Japan's Sad Gambling Addiction in Wake of Disaster

Pachinko's popularity in disaster zone raises gambling addiction concerns

In the areas hit hardest by the Great East Japan Earthquake disaster, it's said pachinko halls were amongst the first businesses to get back on their feet and are enjoying a healthy business. Pachinko is a type of pinball where the player guides small steel balls to certain goals to get even more balls. The balls are traded for prizes which are in turn traded for cash outside the halls. To discover what is on the minds of disaster survivors who visit these halls, I visited one with 10,000 yen of my own money.

The suburbs of Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture, were blanketed with snow. Homes with their first floors gutted by the tsunami and shuttered stores could be seen here and there. I visited a large pachinko hall that had been reopened with new furnishings a half-year after being flooded by the tsunami. Even though it was a weekday, there was a line of around 40 people waiting for opening time.

"I've come even on a snowy day, so you'll give out winnings, right?" said an elderly woman wearing a woolen cap to a young hall employee. They seemed to know each other. The low temperature for the day was -5 degrees Celsius.

"Thank you for coming," came an announcement at 9:00 a.m., and the hall doors parted. While I wondered where to sit, everyone else took a spot in front of a machine. I eventually sat in the front row next to an elderly gentleman.

I started the game. When a ball fell in the center hole, numbers on a screen would spin like on a slot machine. If the three numbers that came up matched it was a jackpot. I heard that when this happens, around 8,000 yen's worth of balls come out of the machine all at once. I'd also heard that jackpots sometimes came one after another. However, with 1,000 yen I was only able to play for a few minutes. Thinking, "Next will be it," I continued playing until I'd lost all 10,000 yen in only 30 minutes.

Coming back to my senses and looking around the hall, I saw that around 80 percent of the over 300 seats were filled. About one in seven or eight people had won a jackpot, and they had stacks of boxes filled with balls. After noon, the hall's seats were almost filled. I looked at the display over the machine of the man next to me. He'd been playing the whole time, but the display read, "Number of jackpots: 0." It had been three hours since the hall opened. Based on the 30 minutes it took my machine to devour 10,000 yen, the man may have lost 60,000 yen. A few minutes of the game is leisure, but more than that is entering the world of high-stakes gambling.

I talked to a few customers leaving the hall. When I asked, "Did you win?" they all gave vague responses, and they all had gloomy expressions. A middle-aged woman who had come to the hall said, "People who lost won't say anything because a lot of them keep their visits here secret from their families.

"The people who line up at the start of business come every day, even on borrowed money," she added.

"Did you get a jackpot?" I asked the man next to me as he got up to leave at around 1 p.m. He looked at me with an uncomfortable expression when I said I'd been sitting next to him since opening.

"Today was bad," he said. "But I came out ahead the day I had 11 jackpots in a row." He couldn't, though, remember exactly when that was or how much he'd won.

When I asked why he still came every day even when he lost badly, he said, "Before the earthquake I didn't do it much. I lost my son to the tsunami, my house was washed away, and now I live with my wife in temporary housing nearby. I don't know anyone there, and I have nothing to do, so it's something to pass the time." He said he has played pachinko since he was young.

A person with ties to the pachinko business in Sendai told me, "Pachinko halls are particularly numerous in Ishinomaki and other coastal areas where there aren't many recreational facilities. I think that New Year's business in Miyagi Prefecture at the top hall of each of the chains was much higher than during the same period the year before the earthquake. There are halls still suffering negative effects from the earthquake, but this year the business as a whole will probably start making a profit again."

Tsukasa Endo, 49, who works for a non-profit organization supporting Ishinomaki, says, "There are many people who visit pachinko halls to escape the harsh realities of post-earthquake life and get hooked. The earthquake probably also serves as something of an excuse. Some lonely disaster refugees are getting addicted to gambling or alcohol, and it's tragic."

According to Hokkaido Mental Health Welfare Center head Hitoshi Tanabe, who has spent many years treating addiction, rises in gambling addiction after disasters are common.

"When disaster-affected lifestyles are prolonged, people with gambling or alcohol addictions or tendencies towards those addictions have an increased risk of relapses or worsened symptoms. The jobs, schools, or family connections that would normally be the focus of their energies are gone. Bad temporary living situations and anxiety about the future continue for a long time, leading to an increased desire to drink or gamble. The risk is even higher when disasters cut patients in support groups off from their group therapy," says Tanabe.

Gambling addiction often sets in when a person in an emotionally vulnerable state, like depression or very low self -esteem, gets a thrill from winning at gambling. It becomes habitual to the point that the person can no longer be happy without gambling, and will even spend money they need for the most basic living expense to support their habit. If the person vows to stop, they may continue while hiding it from their family.

"The first thing this person needs to do is go to a hospital or mental health center that treats addiction for diagnosis," Tanabe says. "Treatment starts with the patient and their family accepting there is an addiction. The patient must attend a support group regularly and change their lifestyle while getting expert advice. A person will not recover by just telling themselves that all they need to do is not gamble."

For the disaster areas, he adds, "In addition to passing out addiction checklists and fliers telling people where they can get help, cooperation between judicial scriveners at debt consultation centers -- often visited by gamblers who have hit rock bottom or their families -- and addiction specialists is also effective." A group of judicial scriveners in Miyagi Prefecture has already invited gambling addiction specialists to open study courses.

However, another volunteer mental health worker helping disaster victims says, "When you say 'disaster survivors,' that includes people in a variety of financial conditions, from those who have received life insurance or donation payments to those who have lost their jobs and not received any compensation. Even if they are playing pachinko, if it's within boundaries it's just leisure. For a volunteer, it's hard to find out how disaster survivors are using their money."

At 7:00 p.m. I visited the same pachinko hall again, and there were people waiting for seats. A girl who seemed to be about junior high school age was searching for someone. She approached a woman who had five boxes of winnings stacked next to her. After an exchange of words, the woman handed 1,000 yen to the girl, who for a split second looked sad.

I caught up with the girl after she left the hall and asked if the woman was her mother, and she nodded. I asked about the 1,000 yen.

"She said, 'Go eat next door.' I'm going to the restaurant now," the girl replied. I asked her whether her mother came to play pachinko every day. "She leaves the house saying, 'I'm going to my part-time job,' but..." the girl said, trailing off.

Gambling addiction is surely not a problem that can be solved by blaming anyone, I thought, standing near the blue-white neon lights of the hall. (By Joji Uramatsu, Evening Edition Department)