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As gambling is generally banned by the Criminal Code in Japan, Japanese gamblers have been traveling to Las Vegas, London, Monaco, Singapore and The Philippines since time immemorial. In fact, Japanese gamblers have gambled in casinos around the whole world except in their own country. Economy has changed and Japanese politicians have been witness to huge amounts of money fleeing Japan to casinos in Macao and China, which had profits worth of 38 billion US dollars in 2012.

For many years now, Japan has been trying to legalize casinos, but after Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's election, it seems to be a pending to be solved right away. Mr. Abe announced that he would like to build entertainment complexes with casinos like Singapore. According to local reports, Takeshi Iwaya, one of the most influential lobbyists in Japan, has said that some law makers from different political parties are drafting a bill to be submitted before Parliament in the third quarter of the year, which could be passed in 2015.

Economic analysts think that Japanese casinos should aim at attracting wealthy clients from mega metropolis such as Shanghai and Beijing and offer them luxurious complexes, to make potential profits worth of 10 billions US dollars, thus almost doubling annual profits of casinos in Singapore and Las Vegas (6 billion US dollars per year respectively).

However, Japanese casinos are most likely to profit the most from local Pachinko (a game similar to Pin Ball), which currently generates over 200 billion US dollars a year in revenue, a figure that matches Toyota's annual turnover.

Although Japan may like the sweet taste of huge potential profits, it will not be easy to have a gaming bill passed in the country because fierce opponents, mainly communists and social democrats, have scared and worried people with their litany of crime and pathological gambling problems related to casino operations.