Online gambling is becoming more popular among Japanese people, who are tempted by online promotions and promises from foreign websites that they can escape legal consequences for their bets. Online betting is illegal in Japan, but not everyone knows that.
The sites’ assertions are contested by Japanese authorities, but they admit the challenges of obtaining enough proof in such situations. Many of the bettors, indeed, do not know that they are breaking Japanese law.
This situation has led some experts to worry that gambling addictions could rise in Japan.
Connected research was done by The Asahi Shimbun and the Japanese branch of SimilarWeb, an Israeli company that provides digital analysis support, on how many Japanese people were accessing foreign online gambling sites.
The casino site that attracted the most visitors was Vera & John. Its monthly visits from Japan soared 119 times from 648,000 in December 2018 to 77.51 million in January 2020, according to the study.
The number dropped to 19.88 million in August 2020, but it bounced back to 49.38 million in November.
The site says that it obtained a license to operate in Curacao, an island in the Caribbean Sea that belongs to the Netherlands. It also invites Japanese players, emphasizing that it “offers fair and just games everyone can enjoy safely and securely.”
Worry that you may be arrested for gambling? Never worry about it!
the Vera & John site says in Japanese – Leylaj Magazine
It is said that most online gambling site owners have gotten official licenses in countries where gambling is allowed. Many of them also show messages in Japanese to lure Japanese users.
There are two main types of gambling sites: online casinos and sports betting.
Among online sports betting services, bet365 got the most views from the Japanese, jumping from 860,000 in December 2018 to a peak of 13.2 million in July 2020, based on the Asahi-SimilarWeb study.
Bet365’s site says its license comes from Malta in southern Europe.
The growing popularity of online gambling goes along with the increasing use of cryptocurrencies. Online gambling ads on social media have also become more common.
Foreign customers can register on online betting sites easily; they just need to provide their names, addresses, bank account numbers, and other details.
Payments can be made with credit cards or virtual currency, but winnings are supposed to be transferred via Japanese bank accounts and other methods.
Most kinds of gambling are banned in Japan. People who gamble on foreign-based sites while in Japan are violating criminal law, police say.
They said some illegal gamblers have been nabbed.
We will round up as many users as possible,
A National Police Agency official said.
But it is hard for investigators to get the permission of server managers and other parties to gather evidence from places in countries and regions where gambling is allowed.
In response to an inquiry by The Asahi Shimbun, Vera & John affirmed that it “operates in accordance with the license, so betting in cash with us will not pose any problems.”
The operators of bet365 did not respond to inquiries, according to the original publisher: The Asahi Shimbun.
Gambling addiction
A man in his 20s in the Kinki region began gambling online a few years ago to earn extra money. He found Vera & John when his monthly income was 150,000 yen ($1,422).
I knew it was illegal, but I believed I would never be arrested,
He said.
On one day, he bet 10,000 yen for one round and won about 300,000 yen.
But now, he has lost more than 2 million yen in total, so he is much more careful about gambling.
“Once I won, my financial sense became paralyzed,” he said. “It’s terrifying that I can gamble so easily there.”
A man in his 50s from Chiba Prefecture discovered that his oldest son, who went to a college in the Kanto region six years ago, had become hooked on online gambling.
The father went to the son’s home and saw bills for student loans from three lenders adding up to almost 1 million yen. The son reassured his father, saying, “I can turn 20,000 yen into 100,000 yen or so.”
Shocked by the irrational comment, the father stepped in and paid off the son’s debt. But the next day, the student took out another 700,000 yen. The father understood the almost impossible challenge of making gambling addicts quit.
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“He was like a car with a broken brake,” the man recalled.
He made his son take a break from college to get help at a facility to beat his addiction. The son has left the rehab center but did not go back to his family’s home.
Japanese have low awareness of the illegality of gambling
A Tokyo-based group that calls itself the international casino institute did a survey in December on 1,000 Japanese who were teens or older. It found that 2.3 percent of them gambled online at least once. That percentage would mean about 2.88 million people nationwide, based on Japan’s population of 125.39 million in 2023.
The gambling rate was highest among men in their 40s, at 8.4 percent, and 4.8 percent of them said they have gambled in the last year.
Only 41 percent of the respondents said they knew online gambling was against the law in Japan, while 41 percent said it was in a “gray zone,” and 18 percent thought it was legal.
Takashi Kiso, the leader of the group, said online casinos and sports betting services started growing rapidly in the 2010s, mainly because easier payments in Bitcoin and other virtual currencies became common.
Dozens of online gambling owners – iGaming operators – are thought to run Japanese sites. The user numbers are reportedly increasing because people lack awareness of the illegality and gambling sites are actively promoting their services through social media.
According to Kiso, betting over the Internet is still not as common as other forms of gambling in Japan, and the country has no sufficient countermeasures against online gambling addiction
Blocking access to those sites or other strong means will be essential,
Takashi Kiso
