Japan's Basic Plan to Promote Measures Against Gambling Addiction was revised in March 2022 and explicitly listed online casinos as an example of illegal gambling1. The revision came as online casino use in the country grew and as police moved against payment processors serving the sites1.
Online casinos are defined in the report as gambling in which baccarat, poker, sports betting and similar games can be played over the internet, accessed from smartphones, with players staking cash, electronic money or crypto assets1. The number of potential users is put at several million1.
Most online casinos are run by overseas operators and cannot be directly regulated under Japanese domestic law, and Japanese-language online casino sites have increased sharply in recent years1. Even where an operator is legally licensed abroad, using an online casino inside Japan is a crime, and police have rejected claims that such use falls into a legal gray zone1.
Prosecutions for gambling offenses connected to online casinos rose sharply in 20241. Because most operators are based overseas, police have pursued payment processing businesses in Japan instead, and a lawyer quoted in the report said customers are being identified from the client lists of prosecuted businesses1. The same lawyer described current enforcement as the tip of the iceberg1.
"オンラインカジノは違法であり、関係省庁が連携し、厳正に取り締まらなければならない"
The report attributes the stronger enforcement in part to that statement by then Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in the Diet in June 20221.
What it means for players
The plan's wording places online casino play by people in Japan on the illegal side of the line, regardless of whether the operator holds a license elsewhere1. That applies to residents and to visitors using sites while in the country. The offenses carry fines or imprisonment, and prosecutions have been rising1. Because enforcement has focused on payment intermediaries in Japan, customer records held by those businesses have become a route to identifying individual players1. The report notes cases of people who ran up online casino debts and became involved in illegal work, and says online casinos have been used for money laundering1. Background on how these sites operate and how the law treats players is set out in the guides to online gambling in Asia and online gambling enforcement against players. Help and warning signs are covered under safer gambling and signs of a gambling problem.
What happens next
No further dated steps are given in the report. It says stronger enforcement requires fundamental measures, without specifying what those would be1.
Sources1 sources
- オンラインカジノなぜ違法 日本のギャンブル産業の今、知りたい10の疑問：日経ビジネス電子版, business.nikkei.com
