Residents submit over 190,000 valid signatures for casino referendum ordinance

The citizens group "Motomeru-kai," which campaigns for a referendum on Osaka's integrated resort (IR) bid, delivered about 200 cardboard boxes of signature sheets to the prefectural government office on July 21, 2022, and made a direct request to Governor Hirofumi Yoshimura to enact the ordinance¹. The Osaka Prefectural Assembly then opened an extraordinary session on July 29 and voted the referendum ordinance down by a majority of Osaka Ishin no Kai and Komeito¹.

The sheets were filed with election commissions in 72 municipalities in early June.

Governor Yoshimura, who also heads Osaka Ishin no Kai, had said during the campaign that "there is no need to hold a referendum at this point in time"¹. At the July 29 session he submitted the ordinance with an opinion against it, saying the IR bid had followed legally required procedures and been decided after sufficient debate by elected assembly members, and that he could not find significance in holding a referendum¹. He repeated in answers that there was no need to hold one¹.

The session allowed six request representatives from Motomeru-kai 30 minutes in total to state their views, an average of five minutes each, and did not refer the ordinance to a committee. Only caucuses with five or more members could ask questions or debate, leaving caucuses outside Ishin, Komeito and the Liberal Democratic Party without a voice, and the vote was taken the same day after about half a day of deliberation¹. By comparison, the city assemblies of Yokohama in January 2021 and Wakayama in January 2022, which had earlier rejected casino referendum ordinances, referred the bills to standing committees, heard the request representatives and took three or four days each before a floor vote¹.

The LDP proposed an amendment limiting referendum eligibility to Japanese nationals, where the original bill included foreign residents. The original bill was rejected by a majority of Ishin, Komeito and the LDP; the amendment was rejected by a majority of Ishin, Komeito and the Communist Party¹.

On the same day the assembly opened, five residents filed a lawsuit at the Osaka District Court, arguing that favoring an operator in the Yumeshima IR bid is illegal. They asked the court to block the city from concluding a leasehold contract with the operator for city-owned land and from paying the operator land improvement costs, arguing that the city bearing costs for liquefaction prevention and soil contamination measures at Yumeshima amounts to preferential treatment of a specific company and violates the constitutional principle of equality¹.

The prefecture and city approved the development plan in their assemblies at the end of March 2022 and applied to the national government for certification at the end of April; the national government was still reviewing the application¹.

What it means for players

Japan has no legal casino gambling at present, and the Osaka IR that the referendum sought to put to a public vote has not opened. The rejection of the ordinance means the decision on the Yumeshima IR stays with the prefectural and city assemblies and the national certification process rather than going to voters. For residents, expats and visitors in Osaka, nothing about what is currently legal changes as a result of the July 29 vote. The eligibility question raised by the LDP amendment, whether foreign residents could vote in such a referendum, was never settled because both the original bill and the amendment were rejected. The separate lawsuit challenges the land and cost arrangements for the IR site, not gambling rules themselves, and its outcome had not been reported at the time of the article. For the general legal position across the region, see Gambling Laws in Asia: What Is Legal in 12 Jurisdictions and Can I Gamble in Japan?.

What happens next

The national government was reviewing the prefecture and city's certification application for the IR at the end of April 2022, and no decision had been reported¹. The residents' lawsuit against the city over the Yumeshima land contract and land improvement payments was filed at the Osaka District Court on July 29, 2022; no hearing dates or ruling had been reported¹.