With the Diet's passing of a law last December that will legalize casino gambling, many are wondering how this development will affect the few forms of tightly controlled gambling and gaming that have been permitted up to now — like pachinko (a type of pinball machine).
"Customers at casinos and those at pachinko parlors are different, so I think they can co-exist and co-prosper," the manager of a large pachinko emporium remarked to Asahi Geino (Nov. 30). "That's because part of pachinko's appeal is that you can walk into a shop by a train station while wearing your sandals."
Pachinko's popularity, however, has declined considerably over the past two decades. Compared to some 30 million customers who paid out an estimated ¥30 trillion in revenue in 1995, the figure last year was down to fewer than 10 million players at approximately 10,000 parlors that generated revenue of ¥22 trillion.