"Pachinko (Japanese pinball) is Japan's biggest business sector, a JPY3trn [US $28 Billion] business that almost no one talks about.

There are 17,000 pachinko establishments in Japan, many of which are operated by people with less-than-savory business backgrounds. Pachinko parlors are unregulated and cause numerous headaches for their approximately 2,000 industry suppliers - meaning that the trust factor and interest in investment are very low.

The pachinko industry has a pyramidal organization. At the top are the pachinko machine manufacturers, who effectively own the patent rights to the machines. Next are the equipment and service wholesalers, the meat in the sandwich, who wind up financing the pachinko operators and placating the manufacturers. At the bottom are the pachinko operators. They generate lots of cash but are generally poor at managing money.

Fujii [investor] plans to help normalize the industry and thus make it more attractive to investors. First, he is implementing ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 programs, which allow operators to declare that they are running their establishments as proper businesses. He introduced the first ISO trial in the middle of 2003, and already has companies signed up and preparing for their ISO inspections."