While gambling is technically illegal in Japan, the government does permit a limited amount of betting on strictly controlled events, such as horse racing, boat and bicycle races and the lottery, with the profits being returned directly to the government.
For committed gamblers, however, yakuza groups have traditionally been able to arrange underground betting on cards, roulette and other illegal games.
But those lucrative sources of income quickly dried up, for the government and underworld alike, when the pandemic struck in 2020 and going out became far more difficult, analysts pointed out.
“Historically, gambling has been very tightly controlled by the government as it was a very important source of income and they wanted to monopolise betting,” said Shinichi Ishizuka, founder of the Tokyo-based Criminal Justice Future think tank.
“But things changed during the pandemic and the emergence of online gambling meant that the government lost control.”
