was a child.

In the "1-game pinball machine," if you hit the ball into the corresponding hole, you would receive a corresponding paper reward card, which you could exchange in the store for soap or candy. Of course, you could also choose not to exchange and save up the medals to exchange for more valuable products. Gradually, the rewards evolved from small snacks like candy to more desirable items for adults, such as pots, pans, or cigarettes.

This expanded the audience for pinball games from children to all ages. As more people participated, the game became less pure. For example, in 1931 in Nagoya, a grocery store called Kurobayashiya suddenly offered a bicycle as the ultimate prize, but it required collecting 300 reward cards to exchange. Note that this was in 1931, when a bicycle was almost equivalent to a Maybach today. Suddenly, the whole city was flocking to their store to play pinball.

But as the saying goes, the seller is always smarter than the buyer, and the owner naturally couldn't easily give away the bicycle. The owner deliberately made the scoring holes of the pinball machine very small, so many people could only get one or two reward cards after playing all day. Gradually, people began to feel something was wrong. At this rate, the money spent on playing pinball could buy two bicycles.

Just when people were losing interest, some smart individuals realized that they couldn't win 300 reward cards themselves, but everyone could win one or two, right? A couple of cards could at most be exchanged for a pack of cigarettes, but if I spent money to buy these people's cards, wouldn't the bicycle be mine?

Thus, people began to stand outside the store offering money for cards. Over time, more and more people stood outside the grocery store buying reward cards, and eventually, some skilled children specifically went to play pinball and then turned around to find people outside to exchange for money. The owner didn't care, after all, no matter how you traded in the secondary market, you were still coming to spend money on pinball. After a few months, someone finally collected enough reward cards to exchange for the bicycle, and by then, the owner of Kurobayashiya had made a fortune.

Seeing others making big money, competitors followed suit, and soon, pinball shops offering big prizes appeared all over the country. The tricks were similar, with prizes ranging from bicycles to radios getting bigger and bigger. The scoring holes of the pinball machines were also made smaller and smaller. The owner collected money and issued cards, and the secondary market spent money to buy cards, each getting what they wanted.

However, a few years later, by the late 1940s, pinball games suddenly cooled down. Not because the prizes were no longer attractive, but because there were no more pinballs. After all, at this time, the minor frictions between Japan and the US had entered the middle and late stages. Under militarism, all metals were used for military construction. A child's toy machine still needed steel balls, which was absurd.

Of course, with the front lines tense, the rear was also tense. Some shop owners considered using other materials as substitutes, such as replacing steel balls with bamboo or clay. But pinballs are not ornamental objects, and the balls are not meant to be played with; they are meant to be hit and battered by players. After prolonged play, the balls would inevitably get damaged, and damaged balls would become smaller, making it possible for them to enter holes that they couldn't before. If the shop owner then claimed that the damaged balls didn't count if they entered a hole, customers would likely overturn his stall.

So, pinball games indeed quieted down for a few years until 1946, when the front lines had become a foregone conclusion. So, let's drink today and be merry, as we live for today.

Thus, pinball stalls reappeared at market fairs, and in that year, the first pure Pachinko shop officially opened in Nagoya. This marked the official entry of this national-level civilian entertainment onto the historical stage.

Banker-Player Game

Those who often leave comments at the bottom of videos asking to see various provincial stream left-brain underdeveloped individuals, pay attention, here comes the main text. Let's answer why the novel describing the past of Korean immigrants mentioned at the beginning of the video is named after Pachinko.

Back then, those of Korean descent set their sights on Pachinko.

Because in the eyes of the proud clump generation, medical commerce, skyscrapers, subways, financial arts, Japan's post-war economic development was booming, and everything was making money blindly. What is Pachinko? Isn't that just selling vigor pills at a street stall? Even if you're itching to play a few rounds after work, if you make this your profession, you must be out of your mind. Who in their right mind would do this? Since the Japanese looked down on it, the Koreans entered the game.

At that time, the mainstream gameplay was five balls for one yen, meaning you could play five times. The easiest prizes to win were generally candies and matches, which you could buy several of for one yen originally. As for prizes like towels and socks, you generally had to spend four or five yen to win. And the ultimate prizes, one might not be exchanged for three or four days.

Many Koreans used this to achieve their initial accumulation in Japan. To this day, Koreans still control over 80% of Pachinko shops in Japan. The owners of the top two Pachinko chain stores, ZENT and Dynam, are both of Korean descent.

As the market heated up, Koreans began to delve deeply into this industry. So, what are the core elements of this industry? Let's take a good look:

1. Prizes, needless to say, the bigger, the better. Don't worry about the prizes being expensive, just worry about no one coming. The more expensive, the more gimmicky, the more expensive, the more traffic. But what if others don't like the big prize? It would be great if you could just give money directly, as everyone likes money. But giving money would turn it into gambling, and Japan doesn't issue casino licenses.

2. Winning rate, this is essentially a banker-player game. At this time, the pinball shops were still traditional physical structures. The shop owner's trick was to lower the winning rate, make the pinballs bigger, and make the holes smaller. But there needs to be a balance, it needs to be possible for ordinary people to win once in ten tries, but the player's method is, if ordinary people are one in ten, are there any extraordinary geniuses? For example, those with a good sense of touch and skills, could they achieve one in seven, or even one in five?

3. Efficiency, this is essentially a game of touch, so naturally, various metaphysical players will appear, such as adjusting angles and finding the right force. If a machine is occupied for two points, you see his consumption, less than 5 yen. If you always have such customers, can you still make money?

In response to these industry pain points in the banker-player game, the bankers began to break them down one by one:

Firstly, in the 1950s, a businessman named Masamura Takeichi made significant modifications to Pachinko:

He abandoned the traditional single-launch method and transformed it into an automated continuous shooting mechanism, significantly shortening the game duration. Single shots became continuous shots, and the player's consumption increased several times in the same amount of time.

Secondly, since there are touch geniuses in mechanical structures, why not just change it to electronic? But this would be unfair to customers, as electronics are easily suspected of the owner secretly adjusting the winning rate. So, I'll slap you twice and give you a candy. The pinball machine is further combined with the slot machine gameplay. If you successfully enter a hole, you can also enter the slot machine's lottery mode. In this way, although your winning probability is lowered, the reward you get after winning may increase.

As for the overall revenue, that's something only the bankers calculate. Ordinary people? Brains, such a good thing, are not something everyone has.

Finally, about the prizes, the bankers personally go to the store to buy back the prize coupons. So, if you want the prizes, you can collect stamps and exchange them, or if you want money, that's fine too, I'll personally buy them back.

Under this series of improvement measures, Japanese Pachinko officially evolved from a street children's game into national gambling.

The government finally couldn't sit still. What are you doing, robbing money? That's always been my job. What's your level, doing the same thing as me? Heavy penalties must be imposed, and a strict crackdown must be carried out.

You can't tell me about horse racing or boxing. Are those gambling? That's lottery! Did you participate in the competition process? Is the competition result under your control? No matter how much you win from betting, it's just a bonus of the event, just like a lottery. But now you're playing a little steel ball, money in and money out, betting small to win big, isn't this opening a casino? Or are you paying me money? Split seventy-thirty? What, you seven, me three? You really are rebelling against the heavens!

Thus, starting from the 1950s, the Japanese government imposed multiple policy restrictions and regulations on Pachinko. First of all, it was to restrict Pachinko manufacturers. To prevent shop owners from manipulating the winning rates of the machines themselves, starting from 1952, the production qualifications for Japanese Pachinko machines needed to be reviewed and granted by the state, and shop owners could only buy from qualified manufacturers.

But there's always a way around policies. Shop owners indeed couldn't modify the machines themselves, but that doesn't mean they couldn't pay the manufacturers to come to their shops for "after-sales tuning." You say I secretly changed the winning rate, that's a false accusation. The machine has been played for a long time and definitely needs maintenance. They come to maintain and tune it for me, is this secretly changing? This is after-sales service.

Seeing the collusion between factories and shops playing tricks, the government fortunately didn't pretend anymore.

In 1954, the Japanese government issued a ban on continuous-fire "Pachinko," and in 1961, it introduced the "Pachinko Prize Off-Table Management," prohibiting the recycling of prizes.

This dealt a heavy blow to Pachinko shops. Since the government wanted to suppress it from the top down, don't blame me for dismantling it from the bottom up.

To get out of the predicament, merchants worked hard on the gameplay, continuing to operate by changing game rules and reward methods.

Thus, the best historical example of exploiting loopholes: the three-shop Pachinko entered the center stage.

Abyss of Desire

By the 1960s, Pachinko, under the government's encirclement and suppression, underwent its ultimate evolution. As mentioned earlier, the Japanese government first completely banned continuous-fire Pachinko. This ban was directly written into the penal code, requiring that after 1959, the Japanese Pachinko industry must not produce, sell, buy, or use continuous-fire Pachinko machines, with a fine of 500,000 yen for violations. This was 500,000 yen in the 1960s.

With this, a large number of manufacturers died out, and without machine supplies, the remaining shops also found it difficult to expand. But which country and which era did the lower-class people not have a little gambling nature, even knowing that from the law of large numbers, they couldn't beat the banker. But people still felt they would be the lucky ones. So, in the later stages, even the common people protested multiple times, demanding the restoration of Pachinko's operation and prize redemption. What protecting the public, aren't you breaking my upward channel?

But the government was determined this time and would not lift the ban. Just when everyone was at a loss, time came to the mid-1970s, and Sega entered the scene. Today, when we mention Sega, we generally think of it as a pure game company. But before getting into games, they had already started producing various jukeboxes and slot machines. In 1974, Sega produced a continuous-fire Pachinko machine with an LCD screen, instantly causing a frenzy in the industry.

The government immediately came to hold them accountable, but Sega said, you banned purely mechanical continuous-fire machines, and what I produced is not a purely mechanical structure. This is just an electronic game machine, and the game it happens to carry is Pachinko. This left the government unable to handle it. This is a typical case of the industry advancing ahead of the law, after all, machine production is always faster than legislation. And it was this operation that quickly received a warm response from the market. Subsequently, industry giants like Konami, ARUZE, and Sankyo entered the scene. The