2019-05-30

A chapter published on May 30, 2019, examining gambling and adult-game regulation in South Korea, Japan’s pachinko industry, Shintaro Ishihara’s criticism of pachinko during the post-3/11 electricity shortage, the controversy over political donations to Naoto Kan, and Asahi Shimbun’s reporting, drawing on Masayuki Takayama’s book How to See Through Asahi Shimbun’s Motives.

This chapter was originally published on September 25, 2018, under the title “Asahi Shimbun Defends Pachinko—Shintaro Ishihara Said This Was the Time to Get Rid of Pachinko.”
Readers who, following my recommendation, bought Masayuki Takayama’s book How to See Through Asahi Shimbun’s Motives at their local bookstore will surely feel the greatest possible gratitude toward the author and perhaps some measure of gratitude toward me for recommending it.
All emphasis in the text other than the headings is mine.
Arrest Naoto Kan for Bribery for Defending “Pachinko Parlors”
Asahi Shimbun Diverted Attention from the Foreign-National Donation Discovered Just Before 3/11
Mahjong Tables and Hanafuda in Press Clubs
For some reason, hanafuda cards tend to carry a somewhat negative image, but in fact they possess a remarkably elegant character.
The picture for January is pine, and February is plum, and each of these designs has a deep origin.
Take April, for example.
It depicts irises and a bridge crossing a pond.
It refers to the iris pond at Yatsuhashi in Chiryu City, Aichi Prefecture, where, according to the story, a princess who had followed Ariwara no Narihira threw herself into the water, and the beautiful kakitsubata irises that preserve her image bloom magnificently in spring.
Narihira also composed the famous poem incorporating the word kakitsubata: “Karagoromo / kitsutsu narenishi / tsuma shi areba…”
September depicts chrysanthemums and a sake cup.
This derives from the Chrysanthemum Festival on September 9, when chrysanthemum flowers were floated in sake cups in prayers for longevity.
October depicts maple leaves and a deer.
It represents Sarumaru Dayu’s poem, “Deep in the mountains / treading through the fallen maple leaves / I hear the deer cry…”
Yet the design showing the deer looking away became even more famous through the expression shikato—literally associated with the “deer of the tenth month”—meaning to ignore someone.
November depicts Ono no Tofu, a willow wet with rain, and a frog.
According to the story, when the young Ono no Tofu, later counted among the Three Great Calligraphers, was close to giving up, he saw a frog repeatedly trying with all its might to leap onto a willow branch and was inspired by its persistence.
Many expressions, like shikato, have associations with hanafuda.
Venison being called momiji, “maple,” is one example.
Horse meat being called sakuraniku, “cherry-blossom meat,” is said to derive from the dodoitsu verse, “Why tie a horse to a cherry tree in bloom? / If the horse grows excited, the blossoms will fall.”
Koi-koi is the game in which players enjoy collecting combinations based on these designs, such as akatan, aotan, inoshikacho—the boar, deer, and butterfly—and the bright cards, including pine, cherry, pampas grass, and paulownia.
The custom has largely disappeared, but in old press clubs it was once normal to have mahjong tables, hanafuda cards, and communal betting bowls on hand.
If only one reporter had free time, he read the newspaper.
If there were two, they placed a cushion between them and dealt out hanafuda cards.
That was once a familiar press-club scene.
Nintendo’s Hanafuda Became a Hit in Korea
It must have been about two decades ago that I learned that hanafuda had an international history.
When Nintendo’s Wii became a worldwide success, a Korean newspaper wrote that “we Koreans made Nintendo what it is today.”
At first I thought it was another boast along the lines of “we invented the Japanese sword,” but apparently that was not the case.
In Nintendo’s early years, the company exported hanafuda cards to Korea, where they became enormously popular.
Koreans call the game hwatu, or “flower cards.”
Today, the Japanese characters on the red poetry ribbons have been rewritten in Hangul, the bush warbler on the plum card has been replaced by a magpie, and Ono no Tofu is dressed in what the author describes as unsightly Korean clothing.
The point of the Korean newspaper article was that hanafuda became widespread in Korean homes and workplaces and generated substantial profits for Nintendo.
It argued that those sales helped establish the foundation from which Nintendo eventually became the global video-game company it is today.
The tone may sound self-congratulatory, but apparently the claim is not entirely exaggerated.
Once they begin playing, the article says, they can wear out a deck of hanafuda cards in a single night and, unable to wait until morning, go to a 24-hour convenience store to buy another deck.
Even today, this is said to generate considerable sales.
As can be seen in contemporary anti-Japanese disturbances, they tend to pursue things to the extreme.
Roughly half of them are Christians, and even their religious services are pursued to the extreme.
Prayers eventually become shouting, shaking churches like an earthquake, and some worshippers collapse or fall into states of frenzy.
There are numerous denominations and offshoots, including the Unification Church, and some groups actually practice in the mountains.
Pachinko, Even Though South Korea Banned It
Believers cling to standing trees while praying, lose themselves in devotion, and finally shake down trees so thick that a person could barely wrap their arms around them.
The author argues that one reason the Korean mountains, which Japan helped reforest, were again becoming barren was partly due to such religious groups.
Into a population portrayed as being so intensely absorbed in things came pachinko from Japan, a game with an even stronger gambling element than hanafuda.
Even Japanese people, whom the author portrays as more restrained, have repeatedly suffered family tragedies associated with pachinko addiction—children locked at home and starved to death, children left inside vehicles in blazing heat and killed, households collapsing under debt, and housewives turning to prostitution.
The argument is that people described as capable of becoming so absorbed that they shake down trees could hardly be expected not to become addicted to pachinko.
After losing all their money at pachinko, some even committed murder and robbery.
Because the social harm had become so severe, in June 2008 Roh Moo-hyun issued a ban on pachinko, and some 15,000 establishments nationwide were closed in a drastic measure.
Those of us who subscribed to Asahi Shimbun and watched its affiliated television stations and NHK knew absolutely nothing about this fact.
He was the president known for having undergone cosmetic surgery around his eyes.
Even so, there were people who could not forget pachinko.
“As many as 500,000 Koreans come to Fukuoka each year for that purpose,” Asahi Shimbun reported on March 3 of the previous year.
Ninety percent of Japan’s pachinko parlors are run by resident Koreans, the remaining ten percent by naturalized former Korean residents, with annual sales of ¥20 trillion, and a portion of the proceeds is sent through Mindan and Chongryon to Park Geun-hye and Kim Jong-un.
Pachinko is not officially classified as gambling, but prizes can be converted into cash through prize-exchange shops.
It is gambling in practice, the text argues, and it also creates addiction, destroys livelihoods, and leads to crime.
It is difficult to accept, the author argues, that even South Korea banned pachinko while Japan leaves it untouched, and that it enriches Korean residents in Japan and both North and South Korea.
Then came 3/11.
While all of Japan conserved electricity and mourned, brightly illuminated pachinko parlors around railway stations continued operating, filled with the constant clatter of machines.
Asahi Shimbun Defends Pachinko
Shintaro Ishihara said that this was the opportunity to get rid of pachinko.
The only people who would suffer, the argument went, would be those spending welfare benefits on pachinko or addicted Korean visitors flying in from Seoul.
It was an ideal opportunity to eliminate it altogether.
The Kan administration at the time, however, rejected the proposal.
Just before 3/11, it had emerged that Kan had received political donations from a Korean pachinko operator.
The text argues that Kan defended pachinko out of a sense of obligation for that support.
It calls this bribery and criticizes prosecutors for not bringing charges.
Asahi Shimbun, meanwhile, promptly gave an industry-paper journalist an entire page and, according to the text, had him falsely claim that pachinko parlors in South Korea had been closed because of corruption.
It then had Professor Naoko Takiguchi of Otani University argue that, because the industry employed 300,000 people, prohibition would be difficult from the standpoint of employment.
The text harshly criticizes academics who speak in ways convenient for Asahi.
It then asks whether Asahi president Tadakazu Kimura defended the industry so strongly because he had received even more than Kan.
(March 2014 issue)