Gambling at the Track, and on the Roads

• In Event: Japanese Gambling in its Sociocultural Context

Abstract

This paper explores the spatial and behavioral dimensions of the cultural category of “gambling” by focusing on motorcycle racing and everyday driving in Japan. In the 1970s, the stands of the motorcycle racetrack in Hamamatsu City would fill to capacity on race days. Traffic would back up on the roads leading to the track even on weekdays, as people would steal off from work during lunch to bet on a couple of races. The excitement about racing reflected the excitement more generally about motorcycles and cars in the first decades of mass motorization. Risk taking, both in the form of high-speed racing and in the form of gambling, was sanctioned within the space of official venues. Both were viewed more problematically, however, when they took place beyond delimited spaces. Racing on public roads, or just driving without proper attentiveness, was a menace to innocent bystanders. Traffic fatalities reached startling new highs in the early 1970s. Gambling was both exciting and dangerous, and the parallel to driving on normal roads was not lost on some. It was precisely such forms of risk taking in inappropriate locations that could be criticized as a form of gambling. At the same time, other kinds of betting on events with uncertain outcomes (e.g. stock market transactions) take place all the time outside of delimited venues, and are thought of as investing, rather than as gambling, until it becomes compulsive. This paper attempts to map some of the spatial and behavior coordinates of “gambling.”

Author

• Joshua Hotaka Roth, Mount Holyoke College