There is a saying that in Japan, in addition to the porn industry, the best way to show people’s desires is the “pinball room”.
Actually, Abe ’s development is also closely related to the billiard room, and there is also a force from North Korea behind the popularity of the Japanese billiard room.
It is said that the Japanese spend $ 200 billion a year on the billiard room, which is almost 30 times the Las Vegas gambling income.
So, what is a billiard room (パ チ ン コ)?
01 Treat the government ’s anti-epidemic requirements as a breeze
Maybe to the surprise of many people, Japan is now the region with the worst epidemic in East Asia, with more than 11,000 patients diagnosed (compared to more than 1,300 in South Korea and only 700 in China)
Abe also had to announce that he would extend the deadline for the declaration of emergency to May 31.
However, what is interesting is that in the “emergency situation”, the billiard room store is still operating as usual, and the government is in a hurry.
For example, the governor of Osaka Prefecture, Yoshimura Yoshimura, on the government website and the new crown epidemic briefing, directly named several billiard rooms and urged everyone not to go.
However, ironically, one or two hundred people lined up at the door of the billiard room early the next morning, and the parking lot was almost full.
When the door opened, the number of people in the shop increased to more than 300.
In an interview with the media, the store even insisted that even if it is criticized by name, it will still operate as usual, and it can also promote it for us and expand its popularity.
Kanagawa, Ibaraki, and Gunma prefectures have all announced bulletin rooms that insist on business without listening to government advice. As a result, instead of acting as a deterrent to sanctions, they have stimulated the sales of these illegal shops.
02 Actually, it is a gambling machine
What is the magic of the billiard room, so that the reserved Japanese, regardless of the epidemic, have to queue up to play two?
The billiard room is the most popular entertainment venue in Japan.
How popular? According to statistics, there are more than 10,000 billiard rooms in Japan. In the core of some small cities, there may not be a convenience store, but you can always find a billiard room.
There are two common machines in the billiard room, one is called “Bai Qingge” and the other is called “Bai Qingsao”.
Among them, Bai Qingge is a marble in Japanese.
The specific gameplay is that the player buys marbles with cash, and then pulls a wrench in front of the machine, trying to send the marbles to the small hole of the machine. If you successfully enter the designated area, a beautiful game screen will appear and the lottery will start. After winning the prize, more bullets will roll out.
The decoration of the billiard room is generally very gorgeous. Various lights, balloons, sound effects, and a dark atmosphere. After entering, people easily lose the concept of time and indulge in the game.
Besides the door, there are often beautiful women in sexy dresses.
Before the outbreak, the billiard room was basically open 24 hours a day, and passers-by were easily attracted to play two.
Also, smoking is basically banned indoors in Japan, but the billiard room is free to smoke, so many old smokers are willing to play.
The unit price of a marble is not high, ranging from 1-4 yen (1 yen is less than 7 cents). Many people mistakenly think that playing this will not cost a lot of money.
But the facts are completely different.
Basic novice play is basically busy work.
A netizen who has lived in Japan for a long time introduced that in just ten minutes, he lost 20,000 yen (equivalent to more than 1,300 yuan).
And this is just the beginning. Losing money continuously will inspire a spirit of unwillingness to lose, and only thinks that you have bad luck.
So, it is often just a small loss at the beginning. When the reaction comes back and you want to look back, you have often lost tens of millions.
Everyone must understand that this is the same as gambling.
Bai Qingsao is directly equivalent to a slot machine.
So, to put it simply, the billiards room is a place for gambling.
03 “Three-store model” circumvents the Japanese criminal law
The Japanese obsession with the billiard room is sometimes surprising.
Gambling is addictive, as is the billiard room.
In 2017, a tragedy occurred in Huxi City, Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan. The father of a child took his 1-year-old son to play Bo Qingge.
Because the child is not bothered to play games, he left the child in the car.
This father played in the billiard room for 2 hours. When he returned to the car, he found that the child had died of heat stroke.
The same thing happens almost every year in Japan.
We know that gambling is prohibited in Japan.
But why still open a store in a billiard room?
In fact, this involves the exchange mechanism of the billiard room, which is the “three store model”.
Simply put, there are two such shops around each billiard room. One is called “Jingpin Exchange” and the other is called “Jingpin Asking House”.
Players go to the billiard room to gamble. If they win, they only win steel balls.
The steel balls can be exchanged for special gifts of equivalent value in the billiard room. Now for the sake of simplicity, the billiard room can directly exchange the marbles for tokens.
Most of these brands are plastic and also filled with 18K gold.
Special tokens, containing 18K gold
Users holding these special gifts or tokens can go to the nearby Jingpin Exchange for cash.
The Jingpin Exchange can hold these special gifts or tokens and give them to Jingpin Wenwu. The billiard room repurchases these gifts from the Asking House, thus forming three cycles.
In the process, the three stores are operated by different companies, and they exchange money for things, entertainment for things, and money for things.
Japanese criminal law stipulates that gambling participants will be fined up to 500,000 yen, but the main point is that they do not include occasional entertainment for the purpose of betting.
That is to say, people do n’t gamble on money, betting on Rolex watches, Apple mobile phones or whatever, they do n’t count money directly as bets, and do n’t commit gambling crimes.
The billiard room takes advantage of the gray area of the law and is blatantly engaged in the business of gambling.
According to the media, the Japanese spend as much as 200 billion US dollars every year in the billiard room, which is almost 30 times the Las Vegas gambling income.
In Japan, there are countless tragedies every year because of the billiard room.
04 Let ’s eat Baidao first
Some people may ask, why not modify the law and plug the loophole?
Or why at the time when the epidemic was raging, both the government and the people in Japan were still so patient with the billiard room, and could they be allowed to open illegally?
In fact, there are three main reasons.
First of all, the most direct reason is that the billiard room is really important for the Japanese economy.
In 2018, there were 10060 billiard rooms in Japan.
This industry is regarded as a vulgar and dirty industry, with more employees than all Japanese car manufacturers.
In the most prosperous 1995, the national billiard room turnover reached 30 trillion 900 billion yen. Until now, the billiard room industry has generated nearly 25 trillion yen in economic benefits every year.
It accounts for more than 4% of Japan ’s total GDP.
It is conceivable that intermittent business during the epidemic period is to wait for death, not only the GDP is lost, but also thousands of people will be unemployed.
More importantly, the billiard room and Japanese political circles have a solid interest link mechanism.
In Japan, various industries have their own associations. Of course, such a large industry as a billiards room also has its own national association, called パ チ ン コ · チ ェ ー ン ス ト ア Association (Pinball Room Chain Association), referred to as PCSA, basically all the marbles Fang is a member of this association.
Opening the official website of this association, you can see 40 members of the Japanese Senate and House of Representatives, who are listed as “special consultants”.
For example, there were two Yamamoto, who had been the Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries of the Liberal Democratic Party, and Noda Seiko, who had widely promoted drinking toilet water in China, etc.
Among them, not only the ruling Liberal Democratic PartyThere are also MPs from the opposition Democratic Party and Reformation Association.
It can be seen how much penetration of the billiard room in Japanese politics.
Some “special consultants” from the ruling party Liberal Democratic Party
The direct approval agency for the billiard room is called the Security Communications Association.
The majority of the people in this organization are people from the former Japanese Police Department.
This also involves an unwritten rule dispatch system in Japan ’s police circles (Tianxiali): The former police department is about to retire or has retired, and it will be arranged in such an association by default, and the treatment is still very generous.
So, the billiard room was protected by the police again.
Even the Shinzo Abe family is closely related to the billiard room.
In the Shimonoseki city of Yamaguchi where Abe ’s political arena, the house ownership of Abe ’s campaign headquarters belongs to a company called Toyo エ ン タ ー プ ラ イ ズ, which owns a billiards chain store.
In other words, the houses of Abe ’s campaign headquarters were rented from a billiard house company.
And when Abe ’s father took part in politics, this company was a strong supporter of the Abe family.
In 2018, a billiard room opened in Yokohama, and someone found the Hexi flower basket sent by Shinzo Abe.
It ’s really hard to imagine that a country ’s highest head of government would give a gambling shop a flower basket, but it did happen in Japan.
05 also eat underworld
The billiards room not only plays in Baidao, but also the underworld forces in the background can’t be underestimated.
In Japan, most of the billiard room operators have a gangster background, and they are mainly Koreans in Japan.
Most of the billiard rooms in Japan are in the hands of Koreans and Koreans in Japan
Previously, Japan colonized the Korean Peninsula, not only plundering resources, but also assimilating education to the Koreans, plundering North Korean labor force. Therefore, after World War II, a considerable number of Koreans did not return to their motherland, but remained in Japan.
In that era, language was not available,Different nationalities, they suffer from discrimination, so many people have no choice but to start barbecue shops, ramen shops, and this kind of billiard room.
After fighting, killing and primitive accumulation, they have their current achievements.
There is an organization in Japan called the Korean Federation of Koreans, which has a history of 60 to 70 years. Because Japan does not establish diplomatic relations with the north of the peninsula, it is said that this federation actually acts almost as a diplomatic institution.
And most of its members come from the billiard rooms all over the country.
It is said that a large part of North Korea ’s foreign exchange income also comes from here.
06 Conclusion
Regarding the popularity of the billiards room, Hideki Kato, a Japanese sociology professor, once said: Japan is an overcrowded society with a strong sense of group, and the pinball machine is precisely a rare activity of Japanese people alone. It belongs to your independent space.
In fact, the billiard room is the most noisy and crowded place in Japan. People sit closely together, the background music is dynamic and noisy, and the huge music is accompanied by the sound of the marbles falling.
Here, you do n’t need to communicate with the people next to you, but rather use this machine to escape from the troubles of reality and devote yourself to one game after another.
Under the double pressure of work and family, the billiard room becomes a good place to release oneself and be freed.
It’s just that in every noisy street, in the collision sound of millions of metal balls, how many people are drunk and dream dead, and how many families will die because of this.
The stakeholders have their own benefits.