Pachinko industry raises money for low-income students

The pachinko industry is urging customers to donate steel balls from their winnings to help put hard-up students through university.

But anti-gambling activists have dismissed the campaign as a marketing stunt that does nothing to address problems with gambling addiction.

“The aim is to help people in difficulty who need assistance to go through higher education,” said Tadamasa Fukiura, chairman of Support 21, a nonprofit organization that has teamed up with six pachinko parlor companies to launch the “pp Shogakukin” scholarship fund.

“A lot of students have to take part-time jobs. We want them to be able to concentrate on their studies,” said Fukiura.

Pachinko is a game in which players feed small steel balls into a mechanical cabinet in an attempt to release more balls, which can then be traded in for prizes and indirectly cash.

Although the industry has been hit by an aging population and the rise of mobile gaming in recent years, players spent ¥23.3 trillion at pachinko parlors in 2015 about 4 percent of GDP according to a 2016 white paper published by the Japan Productivity Center.

The pp Shogakukin campaign encourages players to donate balls from their winnings with each ball valued at ¥4 into a box located within the pachinko parlor. The money is then used to award scholarship funds to students who need assistance to pay for university.

The drive began last December with around 40 collection boxes being placed in parlors nationwide. The first monthly scholarship payments were made in March, with eight students each receiving between ¥30,000 and ¥50,000, Fukiura said.

Anyone over the age of 18 can apply for the scholarship, with the program’s board choosing which students will receive the money. The selection process is based on several criteria, including financial means, academic performance and the applicant’s hopes for the future. Scholarship money does not need to be repaid.

Support 21 was originally established in 1992 as a social welfare foundation to help foreign nationals with ties to Japan, but the pp Shogakukin program is open to everyone wishing to study in Japan.

“Previously our focus was on supporting people who have ties with foreign countries, but we knew that a lot of Japanese people also needed assistance and we weren’t able to help them out due to financial reasons,” said Fukiura.

“We wondered how we could help them so we talked to people involved in the pachinko industry and they had the same dream. So we joined forces and started this project.”

Several of the pachinko industry’s leading parlor operators, including Maruhan and Sankyo, are involved in the project.

“Young people with a thirst for knowledge are the people who will lead society in the future, so we want to do something to support them,” a Maruhan spokesperson told The Japan Times. “While we will continue to look at various ways we can do this, the pachinko industry has come together and will look to expand the pp Shogakukin scheme.

“We are a company in the entertainment industry that provides a service to our customers, and that is how we generate revenue. We don’t consider giving something back to society to be an ethical problem,” he said.

But the plan has come under fire from anti-gambling activists, who believe that the pachinko industry is interested only in boosting its own image.

Pachinko is not officially classified as gambling, which Japanese law prohibits outside of government-run activities such as horse- and boat-racing. Instead pachinko is treated as recreation, but skirts anti-gaming laws by allowing players to trade in steel balls for tokens, which are then swapped for cash at booths located near but legally separate from the pachinko parlor.

“It’s gambling,” said Noriko Tanaka, president of Tokyo-based nonprofit organization Society Concerned about the Gambling Addiction. “No one in Japan believes that pachinko is just a game. Everyone sees it as gambling.

“In my opinion, the pachinko industry is just trying to boost its image. The pachinko industry is under attack and has come in for a lot of criticism. A lot of people think that pachinko is not a good thing. In particular, people think that the pachinko industry is doing nothing to combat gambling addiction,” Tanaka said. “So I think this pp Shogakukin is just something to improve its image.”

A 2013 survey conducted by a research team at the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry found that more than 5 million people in Japan nearly 5 percent of the adult population are thought to have a gambling addiction. The figure was higher than most other countries, where it was around 1 percent.

“It’s a big problem for society, but they are just trying to boost their own image,” said Tanaka. “Instead of doing that, I’d like to see them do something to combat addiction. I think it’s time they came up with a proper plan.”

Last December, the Diet passed a law allowing casino gambling in Las Vegas-style resorts.

But the government is also reported to be considering restrictions on existing gambling establishments, including pachinko parlors, in a bid to tackle addiction. The measures being considered include allowing an individual’s access to pachinko to be restricted at the request of relatives.

There is a very naive way of thinking about gambling in this country,” said Tanaka. “There are no measures in place to combat it and permission keeps being given to open new places to gamble. In other countries, they don’t just open up more places without addressing gambling addiction. Japan is far too soft in this area.파칭코