Game Parlors

Number of game parlors from the National Police Agency's statistics. The numbers of game parlors indicated in the NPA's statistics are the numbers of game parlors reported to the NPA based on the Act on Control and Improvement of Amusement Business, etc. and include video arcades in addition to eating facilities, etc. with arcade games combined. This ranking is based on the total number of both types. Please refer to the "Number of video arcades" for the ranking on only video arcades.

Although there are game corners in some shopping centers and bowling alleys, because it is not necessary to report to the NPA if the area of the game corner is 10% or less of the entire store, they are not included in this data.

Change in number of game parlors since 1968

The number of game parlors has been decreasing consistently since the beginning of this statistic. There were 26,573 game parlors at that time, which means that there has been a decrease of close to 70%. This is believed to be due to the integration of small-sized game parlors being by large-sized game parlors and to the spread of home video game consoles.

As of 2007, there are 8,652 game parlors in Japan, which is 6.77 per 100 thousand population. The greatest is in Okinawa, with 50.98 game parlors per 100 thousand population which is 7.5 times the national average. Of the 700 game parlors in Okinawa, 515 are game parlors combined with eating facilities, 143 are video arcades and the rest are neither. In most other areas, there are more video arcades than combined facilities. Game parlors with eating and drinking facilities seem to be characteristic of Okinawa. There seem to be few large-sized game parlors that install new models, and many are small-sized game parlors.

Okinawa is the prefecture with the fewest Pachinko Parlors in Japan, indicating that such small-sized game parlors may be serving as entertainment venues instead.

There are many game parlors in Fukui (#2) and Aomori (#3) as well, but like Okinawa, many are combined facilities. At the start of the game parlor era, invader games inside coffee shops were popular. Perhaps many such old-fashioned game parlors still remain.