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Tokyo Temple Ceremony Honors Pinball Machines
Japanese pinball is fortunate, one of the few leisure industries lucky enough to defy the nation's economic slump and turn a profit even in the present tough times. Last Friday, those who make a living from pachinko, a game resembling pinball that enjoys huge popularity, gathered at a Tokyo temple to express gratitude to the clattering machines that make it all possible. Garish pachinko parlors, ubiquitous in Japan, are for large parts of each day filled with devotees transfixed by electronic beeping and the rattle of small metal balls whirling through the upright machines.
They make huge amounts of money, with earnings reckoned to be around $240 billion a year. To entice customers, new machines are installed regularly and pachinko fans line up for hours to get first crack at them. In Friday's solemn ceremony, Buddhist monks in purple robes chanted sutras in front of a candle-lit, brocade-draped altar adorned with a golden replica of a pachinko machine. Executives from firms that make pachinko machines and parts for them offered incense before bowing their heads and praying to honor those machines that have come to the end of their working lives over the past year.
"So many people play pachinko," said Hitoshi Osawa, an executive with leading pachinko machine maker Heiwa Corp. "We want to tell the machines, 'Thank you very much for all your hard work.'" Gratitude is definitely due. Heiwa had sales of 45.04 billion yen ($378 million) in the six months ending on June 30, a rise of 13.8 percent over the same period last year despite economic woes that have hit other leisure industries hard.
SOURCE: Reuters.
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