As school and work wrap up, crowds fill Tokyo’s many bustling arcade halls — not to battle it out in fighting games, but to snag plush toys from claw machines.In one of these gaming meccas in the Japanese capital’s Ikebukuro district, aisles of crane games stretch as far as the eye can see.The crown jewels of the arcade industry, they occupy the building’s first two floors, relegating video games to the basement and upper levels.”Crane games are keeping the sector afloat,” said Morihiro Shigihara, an industry expert and former arcade manager.”Arcade operators, machine manufacturers, and even prize suppliers depend on this business,” he told AFP.Some 80 percent of the 22,000 arcades Japan had in 1989 have shut down, but revenues have held up thanks to claw machines, according to the Japan Amusement Industry Association.Their share of revenue has climbed since 1993 from 20 percent to more than 60 percent, the association said.Suzuna Nogi, a 20-year-old student, visits these arcades at least twice a week in search of “big plushies” on which she can spend up to 3,000 yen ($19) at 100 yen per try.”What I like best is the sense of accomplishment,” she said, even though there is no guarantee of success.Nogi added that she enjoys “the thrill of not knowing whether you’ll manage to grab something or not”.The sensitivity of the claw arms is adjusted by operators “based on the cost of the prizes and revenue targets”, Shigihara said.”You can also make the game easier to compete with a nearby arcade.”- From cigarettes to candy -This year, the industry is officially celebrating the 60th anniversary of these construction crane-inspired machines in Japan.But they have actually been around since before World War II, said Benoit Bottos, who wrote his doctoral dissertation on the subject at Japan’s Chuo University.Older models, installed in cafes or bowling alleys, sometimes offered lighters and cigarettes, but those prizes quickly gave way to children’s candy.In the late 1980s, the machines began to gain traction, notably with game company Sega’s 1985 invention of the “UFO Catcher”, which switched up the older version that forced players to lean in and look down.”The old ones were a bit dark. So we opted for a brighter, showcase-like style where you can see the prizes right in front of you,” said Takashi Sasaya, a Sega executive.But the real stroke of genius “was putting plush toys in the claw games”, said Bottos.Manufacturing giants like Sega or Bandai, involved in both video games and toys, then began negotiating licenses for anime and manga characters, with Sega notably securing Disney rights.”That largely explains the success of these machines,” said Bottos, who describes them as “somewhere between a vending machine, a game of chance and a game of skill”.- ‘Transformation’ -The success of claw games also feeds on Japan’s booming fan culture of “oshikatsu”, with many people devoting more and more time and money to supporting their favourite idol.Part of asserting their fan identity involves collecting character merchandise.”I love Pokemon, so I often come looking for plush toys and merch from the franchise,” said professional Pokemon card player Akira Kurasaki, showing off nails decorated with his most beloved characters.Arcade operators have taken this enthusiasm to heart, tailoring their prize selections to the demographics of their neighbourhood and organising events around certain characters.”New prizes are introduced almost every day,” said Sasaya, the Sega executive.The hegemony of claw machines has also gone hand in hand with a gradual transformation of urban hangouts.Arcades — seen in the 1970s and 1980s as dark, male-dominated places linked to crime — “tried to attract a new audience” of women and families, Bottos said.”The crane game is emblematic of that transformation.”

The Japanese government on Friday approved a record budget for the upcoming fiscal year, to pay for everything from bigger defence spending to ballooning social security costs as inflation persists.The 122.3-trillion-yen ($782 billion) budget for the fiscal year from April 2026 will include some nine trillion yen for defence spending, as Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi aims to accelerate Tokyo’s sweeping upgrade of its military in the face of worsening relations with China.The defence ministry said in a briefing document that “Japan faces the most severe and complex security environment since the end of the war,” stressing the need to “fundamentally strengthen” its defence capabilities. At the core of its request is 100 billion yen for the so-called SHIELD coastal defence system, which would marshal drones to block any invasion by foreign troops. Japan is hoping that SHIELD — Synchronised, Hybrid, Integrated and Enhanced Littoral Defence — will be completed by March 2028, with no details yet on which part of Japan’s coastline it will be linked to. The 122-trillion-yen figure compares with the 115 trillion yen sought for the current fiscal year to March, which was also a record. The expanding budget comes as the market worries about Takaichi’s big spending policies adding to Japan’s public debts.Japan already has the biggest ratio of debt to gross domestic product (GDP) among major economies, projected to reach 232.7 percent this year, according to the International Monetary Fund.Earlier this month parliament approved a massive extra budget, to pay for a 21.3-trillion-yen stimulus announced a month earlier.The market has reacted by driving down the value of the yen while the benchmark yield rose for Japanese government bonds. Some observers have drawn comparisons to the UK’s 2022 bond market turmoil under then-premier Liz Truss.Takaichi has advocated big government spending to spur economic growth.”What Japan needs right now is not the undermining of our strength as a nation through excessive austerity fiscal policies, but rather the bolstering of our national strength through proactive fiscal policies,” she told a press conference last week.In an interview Tuesday with the influential Nikkei business daily, Takaichi stressed her commitment to Tokyo’s fiscal health, rejecting any “irresponsible bond issuance or tax cuts.”The current size of the budget is unlikely to shock the bond market, Takahide Kiuchi, executive economist at Nomura Research Institute, wrote in a note ahead of Friday. But an increase to around 125 trillion yen or more, he said, would cause the “turmoil in the bond market, already in crisis mode, to deepen further”. Kiuchi noted that, under Takaichi, the extra budget quickly ballooned, reaching $18 trillion yen.”Financial markets are likely on high alert for a similar occurrence. Should the fall of the yen and bond prices further accelerate due to the size of the budget, it would increase worries about adverse effects on the economy and people’s lives.”A weaker yen raises prices of imports for resource-poor Japan, which relies heavily on foreign food, energy and raw materials to power its economy. Takaichi came to power in October with a pledge to fight inflation after anger over rising prices.Another challenge facing the country is its ageing population, caused by chronically low birth rates and a cautious approach to immigration.The draft budget needs to be approved by parliament.