Is Gambling Legal in Japan? Pachinko and Osaka IR

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Japan looks like a gambling country from the street and is not one in the law. Neon pachinko halls sit next to stations across the country. There is still no legal private casino. The Penal Code bans gambling. Pachinko is licensed as amusement. A separate 2018 statute creates a narrow casino exception inside a nationally certified integrated resort — and that resort is not open yet.

The first one is being built on Yumeshima, an artificial island in Osaka Bay. The target opening is autumn 2030. Until then, what a visitor can actually do is pachinko, or the older state-run bets (horse racing, keirin, boats), not a Las Vegas floor.

Treat the ¥6,000 and the 2030 date as two different systems. The fee applies only after a licensed IR casino opens, and only to people who live in Japan. The hall count is what you can walk into now.

The three legal boxes

Japan did not “legalise gambling” in one vote. It runs three regimes that look similar from outside and are not.

	Pachinko / pachislot	Public betting	IR casino
Legal basis	Entertainment Businesses Act (風営法)	Separate statutes (JRA, keirin, boats, autorace, Toto)	IR Development Act, 2018
Cash from the operator	No. Prizes only; the hall may not buy them back	Yes, at the operator’s windows	Yes, inside the licensed casino
Minimum age	18	20	20
Open in 2026	Yes, and shrinking	Yes	No. Osaka target: autumn 2030
Foreign visitors	May enter if 18+	Follow each operator’s ID rules	Planned: passport ID; no resident entry fee or visit cap

Source: Penal Code; Entertainment Businesses Act; IR Development Act; National Police Agency; Osaka Prefecture

The table is the whole argument. Pachinko is not a loophole casino. Public betting is not pachinko. The Osaka project is not a pachinko hall with table games bolted on.

Pachinko: amusement the government knows about

Pachinko and pachislot are Type 4 amusement businesses under the Entertainment Businesses Act. A hall is a licensed premises. It is not a casino.

Two rules do the legal work. Article 23 of that Act says a pachinko operator must not give cash or securities as prizes, and must not buy back prizes it has given. Article 22 bars anyone under 18 as a customer. The entrance has to say so.

The Cabinet has said, in answers to the Diet, that pachinko run inside those rules is not the Penal Code gambling offence. It has also said it knows customers sometimes sell prizes to a third party after they leave the hall. That third-party sale is the so-called three-store system: hall, prize counter, nearby exchange shop. The hall itself buying the prizes back is the line the police still draw. Prefectural police have arrested operators for doing exactly that.

None of this is a tourist secret, and none of it is a how-to. If you walk into a hall, you buy balls or medals, play machines that are loud on purpose, and exchange what you have left for prizes at the counter — snacks, gadgets, the odd token-like “special prize.” The staff will not cash you out. Photographing other players is a fast way to be asked to leave.

At the end of 2025 the National Police Agency counted 6,464 pachinko businesses, 242 fewer than a year earlier. There were about 1.87 million pachinko machines and 1.36 million pachislot machines. Tokyo had 501 halls, Osaka Prefecture 453. The industry has been shrinking for years. The buildings are still impossible to miss.

Hours are posted on the door. The Act shuts ordinary amusement businesses at midnight unless a prefectural ordinance allows later. Many halls close earlier. Indoor smoking is still common in this trade; tobacco is 20+, same as anywhere else.

If gambling is a problem for you, do not go in. This page is a legal map, not a recommendation.

Public betting, briefly

Horse racing (JRA and local), keirin, motorboat racing, autorace and sports Toto are legal because each sits under its own statute, not because Japan decided casinos were fine. The betting age is 20. These are the older, state-channelled bets. They are not the IR, and they are not pachinko.

The casino law is newer than the neon

Two statutes matter, and they are easy to mash together.

The 2016 law was a promotion act: Japan should study integrated resorts. The 2018 law is the one that actually builds them — the Act on Development of Specified Integrated Resort Districts (特定複合観光施設区域整備法), usually called the IR Development Act.

An IR, in that Act, is not a casino with a hotel glued on. It is a cluster that has to include a casino and an international conference hall, exhibition space, a tourism-attraction facility, a tourist-dispatch facility, and hotels, run as one project by a private operator. The casino floor is capped at 3 percent of the IR’s total floor area. One casino per IR. No more than three certified IR districts in the whole country.

Inside that licensed casino enclosure, Penal Code articles 185 and 186 (gambling, and running a gambling house) do not apply. Outside it, they still do. That is the entire legal trick.

The casino is licensed by the Casino Regulatory Commission, an external bureau of the Cabinet Office. Japanese residents and other people who live in Japan pay an entry fee of ¥3,000 to the state plus ¥3,000 to the certified prefecture, so ¥6,000 per 24 hours. They are capped at three visits in seven days and ten in 28. My Number card is the ID the statute built around. Credit cards are barred for those residents; ATMs are barred in the casino.

Foreign visitors who do not live in Japan are written out of both the fee and the visit caps. They still have to prove who they are — a passport — and they still have to be 20. Organised-crime members are barred, as is anyone who has not paid the fee when the fee applies. Self-exclusion (you, or your family, asking to be locked out) is in the Act.

The Act is not a tourist brochure. It is a gambling statute with a tourism wrapping, and the Osaka plan is honest about the money: in year three of operations the casino is expected to be about 80 percent of IR revenue.

Osaka: Yumeshima, MGM, autumn 2030

Osaka’s plan — Osaka Prefecture, Osaka City, and the operator, now MGM Osaka — was certified by the Minister of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism on 14 April 2023. It is still the only certified IR in Japan.

The site is Yumeshima (夢洲), in Konohana Ward, about 492,000 square metres. Construction of the IR buildings started on 24 April 2025. Osaka Prefecture says the remaining land for the project was handed over in full on 1 April 2026. The prefecture’s progress page was updated on 14 October 2026; the work is underway, not theoretical.

The published target is works finished around summer 2030, opening around autumn 2030. The plan itself says that if the ground, the tax rules, or the construction environment go badly, the timetable can slip by one to two years. Believe the caveat. Reclaimed islands in Osaka Bay are not a simple building plot.

Yumeshima Station on the Osaka Metro Chuo Line opened on 19 January 2025 for Expo 2025. The IR site is on the same island, further into the landfill. The station is useful now; the casino is not. If you go out there to see the island, you will need working data for the Metro map and the walk from the gate — install a Japan eSIM before you fly (Airalo or Saily), because island Wi-Fi is not a plan.

Item	Plan figure
Operator	MGM Osaka (renamed 1 May 2025 from Osaka IR Co.)
Site	Yumeshima, Konohana, Osaka
Certified	14 April 2023
Construction start	24 April 2025
Opening target	Autumn 2030
Initial investment	About ¥1.513 trillion, ex-tax
Hotel rooms	About 2,375–2,760
Table games / e-games	About 470 / 6,400 (may change)
Casino share of year-3 revenue	About 80 percent
Year-3 casino visits (plan)	About 16.1 million

Source: Osaka Prefecture, area development plan (latest minor change filed 31 July 2026)

MGM and ORIX are the core shareholders at about 44 percent each, with a minority slice under 13 percent. About ¥530 billion of the money is project finance. The casino is the engine. The rest of the IR — MICE halls, hotels, entertainment — is what the statute requires in return for that engine.

For a trip to Osaka that is actually on sale this year, use the Osaka travel guide. Do not build 2026 dates around a 2030 opening.

What did not get certified

Nagasaki filed a Kyushu IR plan centred on Huis Ten Bosch. The national review committee did not certify it, on 27 December 2023, citing weak evidence that the money would actually be raised. That is why Osaka is alone.

The Act still allows three districts. The Cabinet set a second application window: 6 May to 5 November 2027. Two slots are left. Other cities may apply. None of them is a casino you can visit on this trip.

If you still want an evening of pachinko

Go during the day, take cash, and treat the spend as the cost of the noise. You need to be 18. You do not need Japanese, but the prize board will not be in English. Do not let anyone “help” you exchange prizes in a way that looks like the hall is cashing you out — that is the operator’s crime, and you do not want to be in the middle of it.

Do not go if you cannot afford to lose the money. Japan’s problem-gambling rate has been a political argument around this law for a decade; the IR statute is full of self-exclusion and family lockout rules because the Diet did not pretend otherwise.

The casino, when it opens, will be a different building on a different legal footing, with ID at the door. Until autumn 2030 at the earliest, it is a construction site on an island you can already reach by Metro.

FAQ

Is gambling legal in Japan? Private casino gambling is not. Pachinko is licensed amusement, not a casino. State-run bets (horse racing, keirin, boats, autorace, Toto) are legal under their own statutes. A licensed IR casino will be legal inside a certified resort; the first one is not open yet.

Can tourists play pachinko? Yes, if you are 18 or over. Buy balls or medals, play, exchange remaining balls for prizes at the counter. The hall cannot pay you cash.

When does the Osaka casino open? The certified plan’s target is autumn 2030, after works finish around summer 2030. The same plan says the timetable can slip by one to two years.

Do foreigners pay the ¥6,000 casino entry fee? Not if they have no address in Japan. The fee and the visit caps apply to Japanese nationals and other people who live in Japan. Foreign visitors still need ID and must be 20.

Is pachinko the same as a casino? No. Different statute, different age, no cash from the hall, and 6,464 of them are already open. The IR casino is a single licensed floor inside a resort that does not exist yet.

Will there be casinos in Tokyo or Nagasaki? Not under the current certification. Nagasaki’s plan was rejected in December 2023. Up to two more IRs can be certified; the next application window is 6 May to 5 November 2027.