VINELAND

[Eslacaja at aol.com]

pachinko is game and a huge industry in japan.  more money is spent on
pachinko than any other form of entertainment (music, books, movies) in
japan.

pachinko is a game somewhat like pinball, involving many small balls (like
ball bearings) that one attempts to shoot into a hole, and thereby gain
points, more balls, etc.    unlike pinball, the pachinko "board" stands
upright.  the player sits in a molded swivel seat bolted to the floor (often
with ashtray and drink holder in place) and manipulates the trigger/handle
that shoots the balls up into the board, where they fall somewhat randomly
along pins and obstacles.  at first i thought the game was totally random,
just chance.  but after one or two plays (albeit short plays) i learned that
if the handle was positioned just right, a certain, almost constant stream of
balls would fall into the target hole out of a seemingly random stream
falling down through the pins.

the balls signify money -- you see players "pachipros" sitting next to racks
and racks of gleaming balls.  the weight of wealth, a mastery of flow and
chaos.  at the end of the game, the successful player heaves his load of
balls to the ball counting machine, and all the silver balls are flushed down
hole in rushing torrent of led blinking and the player is redeemed.

william gibson talks about pachinko in his relatively new book about
post-earthquake tokyo, _idoru_ -- he describes the sound of a pachinko parlor
(aisles and aisles of machines) very aptly as a constant deafening rain.
 Roland Barthes also discusses pachinko in his book _Empire of Signs_ -- his
analysis is worth quoting, methinks:

"What is the use of this art?  to organize a nutritive circuit.  The Western
machine sustains a symbolism of penetration:  the point is to possess, by a
well-placed thrust, the pinup girl eho, all lit up on the panel of the
machine, allures and waits. . . . The machines are mangers, lined up in rows;
the player, with an abrupt gesture, renewed so rapidly that it seems
uninterrupted, feeds the machine with his metal marbles .... 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.  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."
--  _Empire of Signs_ pp. 28-9

dT again?

--ash