Published on July 15, 2019.
This article introduces a passage from Masayuki Takayama’s book Masayuki Takayama Cuts Through: How to See Through the Asahi Shimbun’s Designs, focusing on pachinko, South Korea, Nintendo’s hanafuda cards, Naoto Kan’s foreign donation issue, and the Asahi Shimbun’s defense of the pachinko industry.
It critically examines the structure in which Japan leaves pachinko untouched even though South Korea banned it, involving Korean-resident operators, political donations, and the reporting posture of the Asahi Shimbun.

July 15, 2019.
Kan, out of that obligation, turned to defending pachinko.
This is what is called bribery, yet the prosecutors did not even build a case.
Readers who, in response to my recommendation, purchased Masayuki Takayama’s book Masayuki Takayama Cuts Through: How to See Through the Asahi Shimbun’s Designs at their nearest bookstore must surely be offering the greatest possible gratitude to the author, and must also feel some measure of gratitude toward me, the recommender.
The emphases in the text, apart from the headings, are mine.
Arrest Naoto Kan, who defended the “pachinko parlors,” for bribery.
The Asahi Shimbun replaced the foreign donation issue that had been exposed just before 3・11.
Mahjong tables and hanafuda cards in press clubs.
When one hears hanafuda, for some reason a negative image tends to follow, but actually, those cards have quite an elegant charm.
The pictures of pine for January and plum for February have deep origins.
For example, April.
It depicts irises and a bridge crossing a pond.
It refers to the iris pond at Yatsuhashi in Chiryu City, Aichi Prefecture, where a princess who had followed Ariwara no Narihira threw herself into the water, and the kakitsubata irises that retain her beautiful figure bloom in full splendor in spring.
Narihira also composed a poem incorporating kakitsubata: “Karagoromo / kitsutsu narenishi / tsuma shi areba….”
September is chrysanthemum and a sake cup.
It derives from the Chrysanthemum Festival banquet on September 9, when chrysanthemum flowers were floated in cups in prayer for longevity.
October is maple leaves and deer.
It depicts Sarumaru Dayu’s poem, “Deep in the mountains / treading through autumn leaves / the crying deer…,” but from the design in which the deer is looking away, the word shikato（October deer）became more famous.
November is a picture of a willow wet with rain, a frog, and Ono no Michikaze.
Ono no Michikaze, who later became one of the Three Great Calligraphers, was on the verge of discouragement when he was young.
At that time, the sight of a frog single-mindedly trying to leap onto a willow branch inspired him.
There are many words connected with hanafuda, such as shikato.
Calling venison momiji is one example, and calling horse meat sakura-niku is said to have originated from the dodoitsu: “Why tie a horse to a blooming cherry tree? / If the horse becomes spirited, the blossoms will scatter.”
Based on such designs, collecting red poetry ribbons, blue poetry ribbons, boar-deer-butterfly, and bright cards（pine, cherry, pampas grass, paulownia, and so on）and enjoying them is koi-koi.
It has now declined, but in old press clubs, mahjong tables, hanafuda cards, and donburi bowls were naturally kept on hand.
If one person was free, he would read a newspaper; if two people were free, they would place a cushion between them and scatter hanafuda cards.
That was the scene in press clubs.
Nintendo’s hanafuda became a hit in South Korea.
It was perhaps two decades ago that I learned that those hanafuda cards had an international character.
When Nintendo’s Wii became a worldwide hit, a South Korean newspaper wrote, “We Koreans raised Nintendo into what it is today.”
I thought it was the kind of tall tale like “We created the Japanese sword,” but it was not.
In its early days, Nintendo exported hanafuda cards to South Korea, and they became an explosive hit.
They called them “Hwatu,” and now they have arbitrarily rewritten the “aka yoroshi” on the red ribbon in Hangul, replaced the bush warbler on the plum tree with a magpie, and dressed Ono no Michikaze in their own shabby clothing.
In other words, the point of the article was that in South Korea, hanafuda spread through both homes and workplaces and made Nintendo profitable.
The claim was that thanks to those sales, the foundation of today’s global game-software company Nintendo was built.
It is a patronizing tone, but it seems by no means to be an exaggeration.
Once they start playing, they wear out the hanafuda cards in a single night, and unable to wait until dawn, they go to a 24-hour convenience store to buy more.
Even now, that apparently makes for considerable sales.
As can be seen from today’s anti-Japanese uproar, once they start anything, they go all the way.
About half of them are Christians, but they go all the way even in their masses.
Their prayers eventually become screams, shaking the church like a rumble in the earth, and they fall into fainting and frenzy.
There are mountains of sects such as the Unification Church, and among them are even sects that actually train in the mountains.
Pachinko, even though South Korea banned it.
Believers cling to standing trees and pray, reach self-forgetfulness, and in the end shake down trees that are thick enough to require both arms to encircle them.
One reason the mountains of South Korea, which Japan planted with trees for them, have become bald again is partly because of churches like this.
Into a people so obsessive, pachinko, which has a higher gambling character than hanafuda, entered from Japan.
Even among Japanese, who still have more restraint than they do, tragedies of family collapse never cease: people locking their own children at home and starving them to death, or leaving them in scorching cars and roasting them to death, or falling into the hell of debt and turning to housewife prostitution.
There is no way a feverish people who shake down standing trees would not become addicted to that.
Simply because they lost their money playing pachinko, they will commit murder and robbery.
Because the harms were so great, in June 2008, Roh Moo-hyun issued a pachinko ban and carried out drastic surgery by closing 15,000 shops nationwide.
＊We, who subscribed to newspapers such as the Asahi Shimbun and watched their television stations and NHK, knew absolutely nothing about this fact either.＊
He was the president who had undergone that eye-widening cosmetic surgery.
Even so, there are still people who cannot forget pachinko.
“There are 500,000 South Koreans a year who come to Fukuoka for that purpose,” the Asahi Shimbun reported on March 3 last year.
Of those Japanese pachinko parlors, 90 percent are run by Korean residents in Japan, and the remaining 10 percent by naturalized Korean residents in Japan; they generate annual sales of 20 trillion yen, and some percentage of it is sent through Mindan and Chongryon to Park Geun-hye and Kim Jong-un.
Pachinko is not ostensibly gambling, but it can be converted into cash through prize-exchange shops.
It is open gambling, and in addition it produces addiction, destroys lives, and creates crime.
It is hard to accept that Japan leaves pachinko untouched even though even irresponsible South Korea banned it, and that, moreover, it enriches Korean residents in Japan and both North and South Korea.
Then 3・11 occurred.
While all Japan was saving electricity and in mourning, in front of stations, with flashy illuminations left on, jangling open gambling was taking place.
The Asahi Shimbun defending pachinko.
At this opportunity, Shintaro Ishihara said that pachinko should be crushed.
The only people troubled by that would be loafers playing on welfare and addicted South Koreans flying in from Seoul.
It was truly a good opportunity to crush it.
However, the Kan administration at the time rejected that proposal.
Just before 3・11, it had been exposed that Kan had received political donations from a South Korean pachinko parlor operator.
Kan, out of that obligation, turned to defending pachinko.
This is what is called bribery, yet the prosecutors did not even build a case.
The Asahi Shimbun immediately gave one page to an industry newspaper reporter and had him tell the lie that “pachinko parlors were closed in South Korea because of corruption.”
Furthermore, it had Professor Naoko Takiguchi of Otani University say that because 300,000 people work in the industry, “a ban is difficult from the standpoint of employment.”
Scholars who speak to suit Asahi’s convenience are as ugly as they look.
Does Asahi defend pachinko this much because Asahi president Tadaichi Kimura is receiving even more than Kan?
（March 2014 issue）