Inside Asian Gaming

INSIDE ASIAN GAMING | January 2013 6 COVER STORY Shigeki Sato, a lawmaker with the conservative, LDP-aligned New Komeito Party. By 2006 or so, dozens of local government leaders were reported to be on board, among them Tokyo’s nationalist firebrand Shintaro Ishihara, and the projections for a 1,000-room resort casino in the capital city had swelled to US$2 billion-plus in annual revenues and 10,000 jobs. Nationally, the industry could be worth $44 billion a year, said a study conducted by the Osaka University of Commerce. By 2010, a cross-party coalition was at work on a legalization bill for introduction in the National Diet. Led by Mr Iwaya and Issei Koga, an apparatchik of the then-ruling Democratic Party of Japan, they called themselves the “Diet Member Alliance for Promotion of Integrated Resorts with Casinos” and at times the “General Assembly of International Sightseeing Industry Development Diet Member Association”. Another hero of the new nationalism, Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto, who would go on to found the far-Right. Japan Restoration Party, threw his support behind the effort, proclaiming, “Building casinos before taxation is my belief. Japan needs casinos and Osaka welcomes casino operators with open arms.” Every year since, leaders of the coalition have predicted the bill’s imminent introduction in the House of Representatives, the Diet’s more powerful lower chamber. But with eight prime ministers having come and gone since that first Tokyo study—six in the last five years— nemawashi has proven rather more elusive than the casino lobby thought. Economist and academic Kazuaki Sasaki made note of the problem back in 2010: “It all depends on political stability,” he said. “Things have been too rocky to pass significant laws like this.” Estimates of the size and strength of the coalition are hard to come by, perhaps nomore than 20 or 25 committed Housemembers. Legalization is nowhere mentioned in the policy platforms of the major parties, and given the social and political sensitivities, it’s probably far down on what is a very busy legislative agenda. Their landslide victory in the December elections now a matter of history, Mr Abe and the LDP basically have until this summer’s elections in the upper House of Councillors, which is still controlled by the DPJ, to show how they intend to cure the economy of chronic stagnation, deflation, declining exports, a population that’s shrinking as fast as it’s aging, and crippling public debt. The northeast must be rebuilt in the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami that took 15,800 lives and destroyed 125,000 buildings. China has roared past as the world’s second-largest economy. Voters are confused, skeptical, fearful of the future, their vaunted Nipponese pride increasingly susceptible to extremists promising solutions in the form of national assertiveness and a return to “traditional values”. The ‘Biggest IR Nation’ There is an ancient expression to describe a samurai who has fallen from virtue— nomu, utsu, kau , it goes—“liquor, gambling, womanizing”. Yet, it’s not as if no one places a bet in Japan. The country is awash with it: legal horseracing, bicycle and boat races, a national lottery, a US$320 billion-plus industry when you throw in some 4.6 million pachinko and pachislot machines—which are defined as a “speculative pastime” in government guidelines, amusement rather than gambling games because technically “The idea isn’t just to build casinos but to develop huge entertainment complexes that include shops, restaurants and theaters to give tourists and business people something to do, apart from seeing all of the usual historical and cultural sites of course.” “It all depends on political stability. Things have been too rocky to pass significant laws like this.”