A Casino Grows in Tokyo Japan
A very informing article about casino gambling in Japan. In a city like Tokyo, it is surprising how casinos are still considered illegal in these modern times. It is said to arise from the early days of Edo Period when a lot of Japanese lost their homes and sold their daughters due to casino losses, tsk tsk. However, Japan should consider how revenues from casinos can help boost their economy if legalized. Afterall, there have been a lot of casinos operating in Japan.
From Captain Japan’s Big Empire
On a typical weekday night, the streets on the west side of Tokyo’s Shimbashi Station are alive with activity. Jewelry salesmen hocking necklaces and bracelets compete for sidewalk space with lottery ticket sales booths. Taxis line up for fares. Salarymen slowly filter into the hostess and snack clubs off the main streets.
Mixed in are middle-aged men wearing advertising sandwich boards. They slowly pace the streets and sidewalks. The boards are decorated with playing cards or roulette wheels. Each board is for a different establishment. The boards promise gambling action for as little as ¥10. Small maps give directions to the location of each "game kingdom," or casino.
Today, legal gambling in Japan is limited to horse, motorboat, bicycle, and motorbike racing. A number of other activities, such as the lottery, pachinko, and mahjong, are classified as "amusements" and are legal. Casinos though are illegal in Japan.
How then is this activity possible? Reikichi Sumiya, a yakuza expert and journalist, explains of their existence, "Wherever there’s gambling in Japan, there’s the yakuza."
But unlike days gone by, the yakuza’s involvement in gambling is not the big story. Rather, it is that the whole industry is suffering. The situation is so severe that it is even hitting the gangsters themselves. Sumiya relates, "Before the yakuza boss drove a BMW. Today he drives a domestic."
On a national level, nearly half of all racing operators lost money in fiscal 2000. Declining interest and a staggering economy are to blame. This is a serious situation because municipal governments have traditionally relied on profits from these operations as part of their budgets. To fix these shortfalls, legalized casinos are being proposed in Japan. But the ones now operating illegally are pretty interesting in their own right.
