“Integrated Resorts are a necessary initiative to promote our country as a tourism nation. They will attract visitors from Japan and abroad and spread the charm of Japan to the world,” Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said on Friday. In addition to the casino, the resort is to be equipped with hotels, a shopping center, a museum and a ferry terminal. Cost point: 13.5 billion US dollars (12.2 billion euros).
The man-made island of Yumeshima, located in Osaka Bay, is set to become a new tourism magnet. Up to 20 million visitors are expected to use the resort every year from 2029. According to the Japanese government, they should come from both domestic and foreign countries. The project is also expected to create 15,000 new jobs.
Way out of the “Japan Crisis”
A few years ago, the fact that Japan would build a casino was still a dream in the casino industry. Because the gambling halls were banned on the island state for a long time. A law banned all forms of gambling except, inter alia, betting on car, boat and horse races and other games.
Pachinko halls are therefore extremely popular. They are not listed as games of chance and are therefore legal, even if they are very reminiscent of slot machines. The game involves pouring metal balls into machines in the hope that they will find a hit hole. Non-cash prizes can be exchanged for cash thanks to legal loopholes.
Since 2000, gambling has been raised on the political agenda at irregular intervals. The weakening economy in Japan always played a role in the background. In order to cushion the consequences of the long “Japan crisis” of the 1990s, the then governor of Tokyo Prefecture, Shintaro Ishihara, called for casinos to be legalized in 2003. To do this, he had one floor in the town hall converted into a small dummy casino complete with roulette tables for two days.
Over time, a growing number of those responsible had spoken out – notably the Liberal Democratic Party, of which Ishihara and Prime Minister Kishida belong. For example, the aim was to use casinos to cushion the costs of hosting the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo.
Over the years, however, the global casino industry has also increased its pressure. The island nation is considered a valuable market due to its prosperous economy and proximity to countries where the population spends heavily on gambling. A first draft law to legalize casinos followed in 2013, and three years later the way was opened for the industry.
Nagasaki is awaiting approval
However, casino operations have only really been possible since 2018. Despite protests and concerns, Japan passed a law that allows the construction of integrated resorts in which the casinos will find their new and, above all, legal home. The key figure behind this was Japan’s then Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who had ruled the country since 2012 – before he was assassinated in 2022.
Legalization was part of Abe’s economic policy (“Abenomics”): loose monetary policy, high public investment and greater deregulation. Even former US President Donald Trump reportedly approached Abe about casinos. In 2018, Japan decided to issue a total of three licenses for the construction of integrated resorts, i.e. indirectly for casinos.
But while the search was still underway for suitable locations, a bribery scandal caused a sensation. Japanese politicians are said to have accepted money from a Chinese gambling company. The group wanted to get one of the licenses or demanded that the number of licenses be increased. A member of the Liberal Democratic Party was eventually sentenced to four years in prison.
It stayed with the three licenses for which the major cities of Wakayama, Osaka and Nagasaki showed interest. Wakayama dropped out before the 2022 application deadline. While Osaka can now prepare for the construction of the resort with the operating companies MGM Resorts International and Orix Corp, Nagasaki still has to wait for official approval.
The plans still have to be examined, it said on Friday. The mega project in Nagasaki, which is to be built next to the existing theme park “Huis Ten Bosch”, is being managed by Casinos Austria International, a subsidiary of the state-owned Casinos Austria AG.
Concerned about gambling addiction
However, the construction of casinos has always been considered controversial – opponents fear an aggravation of gambling addiction, which is already a big problem in Japan. According to a government survey, 2.8 million people in the country were addicted to gambling in 2021, which corresponds to 2.2 percent of the population. Clubs that look after gambling addicts referred in an open letter to the increasing number of young people who have become dependent on online gambling.
After the law was passed in 2018, almost two-thirds of respondents nationwide spoke out against gambling houses. A recent poll found that 45 percent of Osaka residents support the resort’s construction on Yumeshima, while 38 percent opposed it — many of whom were women and the elderly. According to a survey by the Asahi Shimbun, the majority of the population is still against the project.
Earthquake-proof casino
Osaka Prefectural Governor Hirofumi Yoshimura tried to calm critics in late March. Only three percent of the resort is intended for the casino. There will also be strict controls at the entrance. There will be a cap on the number of visits per week for Japanese players.
They also have to pay an entrance fee of 6,000 yen (about 40 euros) – part of this fee is earmarked for anti-gambling measures. People who suffer from gambling addiction, for example, could be excluded at all at the request of families.
Another problem had also worried the population in the past: earthquakes. A survey had determined that the soil of the artificial island on which the resort will stand would not withstand an earthquake. The administration in Osaka was then forced to invest a few billion in soil reinforcement.
