As the year’s ordinary Diet session nears a climax this week, debate is heating up over a bill Prime Minister Shinzo Abe characterizes as key to his growth
As the year’s ordinary Diet session nears a climax this week, debate is heating up over a bill Prime Minister Shinzo Abe characterizes as key to his growth strategy: the so-called casino implementation legislation.
The bill spells out a raft of rules on the structure of Japan’s planned integrated resorts — nomenclature for casino resorts — and has ignited the ire of the opposition, as they face the prospect of it being forced through the Diet by Abe’s ruling coalition despite its widespread implications.
The term integrated resort, or IR, refers to a comprehensive entertainment complex that, alongside casinos, incorporates facilities such as shopping malls, theaters, hotels and theme parks.
Here are some key areas under discussion, with a detailed look into points of contention between backers and critics of the casino plan.
Although Japan criminalizes gambling, the nation is home to an estimated 3.2 million gambling addicts, according to a 2017 health ministry survey.
In face-to-face interviews with 10,000 randomly selected residents, of which 4,685, or 46.9 percent, provided valid responses, 3.6 percent were deemed to be currently addicted to gambling or to have been addicts at some point in their lives.
The 3.6 percent figure stands out globally, going well beyond similar, if not directly comparable, statistics of 1.9 percent in the Netherlands, 1.2 percent in France and 1.1 percent in Switzerland.
The biggest factor in their obsession is pachinko, which Japanese laws technically categorize as a form of entertainment rather than gambling. Pachinko is a huge market in Japan, having generated a whopping ¥21.6 trillion in 2016 according to the latest White Paper on Leisure.
This naturally raises concerns that the establishment of casinos may further deepen Japan’s gambling addiction woes.
But the government insists this won’t be an issue, citing what it portrays as a model case in Singapore where a National Council on Problem Gambling study shows rates of “probable pathological gambling” have — contrary to popular belief — decreased since casino legalization, from 4.1 percent in 2005 to 0.9 percent in 2017.
Tokyo attributes the drop to numerous steps taken by Singaporean authorities to strengthen anti-addiction measures in connection with the legalization.
Japan’s government also maintains that casinos here will operate under the “world’s highest standard” with regards to forestalling addiction.
Under the envisaged law, visits to casinos will be limited to a maximum of three a week and 10 a month.
Customers who are residents of Japan will be required to present their My Number identification cards upon entry. And there will also be a substantial admission fee of ¥6,000.
How effectively these regulations can discourage gambling addiction, however, remains open to debate, with critics saying there is no scientific evidence that capping the number of visits or imposing an entry fee are effective at keeping gamblers in check.
Even assuming they are, the Japan Federation of Bar Associations questions the government’s assertion that Japan’s anti-gambling addiction measures will represent the strictest in the world, noting that in Singapore — which Japan seeks to emulate — visits are restricted to just eight times a month and incur a fee closer to ¥8,000.
