Every week brings new stories of celebrities who’ve been caught engaging in illegal online gambling in Japan. The growth in online casino use has authorities considering a ban on even accessing such sites from within the country’s borders.
A Japanese online casino Japanese residents can’t legally use
Japan has five legal forms of gambling: horse racing, auto racing, boat racing, velodrome cycling, and the lottery. (Pachinko, technically, isn’t gambling.) There are no casinos yet, though the country passed a framework for approving so-called “integrated resorts,” with the first set to open in Osaka in 2030.
Online gambling remains very much illegal. That hasn’t stopped a number of celebs, however, from getting their hands dirty. In the past month, it’s come out that members of the Yoshimoto Kogyo talent management group, four members of the Titan group, and at least 14 professional baseball players have been found to have dabbled in the pastime.
The lax attitude toward online gaming, say some experts, likely comes from ease of access. Since people in Japan can access online casinos hosted abroad, and these casinos advertise themselves as legally licensed (under their country’s laws), people conclude it can’t be a crime.
Some, however, also blame a Japanese company for fostering this lax attitude.
Vera&John is an online casino that specifically targets Japanese speakers. The company runs an online gambling business featuring an astounding 4,100 games under a gambling license granted from Curacao. It’s the foremost online gambling site used in Japan – even though it’s flatly illegal here.
In the past, Vera&John has run ads on Japanese TV stations touting a free version of its service that’s legal to use in-country. Critics say commercials like this have led some people to believe that online casinos operate in a legal “grey zone.” Vera&John says that it no longer runs the spots so as not to invite any “misunderstanding.”
Is a complete ban coming?
Despite being illegal, access to online casinos appears to be on the rise. One company consulted by NHK estimates access to online casinos in-country increased by 120 times over a three-year period. According to Mezamashi8, in 2024, authorities identified 279 people who’d used online casinos – a 2.6x increase over the previous year.
The growth in online gambling has led to a growth in gambling addiction. One survey shows that as many as 30% of online gambling addicts have reported turning to crime to feed their habit. Authorities in Yokohama say they’ve seen an increase in consultations from parents whose kids get hooked on online gambling. (We can thank mobile game companies and microtransactions for paving the way to this fresh hell.)
One huge risk with online casinos as opposed to in-country gambling is that you have no idea who’s running a given site and whether it’s fair or a scam. Indeed, some reports indicate the popularity of online gambling sites has already attracted state actors. South Korea’s National Intelligence Service has accused North Korea of renting online casinos pre-infected with malware to SK crime groups.
The growth has Japan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications considering a total block on such sites. According to Yomiuri Shimbun, the Ministry said during a recent Lower House budget committee meeting it was preparing to investigate how it’d go about instituting such a ban.
The discussion is still in the very early stages. The Ministry has to figure out how it would enforce this from a technology perspective and how much enforcement would cost.
Given the risk to kids and society at large, coupled with the risks of fraud and malware from unscrupulous sites, a strict ban is defensible. However, the challenge will come in playing Whack-a-Mole as criminal organizations and unscrupulous foreign governments change domains, set up shop on the dark web, and employ other tactics to dodge the firewall.
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