Winning Pachinko. Eric Sedensky

Its usage in pachinko refers to that one shot, which makes the difference between winning and losing on an ippatsu-dai.) And again, because just one ball is all it takes to "break" the machine, getting that ball where you want it is quite difficult. But many pachinko pros actually favor deji-pachi and ippatsu-dai for this reason. If they accurately analyze the nails (which is what they try to do continuously), they can make good money in a short time with little effort and little strain.

      Pachislo

      The third type of pachinko that appeared in the last decade is in essence not even pachinko. Pachislo is an abbreviation for "pachinko slot," but it is merely a somewhat elaborate slot machine and nothing more. These machines use tokens or "medals" instead of balls and operate like normal slot machines except that the dials are started with the push of a button. The player also has a button under each dial to stop that dial at will. There are options for diagonal and straight wins, according to the number of medals "bet." Pachislo specialty parlors have sprung up everywhere, along with almost as much literature on the genre as on regular pachinko. Presumably by learning the patterns and sequences on the dials of specific machines, one can learn to stop the dials at the right time and hit the winning combinations. There are also various "bonus chance" schemes the player can take advantage of to increase the number of medals a machine puts out.

      In one way or another all three of these machines had a profound effect in aiding the pachinko boom. Ippatsu-dai has been unable to rival the popularity of deji-pachi, but pachi-slo has managed to capture sixteen percent of the machine market.

      There is yet another type of pachinko that did not really play a part in the recent boom but still can be found here and there. It is called are-pachi and combines elements of deji-pachi, ippatsu-dai, pachi-slo, and bingo. The term are-pachi came from "arrange ball," a primitive hybrid of the old korinto getnu and pachinko, but it now stands for "arrange pachinko." True "arrange ball," sometimes called "smart ball," is still around in a few parlors, but like jan-kyū, one really has to look high and low to find it. Are-pachi has never really been popular but is sustained by a cultlike following of college students in the major cities. A number of parlor owners justify keeping a smattering of are-pachi machines on hand, but even so, are-pachi seldom accounts for more than ten percent of a parlor's machines.

      A definite boom followed the introduction of deji-pachi, ippatsu-dai, and pachi-slo, the proof of which is in the numbers. We pointed out before that one quarter of the Japanese population plays pachinko. Where do all these people play? Well, in 1981 at the onset of the pachinko boom, there were 9,807 parlors throughout Japan. They housed a total of almost 1.9 million machines. By 1982, the number of machines passed the 2-million mark and in 1988 hit 3.6 million. Most authorities agree the number is approaching four million by now. The number of parlors grew steadily as well, though it never neared its peak of 70,000 in the early 1950s. By 1986 there were well over 10,000 parlors in Japan, and after averaging better than ten percent growth over four years, the number of parlors reached the 16,000 mark by the end of the decade.

      The new machine types were not die only factor aiding this growth. There have been a lot of other changes in the pachinko business over the years, particularly the parlor owners' efforts to clean up their image. One of the simplest ways they accomplished this was to change the name of the place where pachinko was played. Parlors most often were referred to as "pachinko halls." But, much like the American image of a "pool hall," this term had a tendency to bring to mind a lot of smoke, dust, darkness, and undesirables. In Japanese the word "parlor" may not exactly suggest a place where elderly ladies gather to play bridge and drink tea, but it is vaguely brighter and more positive. For whatever reason though, the term "parlor" caught on. Presently, places where pachinko is played are called halls and parlors with about the same frequency. The same can be said for the frequency of each term as used by players and pachinko information sources, neither of which prefers one term over the other. For the most part though, in the last five years (since the peak of die pachinko boom) nearly all newly built or established places where pachinko is played have preferred to call themselves parlors.

      Hardest to clean up, however, has been pachinko's gambling image. Gambling in Japan has always had the connotation of being a pastime of middle-aged men, often gangster types with gold chains, "punch perms" (tightly permed short hair), and maybe a scar or two. Parlors started to combat this image with brightness, namely in the form of neon lights. Older pachinko parlors, which were built before 1980 and are likely to still be called halls, rarely have the prerequisite neon lights that characterize today's parlor. Nowadays, not only do new parlors have multitudinous banks of neon lights in multitudinous colors, they also have spacious reception areas complete with welcomers, welcome mats, vending machines, and umbrella stands. The toilets, sometimes with elaborate brass and marble fixtures, are kept immaculately clean, and the entire parlor is well illuminated from one corner to the other. The attendants are dressed in color-coordinated uniforms and the floor is swept thoroughly and regularly during business hours. This type of parlor, which began appearing in the late 1980s, was instrumental in attracting an entirely new clientele-women. Machine makers caught on quickly and began using pastel pinks, blues, and greens to appeal to the ladies. Now over twenty percent of the pachinko-playing population are women. This has prompted some parlors to put in josei kōnā, "women's corners," where only the ladies are allowed to play. There are even a few josei sen'yō, "women only," pachinko parlors scattered around the country.

      Other clientele that began appearing with the ladies were young adults and older teens. Although pachinko is not officially recognized as a form of gambling, no one under eighteen can play. Like driving or drinking, as soon as most young people reach the required age, they are anxious to give pachinko a try. They often have experienced the game in a tamer form at the local matsuri, or "festival," where a couple of beat-up pachinko machines from the early fifties are sometimes set up in a gaming stall. One of the largest groups of players are the gakusei pachinko or "student players," who try to supplement their meager spending allowance with a few thousand yen won at pachinko.

      As mentioned earlier, parlor innovations, such as the rental ball dispenser, played a part in the revitalization of pachinko in the 1950s. The boom in the 1980s also had its innovation—the "prepaid card."