Gambling in Japan

The gambling scene

Gambling in Japan splits into two worlds. On one side sit the public products: four racing sports run under national law, a state lottery, and soccer pools, all sold through official channels. On the other side sits pachinko, which is not officially classified as gambling for money and yet is by far the most ubiquitous and lucrative form of wagering in the country, played in thousands of parlors from Hokkaido to Okinawa⁹. Enthusiasts line up outside parlors before the 10 a.m. opening, and the game has at least three or four modern variations, from classic hanemono machines to digital pachi-suro slots⁹.

Casinos have been debated since 2001, when Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara began pushing for them, but none have opened⁹. The story of how the country got here, from Edo-period games to the modern racing monopolies, is covered in gambling culture and history in Japan.

Casinos and resorts

There are no legal casinos operating in Japan today. The first integrated resort, MGM Osaka, is scheduled to open by 2030, and in 2026 the government opened a second application window for the two remaining casino licenses, with Nagasaki and Hokkaido the front-runners⁶. The full picture of what is coming, and what the resorts will look like, is on the casinos in Japan page.

When the resorts open, the rules for locals will be strict. Under the integrated resorts law, Japanese nationals and foreign residents of Japan will face limits on the number of entries, an entry fee, and restrictions on lending by casino operators, while short-term visitors will enter freely¹⁰. The enforcement rules list the permitted games, which include table staples and the money wheel¹¹. Residents will need to present their My Number card and verify identity on each entry and exit of the gaming area¹¹.

The lottery

The national lottery, takarakuji, comes in several families. Ordinary lotteries, including the famous jumbo draws held five times a year, use pre-printed tickets, while number-selection games let you pick your own digits¹². The year-end jumbo set a record in November 2013 with a first prize of JPY 500 million, or JPY 700 million counting the before and after prizes of JPY 100 million each³. The Japan lottery page covers the whole system, including where to buy tickets.

The number games each have their own page:

Loto 6 costs JPY 200 a line and can be bought year-round at takarakuji booths, online, at some bank ATMs and at some convenience stores, with continuous purchase of up to 10 draws⁵. Its prize ladder runs from a fixed JPY 1,000 for fifth prize to about JPY 10 million for second⁵. Loto 7 made history in May 2013 when, after five consecutive carryovers, three tickets each won JPY 800 million, a first in takarakuji history³. Bingo 5 launched nationwide in April 2017 and draws at Tokyo Takarakuji Dream Hall, with live internet streaming³.

Sports betting and racing

Japan's legal sports betting rests on four racing sports, all run by government or municipal bodies: horse racing, motorboat racing, bicycle racing (keirin) and motorcycle auto racing⁶. The general landscape, including what online wagering is allowed, is on the sports betting in Japan page.

Horse racing

National racing runs at ten Japan Racing Association venues: Chukyo, Sapporo, Hakodate, Fukushima, Niigata, Tokyo, Nakayama, Kyoto, Hanshin and Kokura¹⁵. The biggest first-place purses are JPY 500 million each for the Japan Cup and the Arima Kinen, and the smallest is JPY 5.8 million for events for winless young horses¹. The horse racing in Japan page covers race days, and major horse races in Japan lists the big fixtures, such as the Japan Cup at Tokyo Racecourse on November 29, 2026 and the Arima Kinen at Nakayama on December 17, 2026, both days with no on-site ticket sales¹⁶. The Japan Cup page covers the flagship race itself.

Betting tickets have a face value of JPY 10, and the basic methods are win, place, exacta and quinella, plus multi-race bets². Which bet types are sold depends on field size: with 2 starters only the win bet is sold, with 5 to 7 starters you get win, place, quinella, trifecta, trio and wide, and with 9 or more starters bracket quinella bets are added as well¹⁷. The Japanese horse racing bet types page explains each one. For betting from home, betting on Japanese horse racing online covers the four JRA membership systems: A-PAT, Soku-PAT, JRA Direct and ARS¹.

Alongside JRA racing, local governments run their own meetings. Local horse racing (chiho keiba) covers these tracks, including Tokyo City Keiba at Oi in the heart of Tokyo, which offers free Wi-Fi with no registration and a beginners counter on the first floor of the L-WING¹⁸. Ban'ei racing is the most distinctive of all: draft horses weighing 800 to 1,200 kg pull a sled with a jockey and a heavy load over a 200-meter dirt track with two humps, and it is held only in Hokkaido¹.

Boat racing

Boat racing, or kyotei, puts six boats on a 1,800-meter course, three laps of 600 meters, with a flying start in which boats must cross the start line within a set time¹⁹. A race day has 12 races, and you can watch, eat and enjoy the venue without betting at all²⁰. The boat racing page covers the race day experience, and boat race betting explains the bet types and odds. A JPY 100 ticket at odds of 6.2 pays JPY 620, and machines around the venue pay prizes on the spot²¹. The main bets are place (pick 2 of the top 3 in any order), exacta, trifecta and trio; a sample trio bet on boats 1, 2 and 4 had odds of 15.3 against a 1 in 20 chance²¹.

Keirin and auto race

Keirin is bicycle racing on banked velodromes. Odds work as multipliers on a JPY 100 stake: a 2-car win bet on rider 1 first and rider 7 second at odds of 4.5 pays JPY 450, while a longshot combination at 9418.5 pays JPY 941,850²². The keirin page explains the odds board and bet types. Auto race covers motorcycle racing on paved ovals, the fourth public sport.

Soccer pools

The toto family lets you predict real soccer results. Toto soccer pools is the classic format, with a prize cap of JPY 100 million, or JPY 500 million when a carryover occurs²³. BIG and MEGA BIG are the big-money versions: BIG covers 14 matches with 50% of sales paid as prizes and a first prize of up to JPY 600 million, while the 12-match total-goals version costs JPY 100 a bet and pays up to JPY 200 million, or JPY 1.2 billion for MEGA BIG with carryover²⁴. In one recent BIG draw, second prize paid JPY 2,066,400 across 13 winning tickets, third prize JPY 39,360 across 195 tickets, and the small prizes ran down to JPY 540²⁵. WINNER is a smaller pool where the first prize takes 100% of the prize fund²³. DUNK is the basketball lottery: a JPY 100 ticket on 10 games pays up to JPY 300 million with carryover, or JPY 100 million without, with first-prize odds of 1 in 1,048,576²⁶. Winnings of JPY 100,000 or less are paid in cash on the spot at handling shinkin banks and some counters; over JPY 500,000 you complete a procedure at a shinkin bank and collect at the counter after 12 business days or by transfer, bringing the ticket and an identity document²⁷. Buying toto and BIG online covers the official partner sites, including the Yahoo!, Rakuten, SMBC and PayPay Bank toto sites²⁸.

Poker

Cash poker is not part of the legal landscape: traditional cash games for money are illegal, and there are no legal casinos or live poker rooms paying out cash⁷. Instead, venues run tournaments classified as amusement or mind sports, where prizes cannot be paid out on site⁷. The poker in Japan page explains how this scene works, and poker tournaments in Japan lists the events. The Japan Open Poker Tour is the flagship:

• JOPT follows international poker rules and the rules of the Tournament Directors Association
• It requires the free GameID app registered by the day before
• It awards trophies, medals, entry tickets for future events and sponsor benefits rather than cash²⁹

The Guild Group runs several venues in Tokyo and beyond, including Casino Quest in Akihabara, Ikebukuro Guild, Nagoya Guild and others³⁰. Video poker machines in amusement settings let you bet borrowed medals but cannot exchange won medals for anything of value³¹. Online poker in Japan covers the offshore side, a gray area that has grown darker as the government intensifies its stance against offshore gambling⁷.

Local and traditional games

Pachinko is the national game. Parlors number in the thousands across the country, and the game survives through workarounds on transactions and a cultural carve-out rather than a straightforward gambling license⁶. The pachinko page explains how the machines work, and pachinko parlors in Japan covers what a visit is like, from the 10 a.m. opening queues onward⁹.

Pachislo is the slot-machine cousin, and it has its own stars. The Juggler slot machines page covers the long-running series, while Okinawa pachislot machines looks at regional machines such as Pachislot Kelot 4, the first Kelot series machine in the 6th machine standard, developed by Seven League, a subsidiary of YAMASA, and released in March 2020³². Another well-known machine is Kaiji, made by Rodeo and based on the Tobaku Mokushiroku Kaiji manga³³. The pachislot page covers the category as a whole.

Riichi mahjong is the Japanese form of the tile game, played with 136 tiles instead of 144, since flower and season tiles are omitted⁹. The riichi mahjong page explains the rules, including three-player variants common in parlors west of the Chukyo area, where a tsumo win uses special scoring adjustments such as baidori, doubling the winner's income³⁴. Traditional Japanese gambling games covers the older home and festival games that predate all of the above.

Online

Official products can be bought online: public lottery tickets, toto sports lottery tickets, and JRA horse racing bets through the membership systems described above⁶. Everything else online is off-limits. An online casino is any game played via smartphone or PC in which you wager cash, crypto assets or electronic money on the outcome, including slots, card games and sports contests³⁵. Connecting from Japan to gamble, including on overseas-licensed online casinos, is a crime regardless of legality in the server's country, and police have pushed strict enforcement; even free versions of casino games must not be used⁸. There are no licensed and regulated online casinos inside Japan, though many offshore sites welcome Japanese players, offer Japanese language support and Japanese Yen accounts, and run live dealer games including blackjack, baccarat, roulette, Dragon Tiger and Sic Bo⁶. The online gambling in Japan page covers this in full.

Money and payments

At tracks and venues, everything runs in yen, in cash, with tickets from JPY 10 upward². Lottery and sports lottery prizes are paid as described above, with a JPY 50 fee for bank transfer of sports lottery winnings over JPY 500,000 to Japan Post Bank²⁷. On the offshore side, minimum deposits are often around USD 10 or equivalent, and most sites do not disclose maximum deposit limits³⁶. The online gambling payments in Japan page covers deposit and withdrawal methods in detail.

On tax: public lottery prizes are exempt from income tax under the Act on Public Lottery Tickets¹². Online casino winnings, by contrast, are treated as miscellaneous income and require a tax return if annual winnings exceed JPY 500,000³⁷. The tax on gambling winnings in Japan page explains what counts and what does not.

Who can play

The rules differ by product and by who you are, so here is the full picture at a glance.

In short: public racing betting is for ages 20 and up, sports lottery tickets cannot be sold to anyone under 19, and pachinko, pachislo and most amusement poker rooms require you to be 18, with some poker rooms restricting under-18 entry after about 10 p.m.⁸. The Horse Racing Act states plainly that pari-mutuel tickets must not be purchased by or transferred to anyone under 20².

Visiting and living there

If you are visiting, the practical answer is on the gambling in Japan as a visitor page: the public products are open to you on the same terms as locals, and you can walk into any racecourse, boat race venue or pachinko parlor and simply watch if you prefer²⁰. Japanese law prohibits opening or providing gambling venues within Japan, but gambling at a casino abroad, where it is legal locally, is not punishable under Japanese law because the acts occur entirely outside the country³⁷. The gambling trips abroad from Japan page covers where residents and citizens commonly go.

For residents, the main practical difference from visitors will come with the casino resorts: the entry fee, entry limits and My Number verification will apply to Japanese nationals and foreign residents alike, while short-term visitors enter on a passport¹¹. Playing at offshore online casinos from inside Japan carries the risk of a gambling charge, and a heavier habitual gambling charge if repeated⁸.

Getting help

If gambling is stopping being fun, Japan has a gambling addiction consultation hotline at 070-4501-9625⁸. The gambling help in Japan page lists the support services, counseling options and self-exclusion tools available in English and Japanese.