In many ways the city has never recovered from Hideyoshi's subsequent decision to move the national capital from Kyoto to Edo (now Tokyo) in the early 1600s a blow compounded by the young Emperor Meiji shifting the imperial household to Tokyo in 1868.
The city used to be the capital of Japan.
It's a relatively simple game, where bets are placed by laying chips on a single number or groups of numbers, colors, or odd/even.