The History of Gambling in Japan
Japan has banned gambling by statute since at least the seventh century, yet it hosts one of the largest wagering economies on earth. The country’s Penal Code (keiho, 刑法), in force since 1907, prohibits gambling outright in Articles 185–187, but four separate “public sports” laws license pari-mutuel betting on horse racing, keirin, boat racing and auto racing; a parallel legal fiction called the “three-shop system” lets pachinko parlours pay out cash prizes without technically gambling; and the state itself runs the takarakuji lottery and the toto football pool. A 2018 law authorised up to three casino resorts, of which only one — MGM Osaka on Yumeshima island — is under construction, targeting an autumn 2030 opening. Betting at an offshore online casino has been treated as a criminal offence under the Penal Code since a 2016 court ruling, and a 2025 amendment separately criminalised advertising or listing such sites for a Japanese audience.
Ancient and classical origins: the first prohibitions
Gambling in Japan is documented from the country’s earliest written records. The Nihon Shoki (日本書紀, Chronicles of Japan, compiled 720 CE) describes Emperor Tenmu’s enthusiasm for sugoroku (双六), a dice-based board race game imported from the Asian mainland and distinct from the modern board game of the same name. According to the historical record, Tenmu’s widow and successor, Empress Jito, issued Japan’s first known gambling prohibition in 689 CE — a ban on sugoroku that later commentary links directly to concern over her late husband’s own wagering. A second sugoroku ban followed in 754 CE, under Empress Koken. Neither ban stopped the practice: by the height of the Heian period (794–1185), gambling on sugoroku and other dice games was reportedly widespread in the capital, Kyoto, among aristocrats and commoners alike.
These early edicts establish a pattern that recurs throughout Japanese gambling history: prohibition by decree, followed by persistence in practice, followed eventually by narrow, state-controlled carve-outs rather than genuine liberalisation.
The Edo period: bakuto, tomikuji, and the roots of organised crime
Gambling culture matured considerably during the Edo period (1603–1868), the two and a half centuries of Tokugawa shogunate rule. Professional gamblers known as bakuto (博徒, literally “gambling people”) operated dice games such as chohan (odd-or-even) for a cut of the stakes, often under the loose protection of local power-brokers. As the period wore on, bakuto groups organised themselves along quasi-familial oyabun–kobun (parent-role/child-role) lines, established permanent gambling dens, and in some regions armed themselves. The Tokugawa shogunate responded in 1805 by creating the Kanhasshu Torishimari Shutsuyaku (関八州取締出役), a mobile police force tasked with suppressing bakuto activity across the eight provinces of the Kanto region; the crackdown is credited with pushing bakuto bands further into the Kozuke (Joshu) area, where some groups consolidated and, in places, resisted shogunate authority outright.
This matters beyond antiquarian interest. Japanese police white papers describe the modern yakuza (boryokudan, 暴力団) as having emerged from two historical lineages: the bakuto gambling groups and the tekiya (的屋), itinerant street-stall operators who controlled festival and market territory under similar oyabun–kobun structures. Postwar underworld groups, the gurentai (愚連隊), added a third strand amid the chaos of the black markets after 1945. The bakuto lineage in particular is the reason organised crime in Japan retains gambling-derived vocabulary and ritual (the term “yakuza” itself is said to derive from a losing hand — 8-9-3 — in a card game called oicho-kabu).
Separately from bakuto gambling, licensed tomikuji (富くじ) lotteries — draws sold to fund the reconstruction or upkeep of temples and shrines — were a recognised, if periodically restricted, feature of Edo-period life in the three major cities of Edo, Kyoto and Osaka. The incoming Meiji government abolished tomikuji entirely in 1868, closing off this exception as it began building a modern, centralised legal system.
Meiji codification: a blanket ban written into the Penal Code
Japan’s first Western-style criminal code, the Old Penal Code (kyu keiho, 旧刑法), was promulgated on 17 July 1880 as Dajokan Proclamation No. 36. Its Article 261, sitting in a chapter on offences against public morals, created Japan’s first codified simple-gambling offence. A wholesale revision followed a generation later: the current Penal Code was promulgated on 24 April 1907 (Meiji 40) as Act No. 45 and took effect on 1 October 1908. Gambling and lottery offences were placed in Chapter XXIII, “Crimes Related to Gambling and Lotteries” — Articles 185 to 187 — and that numbering and structure remain in force today, making Japan’s gambling law among the oldest continuously operating sections of its Penal Code.
What Articles 185–187 actually say
Article 185 (gambling, tobaku) states that a person who wagers money or property on a game of chance is liable to a fine or petty fine of not more than ¥500,000 — unless the stake is an “item of momentary entertainment” (ichiji no goraku ni kyosuru mono, 一時の娯楽に供する物), such as a round of drinks or a snack consumed on the spot. This exception is read narrowly: a 1948 Supreme Court ruling held that a cash stake never qualifies as “momentary entertainment” regardless of how small the amount is.
Article 186 addresses habitual and organised gambling. Habitual gambling (paragraph 1) carries a penalty of up to three years’ confinement. Opening or operating a gambling venue, or uniting gamblers for profit (paragraph 2) — the offence historically aimed at bakuto-style operators — carries a heavier penalty of not less than three months and not more than five years’ confinement, reflecting the law’s view that organising gambling for gain is more serious than merely playing. Article 187 covers private lotteries (tomikuji): selling lottery tickets is punishable by up to two years’ confinement or a fine of up to ¥1.5 million; brokering such sales by up to one year or a ¥1 million fine; and simply receiving or passing on a ticket by a fine of up to ¥200,000 or a petty fine. (Note on terminology: Japan unified its former “imprisonment with labour” (choeki) and “imprisonment without labour” (kinko) into a single “confinement penalty” (kokinkei, 拘禁刑) with effect from 1 June 2025 — the first change to the Penal Code’s catalogue of punishments since 1907.)
Crucially, Article 186(2) and the gambling-place provisions have been applied to online betting placed from within Japan even when the server sits overseas. A 2016 Fukuoka District Court ruling held that a Japan-based bettor using an offshore-licensed online casino was still gambling “in Japan” for the purposes of Article 185, because the wager and the bettor were physically located there — the location of the server was legally irrelevant. That precedent underpins everything that follows about the online-casino grey area.
Koei kyogi: four statutes that carve betting back out
Rather than repeal the Penal Code’s blanket ban, postwar Japan created narrow, purpose-built exceptions for four “public sports competitions” (koei kyogi, 公営競技), each authorised by its own dedicated statute and each historically tied to funding local or national reconstruction and industrial policy:
- Horse racing (keiba, 競馬): An earlier Horse Racing Law of 1923 (Taisho 12, promulgated 24 March 1923) legalised pari-mutuel betting under state oversight, primarily to fund military horse-breeding programmes, after a 1908 ban on betting tickets (triggered partly by a race-fixing riot at Negishi racecourse the previous year) had briefly shut the practice down. The current Horse Racing Law (keibaho, 競馬法) was promulgated on 13 July 1948 as Showa 23 Law No. 158.
- Keirin (競輪), track cycle racing: Authorised by the Bicycle Racing Law (jitensha kyogiho, 自転車競技法), promulgated 1 August 1948 as Showa 23 Law No. 209.
- Kyotei/boat racing (競艇), also called motorboat racing: Authorised by the Motorboat Racing Law (motabotokyosoho, モーターボート競走法), promulgated 18 June 1951 as Showa 26 Law No. 242.
- Auto race (オートレース), small motorcycle racing: Authorised by the Small Motor Vehicle Racing Law (kogata jidosha kyosoho, 小型自動車競走法), promulgated 27 May 1950 as Showa 25 Law No. 208.
Each of these statutes creates a specific, licensed exception to Articles 185–187 rather than a general repeal — bettors may legally wager only through the totalisator systems these laws establish, at authorised venues or their licensed off-course outlets, on the specific sport each law names.
Pachinko and pachislot: gaming that is legally not gambling
Pachinko (パチンコ), a vertical pinball-style machine game, traces its Japanese lineage to Corinth-game and wall-machine amusements imported from the West in the 1920s; Nagoya is generally credited as the birthplace of the modern coin-operated version after the city granted a licence for automatic gaming machines in 1930, and “one-sen pachinko” parlours spread nationally from 1931. Pachislot (パチスロ), a slot-machine variant, developed later within the same regulatory category.
Pachinko halls are licensed and regulated under the Act on Control and Improvement of Amusement Business (fuzoku eigyo ho, commonly abbreviated fueiho, 風俗営業等の規制及び業務の適正化等に関する法律), a lineage that traces back to a 1948 amusement-business law; pachinko itself was folded into that law’s scope in 1954. Article 23 of the current law prohibits pachinko operators from paying out cash or securities as prizes, from buying back prizes they issued, or from letting customers remove gaming balls or discs from the premises. Because a hall can therefore never legally hand a winning player cash, the industry developed the “three-shop system” (santen hoshiki, 三店方式): a player exchanges winnings for a “special prize” token inside the hall; the player then carries that token to a legally and financially independent prize-exchange shop (keihin kokankai), typically licensed as a secondhand-goods dealer, which buys the token for cash; a separate wholesaler then buys the unused tokens back from the exchange shop and resells them to the hall. Provided the three businesses are genuinely separate — no shared ownership, capital or management — no single party is deemed to have exchanged prizes for cash directly, and the arrangement has stood for decades without triggering the Penal Code’s gambling provisions.
The industry has shrunk sharply from its mid-1990s peak. National Police Agency figures, as compiled in Japan’s annual Leisure White Paper (Leisure Hakusho), put the number of pachinko halls at 18,244 in 1995, with roughly 4.76 million pachinko and pachislot machines installed nationwide and a market estimated at around ¥30.9 trillion. By the end of 2024, the National Police Agency recorded just 6,706 halls nationwide — down 377 halls, or 5.3%, in a single year — operating 1,969,913 pachinko machines and 1,355,839 pachislot machines, a combined machine count of roughly 3.33 million. The market itself had roughly halved from its peak, to about ¥15.7 trillion according to Leisure White Paper estimates. The decline reflects an ageing player base, competition from mobile gaming, tighter machine regulations reducing payout volatility, and post-pandemic changes in leisure spending.
Takarakuji and toto: the state as bookmaker
Where private lotteries remain criminalised under Article 187, the state runs its own. The Lottery Tickets Act (tosenkin-tsuki shohyo ho, 当せん金付証票法), Showa 23 Law No. 144, was promulgated on 12 July 1948 and provides the legal basis for takarakuji (宝くじ), sold to fund local government finances. Japan’s modern lottery has wartime origins: in July 1945 the government sold a war-bond-style draw called katsufuda (勝札, “victory ticket”) that became known bitterly as makefuda (“defeat ticket”) after Japan surrendered before the draw was held; a first postwar national lottery under the takarakuji name followed in October 1945, and the first prefectural lottery — Fukui’s reconstruction lottery — was issued in December 1946.
Sports betting followed half a century later. The Act on Carrying Out, etc. Sports Promotion Vote (supotsu shinko toho no jisshi tou ni kansuru horitsu, スポーツ振興投票の実施等に関する法律), Heisei 10 Law No. 63 of 1998, authorised toto (トト), a pool-style bet on J.League football results, which went on national sale on 3 March 2001. Both takarakuji and toto operate as state or quasi-state monopolies, structurally similar to the koei kyogi model: narrow, licensed carve-outs from a general prohibition, justified as raising public revenue rather than as commercial gambling liberalisation.
The integrated resort push: from promotion act to Yumeshima
Japan’s move toward casino resorts began with the Act on Promotion of Development of Specified Integrated Resort Areas (tokutei fukugo kanko shisetsu kuiki no seibi no suishin ni kansuru horitsu), Heisei 28 Law No. 115, promulgated and enforced on 26 December 2016 — commonly called the “IR Promotion Act.” It was a framework law only: it committed the government to legislate the actual rules within roughly a year and set out the basic concept of an “integrated resort” (IR) combining a casino with conference facilities, hotels and entertainment under national oversight.
The substantive rules followed in the Act on Development of Specified Integrated Resort Areas (tokutei fukugo kanko shisetsu kuiki seibi ho), Heisei 30 Law No. 80, enacted 20 July 2018 and promulgated 27 July 2018 — the “IR Development Act.” It caps the number of licensed IRs at three nationwide, sets an entry fee of ¥6,000 for Japanese residents (foreign visitors enter free), and limits resident visits to three times per week and ten times per month, tracked via the My Number identification card. It also created the Japan Casino Regulatory Commission (kajino kanri iinkai, カジノ管理委員会), established on 7 January 2020 as an external bureau of the Cabinet Office. The commission is a “Article 3 committee” under Japan’s National Government Organization Act — meaning it operates with statutory independence roughly comparable to a securities or competition regulator — and its stated remit covers licence screening, ongoing supervision of casino operators and related businesses, technical regulation of gaming equipment, addiction-prevention measures, and international regulatory cooperation.
Three prefectures initially bid for IR status; only one has survived scrutiny. The national government certified Osaka’s Yumeshima development plan on 14 April 2023. Nagasaki Prefecture’s rival Huis Ten Bosch-area proposal was refused certification in December 2023, with the review panel citing insufficient evidence of secure financing and of the operator’s ability to sustain the project and manage its harms; no other prefecture is currently pursuing certification. The Osaka project, MGM Osaka — a joint venture led by MGM Resorts International and Orix Corporation, each holding a 42.5% stake, with Panasonic, Kansai Electric Power and West Japan Railway among the remaining local partners — broke ground on the artificial island of Yumeshima on 24 April 2025. As of early 2026 the project remains on its published schedule, with foundation work underway on the casino, three hotel towers (around 2,500 rooms combined), a large MICE and exhibition complex, and retail facilities, against a total investment of roughly ¥1.27 trillion. Construction is targeted for completion in summer 2030, with the resort opening that autumn.
Problem-gambling policy: the Basic Act
Alongside the IR Development Act, Japan passed the Basic Act on Gambling Addiction Countermeasures (gyanburu-to izonsho taisaku kihon ho, ギャンブル等依存症対策基本法), Heisei 30 Law No. 74, enacted in July 2018 and brought into force in October 2018. The law commits national and local government to build treatment access regardless of where a person with a gambling problem lives, to expand counselling through mental-health centres, public-health centres, consumer-affairs centres and the Japan Legal Support Center, and it established a Cabinet-level Headquarters for the Promotion of Measures against Gambling Addiction, chaired by the Chief Cabinet Secretary, on 5 October 2018. The Basic Act pre-dates and sits alongside — rather than inside — the IR Development Act, and its remit covers all forms of legal gambling in Japan, not only prospective casinos.
The offshore online-casino grey area — and what changed in 2025
Offshore-licensed online casinos advertising in Japanese and accepting yen have operated in a legal grey zone for years, but the underlying legal position on play itself is not actually ambiguous: as established by the 2016 Fukuoka District Court ruling discussed above, a person placing bets from inside Japan commits the Article 185 gambling offence regardless of where the operator or its servers are licensed or based. A National Police Agency-commissioned survey, conducted between July 2024 and January 2025 and published in March 2025, surveyed 27,145 people aged 15–79 and estimated that about 3.37 million people in Japan (roughly 3.45% of the surveyed cohort, scaled nationally) had used an online casino at some point, with about 1.97 million still active users; average annual wagering per user was estimated at around ¥630,000, implying a national total of roughly ¥1.24 trillion staked per year. Despite the settled legal position, 43.5% of respondents who had gambled online said they were unaware it was illegal.
That awareness gap is the backdrop to the 2025 legal change. The Diet passed an amendment to the Basic Act on Gambling Addiction Countermeasures on 18 June 2025; it was promulgated as Reiwa 7 Law No. 76 on 25 June 2025 and took effect on 25 September 2025. Rather than creating a new criminal offence for bettors (who were already covered by Article 185), the amendment separately prohibits presenting, to an unspecified audience inside Japan, any website or app that provides a venue for illegal online gambling, and prohibits disseminating information that induces participation in it. Government and legal commentary is explicit that this sweeps in more than casino operators themselves: it targets advertising and referral content, including “reach sites” that rank or list online casinos and social-media posts promoting them, and commentary on the law has specifically named comparison and “top 10 recommended online casino” style listicle content as the kind of material the prohibition is aimed at. The amendment also requires national and local government to run public-awareness campaigns in schools, workplaces and communities stating plainly that online casino use is illegal.
The enforcement mechanism the 2025 law actually created is administrative rather than criminal, and it runs through a separate law: Japan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC) sought public comment, from 18 to 31 July 2025, on a draft revision to its guideline under Article 26 of the Act on the Limitation of Liability for Damages of Specified Telecommunications Service Providers (the “Provider Liability Limitation Act”), then formally revised and published the guideline on 25 September 2025 — the same day the 2025 amendment itself took effect — specifically to cover illegal online-casino content, setting out how hosting providers, app stores and platforms can be asked to remove such material. Compliance with a deletion request under this guideline is voluntary; the guideline itself carries no penalty for a provider that declines to act on a request. Separately, content that actively promotes an illegal gambling site may expose its author to liability as an accomplice to the underlying Article 185/186 gambling offence under ordinary criminal-law principles, which is a route to real criminal exposure that predates and sits outside the 2025 amendment itself. In short: playing at an offshore online casino from Japan was already a crime before 2025; what changed in 2025 is that presenting or promoting such a site to a Japanese audience is now itself expressly unlawful, enforced in the first instance through non-binding platform-level takedown requests rather than through a new criminal charge against publishers.
Japan’s gambling landscape in 2026
Entering 2026, Japan’s gambling framework remains a patchwork of narrow, purpose-built exceptions layered onto an unrepealed blanket prohibition first written into law in 1880 and re-codified in 1907. Horse racing, keirin, boat racing and auto racing continue to operate as licensed public-sports betting under their respective mid-century statutes. Pachinko and pachislot, still nominally “not gambling” under the three-shop system, have contracted to roughly a third of their mid-1990s hall count even as remaining halls run more machines each on average. Takarakuji and toto continue as state-linked lottery products. Japan’s first legal casino resort is under construction on Yumeshima, regulated by the Casino Regulatory Commission, with an autumn 2030 target opening and no second or third licensed site yet in active development following Nagasaki’s 2023 rejection. Offshore online casinos remain squarely illegal to use from Japan, and since September 2025 it has also been unlawful to present or promote such sites to a Japanese audience — a rule whose practical bite so far runs through voluntary takedown requests to hosts and platforms rather than criminal prosecution of publishers.
Key dates
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| 689 CE | Empress Jito issues Japan’s first recorded gambling prohibition, banning sugoroku |
| 754 CE | Empress Koken issues a second sugoroku ban |
| 1805 | Tokugawa shogunate creates the Kanhasshu Torishimari Shutsuyaku to suppress bakuto gambling groups in the Kanto region |
| 1868 | Meiji government abolishes temple/shrine tomikuji lotteries |
| 17 July 1880 | Old Penal Code (Dajokan Proclamation No. 36) codifies Japan’s first modern gambling offence |
| 24 April 1907 / 1 Oct 1908 | Current Penal Code (Act No. 45) promulgated/enforced; Articles 185–187 establish the modern gambling ban |
| 24 March 1923 | Old Horse Racing Law legalises pari-mutuel betting on horse racing |
| 1930–1931 | Modern coin-operated pachinko emerges in Nagoya and spreads nationally |
| 13 July – 18 June 1948–1951 | Horse Racing Law (1948), Bicycle Racing/Keirin Law (1948), Small Motor Vehicle Racing/Auto Race Law (1950) and Motorboat Racing/Kyotei Law (1951) enacted |
| 12 July 1948 | Lottery Tickets Act establishes the legal basis for takarakuji |
| 1998 / 3 March 2001 | Sports Promotion Vote Act passed (1998); toto goes on national sale (2001) |
| 26 December 2016 | Integrated Resort Promotion Act enacted |
| July–October 2018 | IR Development Act and Basic Act on Gambling Addiction Countermeasures both enacted |
| 7 January 2020 | Japan Casino Regulatory Commission established |
| 2016 (Fukuoka District Court) | Court rules that betting from Japan at an offshore-server online casino is a domestic gambling offence |
| 14 April 2023 | Osaka’s Yumeshima IR plan certified by national government |
| December 2023 | Nagasaki’s rival IR plan refused certification |
| 24 April 2025 | MGM Osaka breaks ground on Yumeshima |
| 18 / 25 June / 25 Sept 2025 | Basic Act amendment (Law No. 76) passed the Diet (18 June), promulgated (25 June) and entered into force (25 September), prohibiting online-casino inducement and promotion |
| Autumn 2030 (target) | Planned opening of MGM Osaka |
Sources
- Japanese Law Translation — Penal Code (official English translation): structure of Chapter XXIII and Articles 185–187.
- Current Japanese-language text of Penal Code Article 186: exact wording and penalties, including the post-2025 “kokinkei” (confinement penalty) terminology.
- Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, lottery-related law extract: exact text of Penal Code Article 187 (tomikuji offences).
- Monolith Law Office: penalties under Articles 185/186 and the 2016 Fukuoka District Court ruling on offshore-server online gambling.
- National Police Agency — “Gambling using online casinos is a crime”: official position on the illegality of offshore online-casino betting.
- National Police Agency-commissioned online casino survey report (Jan 2025): primary data on user numbers and wagering totals.
- Nippon.com summary of the NPA online-casino survey: user estimates, wagering totals, and awareness-of-illegality statistics.
- National Diet Library Houreisakuin — Basic Act on Gambling Addiction Countermeasures amendment: confirms Reiwa 7 Law No. 76, promulgated 25 June 2025.
- Nikkei — passage of the online-casino inducement law: what the 2025 amendment prohibits and its “voluntary deletion” enforcement approach.
- MIC press release — revised Provider Liability Limitation Act Article 26 guideline: confirms the deletion-request mechanism for illegal online-casino content is provider-voluntary and carries no penalty for non-compliance.
- Japan Racing Association glossary — Horse Racing Law: 1923 old law and 1948 current law history.
- JKA (Japan Keirin Autorace Foundation) — Small Motor Vehicle Racing Law text: law number and 1950 enactment date for auto race.
- National Diet Library Houreisakuin — Bicycle Racing Law: confirms 1 August 1948, Law No. 209 (keirin).
- National Diet Library Houreisakuin — Motorboat Racing Law: confirms 18 June 1951, Law No. 242 (kyotei).
- Pachinko industry data compilation (citing Leisure White Paper and National Police Agency): 1995 peak hall/machine/market-size figures versus 2024.
- Amusement Japan — NPA year-end 2024 pachinko statistics: exact end-2024 hall and machine counts.
- Takarakuji official history site: 1945 katsufuda/takarakuji origins and the first 1946 prefectural lottery.
- Japan Tourism Agency (MLIT) — Integrated Resorts overview: 2016 Promotion Act, 2018 Development Act, and Osaka/Nagasaki certification status.
- Japan Casino Regulatory Commission — official mandate page: establishment date, legal basis and functions.
- Yogonet International — MGM Osaka groundbreaking: 24 April 2025 groundbreaking, project ownership structure, and 2030 target opening.
- House of Representatives (Shugiin) legislative record — Basic Act on Gambling Addiction Countermeasures: 2018 enactment text.