Meiji Gakuin Course No. 3505/3506 Minority and Marginal Groups of Contemporary Japan

Tom Gill Lecture No. 12 Gamblers 賭博・ギャンブラー ＯＧＡＷＡ

For over twenty years he had a very cushy job, He says he earned a good salary for doing little work. He was married to his second wife, but he admits he treated her badly. “I never took my wife on holiday, I hardly even took her out for a meal. Any spare cash I had was used for gambling.” I met Ogawa san in a homeless shelter in Kawasaki in 2007. • Ogawa’s main weaknesses were bicycle racing and slot-machines. He reckons nearly everyone in his shelter has a gambling problem. Maybe Kawasaki has more compulsive gamblers than the average city, with bicycle and horse-racing tracks right in the center of town.

Compulsive gambler ギャンブル依存者 But the slots and pachinko are worse, he says, because you can play them any time. Racing happens only at certain times of day and certain times of the month, but there is always an open pachinko / pachisuro place – and the money goes away faster. He can’t blame his wife for leaving him after he lost his job. It was his fault. I asked Ogawa why he did something so self-destructive. He offered three reasons: boring married life, too much free time at work, and easy access to gambling facilities. But the first of these was the biggest factor.

From: “The Meaning of Self-Reliance for Homeless Japanese Men” by Tom Gill, on-ｌｉne at Japan Focus Gambling fascinates, because it is a dramatized model of life. As people make their way through life, they have to make countless decisions, big and small, life-changing and trivial. In gambling, those decisions are reduced to a single type – an attempt to predict the outcome of an event. Real-life decisions often have no clear outcome; few that can clearly be called right or wrong, many that fall in the grey zone where the outcome is unclear, unimportant, or unknown. Gambling decisions have a clear outcome in success or failure: it is a black and white world where the grey of everyday life is left behind.

Outcome = result, 結果 As a simplified and dramatized model of life, gambling fascinates the social scientist as well as the gambler himself. Can the decisions made by the gambler offer us a short-cut to understanding the character of the individual, and perhaps even the collective? Gambling by its nature generates concrete, quantitative data. Do people reveal their inner character through their gambling behavior, or are they different people when gambling? Gambling capital of world?

US (2007) Gross revenues from gambling (including casinos, lotteries etc) were $92.27 billion in 2007, which at $1 = ¥80 is about ¥7 trillion for a population 2.5 times the size of Japan’s. So if Japanese were like Americans, we’d expect them to spend: 7 / 2.5 = c. 3 trillion yen. Gambling capital of world?

UK: (2008-9) in FY2008-9 spent roughly £7.16 billion on horseracing bets and £1.72 billion on dog racing. Total: £9 billion or about ¥1.2 trillion at £1 = ¥130. The UK has about half the population of Japan, so if Japan was like the UK, we’d expect people to spend

1.2 x 2 = c. 2.4 trillion yen

Gambling capital of world! Japan: (2005) ¥3.26 trillion on horse- racing, ¥1 trillion on powerboat racing, ¥0.88 trillion on bicycle racing, ¥0.11 trillion on motorbike racing. Total spend just on race gambling is ¥5.22 trillion. Then there’s another several hundred billion on lotteries… And this in a country once known for its high savings rate.

The paradox: compared with people in other countries, Japanese SAVE more money but they also GAMBLE more money. Why is that? Is it really a paradox? People save because they are concerned about the future… right? Why do they gamble?

People gamble because they think having fun in the present matters more than the future. OR…

They have plenty of money, so they don’t have to worry about the future. OR…

They ARE worried about the future, do NOT have enough money, and think they can win!

People gamble because having fun in the present matters more than the future. PRESENT ORIENTATION 現在中心思考 They have plenty of money, so they don’t have to worry about the future AFFORDABLE GAMBLING 遊び金の賭博 They ARE worried about the future, lack money, and think they can win! INVESTMENT GAMBLING 「投資」型賭博 By global standards Japan gambles a lot – and that is before one even considers the ¥23 trillion spent on pachinko in 2008, which dwarfs all other kinds of gambling in the world. (Technically, pachinko is classified as “amusement” rather than “gambling”. Here’s how…)

PACHINKO

1. Pachinko alone accounts for 74% of all amusement spending in Japan. 2. The average Japanese person (including children) spends ¥30,000 a year on pachinko. 3. Japanese people spend 100 times more on pachinko than on movies and nearly 20 times more than on golf… though Japanese love of golf and cinema are famous. 4. Pachinko parlors are 4.5 times as profitable as movie theatres and 10 times as profitable as golf courses.

Japan spends about 5 times as much on pachinko as it does on defence. So pachinko is a huge phenomenon… a license to print money.

Why? “The parlor is a hive or a factory - the players seem to be working on an assembly line.” Quotation from Empire of Signs, by Roland Barthes (1971) L‘Empire des signes (1970), 『表徴の帝国』 ロラン・バルト , 1974年 Roland Barthes, 1915 to1980

“The pachinko is a collective and solitary game. The machines are set up in long rows; each player standing in front of his panel plays for himself, without looking at his neighbor, whom he nonetheless brushes with his elbow. You hear only the balls whirring through their channels (the rate of insertion is very rapid); the parlor is a hive or a factory - the players seem to be working on an assembly line. The imperious meaning of the scene is that of a deliberate, absorbing labor….” From factory to factory farm, Barthes switches metaphors

“The machines are mangers (かいばおけ，まぐさ おけ), lined up in rows; the player… feeds the machines with his metal marbles; he stuffs them in, the way you would stuff a goose; from time to time the machine, filled to capacity, releases its diarrhea of marbles; for a few yen, the player is symbolically spattered with money.” Something sexual and political in pachinko… “Here we understand the seriousness of a game which counters the constipated parsimony of salaries, the constriction of capitalist wealth, with the voluptuous debacle of silver balls, which, all of a sudden, fill the player’s hand.”

Roland Barthes, Empire of Signs, pp.27-29. “FEVER”

• At twenty past two I drop a ball into a hole beneath the LCD screen and up pop three mermaids in a row. The machine goes ape-shit. White lights explode like landmines, the wheel starts buzzing and a siren begins to mewl Dolby sound from the ceiling above me. Jackpot. Blondboy slaps me on my back. He points at the three hula-dancing mermaids and screams “Fever!” over the wail of the sirens. There must be fifty balls screaming about behind the glass. I’m worried the screen will crack. More balls keep flying out the bottom of the machine, pouring into a plastic box between my legs. Soon, it’s overflowing. I jump up and start stuffing them into my pockets, a plastic carrier bag. A girl comes over and smoothly replaces the full box with an empty one. She whips out a DustBuster and sucks up the spilled balls from the floor.

Jon Mitchell, Great Balls of Steel But the appeal doesn’t travel

Other aspects of Japanese popular culture – judo, karate, karaoke, sushi, Pokemon etc. – have proved very popular abroad. Yet all attempts to transplant pachinko to other countries have failed miserably. For once, we can safely say that this really is “unique to Japan.” Atsushi Kubota – a ‘pachi-puro’ (professional pachinko gambler)

久保田 篤（くぼた あつし）、パチプロ How to win at pachinko 1. Bet with the streak 2. Bet against the streak 3. Watch the nails 4. Cheat… electronic devices etc. 5. Sweet-talk the management 6. Get lucky? Trusting to luck: Lucky balls on a key ring Trust the nail-man? “Generous Nails Corner” A book on how to overcome ‘pachinko dependence syndrome.’ Compulsive gamblers? The Japanese Gamblers Anonymous was only launched as recently as 1989, but now has 114 active groups in 44 prefectures. Given the enormous scale of gambling in Japan, surely the welfare state is not doing enough.

Welfare state 社会福祉国家。Gamblers Anonymous 匿名賭博者、アルコール中毒者のAlcoholics Anonymous を原型にした賭博中毒の助け合い集団 Hahakigi (2004: 57-58) estimates that there are two million compulsive gamblers in Japan, but his evidence mainly consist of taking bits and pieces of data from other industrialized countries and assuming that Japan is roughly the same. Inami (2007) gives a figure of 1.6 million “latent patients” – but does not explain how.

Hahakigi, Hōsei. 2004. Gyanburu izon to tatakau (Battling against gambling addiction). Inami, Mario. 2007. Byōteki gyanburā kyūshutsu manyuaru (The pathological gambler’s rescue manual). Yokohama’s One Day Port (Wandēpōto), founded in 2000, is a rare (unique?) example of a residential facility devoted specifically to gambling problems. It can only handle about thirty patients at a Mr. time and they come Nakamura, from all over Japan. It specializes in pachinko. the boss Race betting

Keiba (horse racing) Keirin (Bicycle racing) Kyotei (Powerboat racing)

… the “three Ks” of race betting Horse-racing (keiba 競馬） Bicycle racing (Keirin) 競輪 There are 50 cycling tracks in Japan

The nearest ones to here are at Kawasaki and Hiratsuka. One at Kagatsuen in Yokohama was closed in 2008. レーストラックは５０ヶ所。近いのは川 崎、平塚。横浜・花月園はもう、廃止。 Kyôtei 競艇 Thrills and spills… Sinister (不気味) symbolism? Come with me for a “Dracula nighter”

On April 1, 2010, the official name was changed from kyōtei to bōtorēsu (boat race), in a feeble attempt to improve the sport’s image. … an interesting example of what I call the “uneasiness” or “restlessness” of this enterprise. I argue that restlessness or uneasiness pervades the mindset of the people who gamble on it. Immoral and illegal

Gambling is supposed to be illegal in Japan, under article 23 of the Penal Code, which prescribes up to three years with hard labor for any “habitual gambler,” and three months to five years with hard labor for anyone running a gambling establishment. Gambling is clearly defined as both immoral and illegal. State hypocrisy

Yet a series of laws passed over the years allow the state to ignore its own moralistic prescriptions. Postwar institutionalization

Horseracing gambling legalized in 1948 (Ministry of Agriculture) Bicycle racing, also 1948 (Ministry of International Trade and Industry) Car/motorbike racing, 1950 (also MITI) Motorboat Race Law, June 1951 (Ministry of Transport) (Takarakuji lottery, also 1948)

Official objective:

To help fund the reconstruction of infrastructure and industry in war- shattered Japan. Sixty years later, that objective has undoubtedly been achieved… yet the state continues to sponsor an activity it describes as immoral and illegal… leading to a certain uneasiness. A hefty tax

25% (Very high by international standards) ¥1 trillion = $12 billion = £8 billion

• From modest beginnings, kyōtei grew rapidly from the late 1960s until 1991, and from 1972 to 1983 it outstripped the nationally run horse races to be the biggest form of race gambling in Japan. But it went into decline after the Bubble Economy burst: after peaking at ¥2.21 trillion in 1991, sales declined to ¥0.97 trillion by 2005 – a 56% decline. By 2009 sales had dipped to ¥0.94 trillion.

Boatopia ボ ー オ ー ピ

ア Image of Boatopia customers… actually most are working-class men

KYOTEI

PHOTO-ESSAY

2-rentan, 3-rentan

Some features of Kyotei

Compared with other kinds of racing, relatively little emphasis on brute strength. Instead, skill, nerve, technical ability are stressed. So women have a chance, and about 10% of pro racers are women. Age does not matter much either, and there are many racers in their 50s and a few in their 60s. This is an all-women race, but the best will race with the men.. Kanae Yokonishi 横西奏恵

“Japan’s strongest single mother” Akira Mantani Shunji Kato 万谷章 68 加藤俊二 70

(Shunji Kato turned 70 on January 12, 2012, and was in a race at Heiwajima that day.) Boats and engines are standard, owned by the JMRA, and allocated by lottery Engines are kept for a season, and some are thought better than others Only the propeller, spark plugs and helmet belong to the racer. Racers must do their own maintenance and tuning (not like F1 drivers…) Class of punters • Boats and bikes – admission 100 yen [c. 70p] • A cheap day out if you do not gamble • Popular sanctuaries for homeless men • 2006 survey of 1,379 men and women over 20: --- 58.2% had gambled in the last year. Of those: ------75.1% had bought a lottery ticket ------39.7% had played pachinko, ------5.7% had bet on horse-racing ------3.1% on bicycle racing ------2.4% on power boats (CRS 2006: 1). Bicycle and boat gamblers appear as a relatively small fringe element of Japanese society.

Gender of punters

2006 survey found 51.3% of women said they had never gambled, against 31.2% of men. But that is far more pronounced at boat races, and even more so at off-course betting centers… … it is almost exclusively a man’s world. Battle of Six The course #1 boat wins 40% of races Many races are effectively decided at the start line, and the majority are won by the boat that gets round the first turn in first place. Very often that boat will then lead the others round the remaining 2.5 circuits, in a pattern called a nige, or ‘escape.’ Once a boat has established a lead, it is very difficult for others to overtake, because (a) the lead boat can take the inside course at every turn, reducing the distance it has to travel compared to the others; and (b) the pursuing boats will have their progress impeded by the wake from the lead boat. I analyzed the results of 1,392 boat races held from July12 to 21, 2010. The winning percentage for each lane were: (1) 40.4%, (2) 15.8%, (3) 14.9%, (4) 15.6%, (5) 9.3%, (6) 4.1%. Typically, boats #1 to #3 start on the inside, lining up closer to the start line than boats #4 to #6, which start further back. This is because the inside boats need to make a slow start (surō) to avoid overshooting the marker buoy at the turn, while the outer boats need to start with a dash (dasshu) as their wider course means they have a greater distance to cover. The #4 lane, as the “innermost of the outside boats” is favored by some racers, and this position is called “the corner” (kado). My data in note 9 shows boat #4 doing marginally better than boats #2 and #3 inside it. Makuri (wind-round; the winning boat overtakes from the outside) Sashi (stab; outside boat slips inside lead boat at the turn) Makuri-kaeshi (wind-and-return; the winner goes around the outside of following boats, then slips inside the lead boat; very difficult); Nuki (lead boat is overtaken on the final circuit); Megumare (blessing; one or more boats are disqualified and a lower-placed boat gets the win). In-nige and Makuri

イン逃げ 捲くり Sashi and Makurikaeshi

差し 捲くり返し First turn “Auto-ya” “Outsider” Katsuya Awa 阿波勝哉 “Awakatsu” アワカツ “Mr Chiruto-san” (Tilt 3) ミスターチルト３ Awakatsu in action

Analysis of discarded betting tickets Tōhyō Kādo Betting slip for use at any of 24 stadia, forecasts and tricasts, up to 300,000 yen each on up to 8 bets 2 ren-tan Forecast 3 ren-tan

Tricast Trifecta Tōhyō Kādo for use at any of 24 stadia, wheels and boxes up to 300,000 yen Funaken Betting ticket 1. 4 reverse forecasts 2. 5 tricasts 3. 1st place wheel (4 tricasts) 4. 1-3-6 box (6 tricasts) The Heiwajima tickets Range of amount staked No. of tickets ¥100 to ¥500 33 ¥600 to ¥1,000 32 ¥1,100 to ¥1,500 7 ¥1,600 to ¥2,000 11 ¥2,100 to ¥2,500 5 ¥3,000 10 Over ¥3,000 5* Total 103 *Two bets of ¥5,000, one each of ¥6,000, ¥8,000 and ¥20,000. Type of bet in Heiwajima sample

Type of bet Odds Tickets ni-ren-tan [forecast] 1/30 4 ni-ren-fuku [reverse forecast] 1/15 1.5 san-ren-tan [tricast] 1/120 44 san-ren-fuku [tricast box] 1/20 1.5 san-ren-tan nagashi [wheel] Various 31 san-ren-tan bokkusu [box] Various 21 Total 103 三連単 By far and away the most popular type of bet was the tricast (san-ren- tan), which of the four basic bets is by far and away the toughest one to make, with odds of 120 to 1. Including the boxes and wheels, tricasts made up 96 of 103 bets. One day at Edogawa (June 7, 2007)

単勝 複勝 2連単 ２連複 ３連単 ３連複 合計 額利用者 Win Place Fcast Rev Tricast Rev tri- Total Bettors Fcast cast 0.2 0.1 53.1 8.5 445.1 12.1 519.1 55,757 Number of outcomes forecast in Heiwajima sample No. of outcomes No. of tickets forecast 1 5 2 15 3 10 4 27 5 6 (median) 6 29 7 2 8 8 32 1* Total 103 Radical? Conservative?

• Relatively small amounts staked – conservative • Spurn simple win and place bets – radical • Prefer long-odds tricast to short-odds forecast – radical • But obsessively hedge bets – conservative

Part 6

Experiment with macro-data 01 桐生 競艇場

3連単 3連複 2連単 2連複

4-1-5 2,800 10 1-4-5 880 4 4-1 430 1 1-4 180

4-2-6 11,290 56 2-4-6 3,060 15 4-2 2,070 10 2-4 1,920

5-6-3 8,830 37 3-5-6 1,260 6 5-6 2,520 13 5-6 1,310

3 of the 1,020 races analysed Theoretical models • Punter #1 Always bets 1,000 yen on 1-2 • Punter #2 Always bets 200 yen each on 1-2, 1- 3, 1-4, 1-5, 1-6 total 1,000 yen • Punter #3 Always bets 250 yen each on 1-2-3, 1-2-4, 1-2-5, 1-2-6 • Punter #4 always bets 1,000 yen on a single tricast, 1-2-3 (following punter 1 in backing #1 and #2 to finish first and second, but further backing just boat #3 to come 3rd).

Punter 5 is like punter 4 but has a soft spot for the auto-ya and always bets ¥1,000 on the 1-2-6 tricast. Punter 6 always bets ¥1,000 on the 6-5 forecast, the same type of bet as punter #1 but backing one of the forecasts least likely to come up and therefore likely to have long odds. Punter 7 always bets ¥250 each on the tricast wheel of 6-5-4, 6-5-3, 6-5-2, 6-5-1 – betting on the #6 and #5 boats like punter 7, but equally favoring each of the other 4 boats to come 3rd. Punter 8 is a radical who always bets ¥1,000 on arguably the most unlikely tricast, 6-5-4. Results • #1: 118 wins; net loss of ¥65,800 (6.5%) • #2: 395 wins; net loss of ¥269,630 (26.4%) • #3: 117 wins; net loss of ¥96,175 (9.4%) • #4: 32 wins; net loss of ¥204,300 (20.0%) • #5: 23 wins; net loss of ¥81,800 (8.0%) • #6: 12 wins; net loss of ¥497,100 (48.7%) • #7: 12 wins; net loss of ¥523,625 (51.3%) • #8: 2 wins; net loss of ¥974,800 (95.6%)

Commentary

Totally random betting should produce a loss of 25%, that being the government tax. Note the surprisingly good results for punters 1, 3 and 5, only losing 6 to 10%. What they have in common is that they all back the #1 boat followed by the #2 boat with all their stake money. Punter 2, only betting 20% of his stake money on 1-2, has done much worse. Commentary

The 1-2 result is probably the most common outcome of the lot – the boat in the inside lane wins and the boat just outside it comes second. Indeed, this result came up 118 times in 1,020 races or 11.6% of the time, compared with 3.3% (1/30) for the average forecast and 1.2% (12/1,020) for the least likely forecast, 6-5. Commentary

If Japanese gamblers took full account of the strength of the 1-2 forecast, they would back it so heavily that the odds would be reduced to the point where the lowness of the odds offset the likelihood of the outcome. Had they done so, punters 1, 3 and 5 would have lost roughly 25% of their stake money. The fact that they actually lost just 6.5%, 8.0% and 9.4% respectively indicates that the 1-2 combination is significantly under-backed. Commentary

If Japanese gamblers under-back likely outcomes, one would expect that they would over-back unlikely outcomes. I tested that hypothesis with punters 6, 7 and 8, who consistently backed the long-odds outcome of 6-5. The heavy losses sustained by all three appear to confirm the hypothesis. Commentary

The longer odds available on outsiders are not as long as they should be, because too many people are aiming for them, which brings down the odds in the pari-mutuel system. Conclusion

Japanese gamblers tend to under-back favorites and over-back outsiders. This means that many punters, by exaggerating the frequency of wins by outsiders, will lose more than 25% of stake over the long term, enabling conservative favorite-backers to do significantly better – though not, alas, sufficiently better to overcome the massive handicap of the 25% betting tax.

Numerological influence?

Belief in “deme” 出目 ― gambling systems based on patterns of numbers, independent of form etc. Encourages the idea that a number which has not come up for a long time is more likely to come up next time. Most people know that this is a fallacy even rolling dice or tossing coins, but in the case of powerboat racing, the conditions that produce a string of wins for low or high numbers are likely to produce more of the same result, making deme thinking even more problematic. … hence the disastrous results shown by punters 6, 7 and 8. Radical? Conservative? • Relatively small amounts staked – conservative • Spurn simple win and place bets – radical • Prefer long-odds tricast to short-odds forecast – radical • But obsessively hedge bets – conservative • Yet tend to overback outsiders – radical

Perhaps best described… … neither as radical, nor as conservative, but as compromised, uneasy, or restless.