Japan has not yet given up on its aspirations for more integrated resorts in the country featuring casinos. The recent announcement opening up a new application period for local governments interested in housing such IRs pushes back the timetable even further, though, prompting concern of a repeat performance of the first round of bidding.

Gaming expert and author Daniel Cheng points out the cracks in the country’s casino vision, highlighting who might still be willing to play the game. 

Pyotr’s folly.

The composition showed true promise, but the finished work was uneven at best and derivative at worst. Winter Daydreams was widely criticized for its lack of originality and found a modern, concrete echo in the saga of Yumeshima. In English parlance, Dream Island is a cruel irony for a reclaimed toxic landfill that has spent decades as a graveyard for thwarted municipal dreams. The Osaka authorities sought an opus in an $8 billion, Vegas-style integrated resort by MGM Resorts. The score barely scraped through with an almost nightmarish D grade (65.7%), accented by the repeatedly poor cadence of the Japanese government. The promised crescendo turned into a stuttering prelude to the advent of the Japanese casino industry.

Symphony No. 1 was uninspiring. Ten years later, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky would find complete redemption in pairing masterful orchestration with profound emotional depth in a masterpiece that has become an emblem of the ballet repertoire. The ascension of Sanae Takaichi into the Prime Minister’s Office opened the doors for the Japan Tourism Agency (JTA) to pick up from where they left off, announcing in recent days that applications will reopen 15 months from now for the remaining two integrated licenses in May 2027. They say the devil is in the details, but in this case, it will be the annotations that critically determine whether the next arrangement can earn absolution and mirror the rebound of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake.

That there appears to be no overt political manipulation of the JTA to fast-track the process is a positive sign, especially as memories of the missteps by the now-deposed Pheu Thai government in Thailand remain fresh. However, with submissions not due for more than a year and decisions likely only two years away at the earliest, this is an obvious source of concern and uncertainty for both investors and prefectural governments.

However, a year-and-a-half is painfully tight for any prefecture starting from scratch to define a clear policy purpose. Crafting such a policy requires harmonizing tourism repositioning, urban regeneration, and fiscal stability into a singular vision. It is a mammoth endeavor that spans years and even decades, much like the evolution of Singapore’s Marina Bay district.

While a major integrated resort can act as a powerful catalyst, it remains only one component of a compelling broader masterplan. A lack of comprehension regarding these strategic elements strips the project of its transformative power, reducing it to a mere commercial real estate project or, worse, just a gambling business, thereby marginalizing all potential spillover effects and missing the forest for the trees.

Unlearned lessons

The casino industry is a highly specialized niche, dominated by a select few international marquee brands that can be counted on one hand. Singapore was acutely mindful of this exclusivity when it embarked on a comprehensive market analysis to establish its gaming sector. The government sought high-level counsel from premier industry consultants to conduct exhaustive demand studies and formulate credible social-impact assessments.

This rigorous approach allowed for a clear articulation of the trade-offs and benefits to ensure the creation of a market-led industry that simultaneously upheld the social contract and national security. This meticulous planning gave birth to the still-nascent “Integrated Resort” (IR) model which became the cornerstone of Singapore’s global acclaim. Aspiring jurisdictions were quick to embrace and endeavor to emulate this model, viewing it as the gold standard to mitigate the polarizing Marmite effect that plagues gambling deregulation.

Japan’s folly, by contrast, lay in the government’s failure to recognize this inherent complexity, a shortcoming further exacerbated by the conflation of political agendas and commercial interests. A novice without a maestro to guide the arrangement inevitably resulted in a cacophony of misaligned expectations rather than the harmonious masterplan required for success. This lack of fundamental understanding and the failure to enlist specialized subject-matter expertise lies at the crux of why Japan’s first bidding round fell decidedly flat.

Hands-off approach

The brevity of the announcement last week by the Japan Tourism Agency was troubling because it suggested again a lack of active participation or support from the central government. By appearing content to simply wait until 2027 to review proposals, the agency is leaving interested prefectural authorities to their own devices to synthesize a vision, assimilate plans, and select operators independently. This hands-off approach perpetuates the same systemic gaps that plagued the inaugural round, allowing ineligible and rogue actors to slip through the cracks.

Nagatacho is already sorely lacking in foundational expertise, a deficit that painfully exposed the vulnerability of prefectures with fewer resources and less intellectual capital. Ultimately, this lack of oversight transformed the bidding process into a laughingstock and triggered a mass withdrawal of interest from the industry’s major operators.

The scenario is begging a repeat fiasco where the only redeeming note would be Hokkaido Prefecture, where Tomakomai City had a 10-year head start in orchestrating a proper thematic blueprint in lockstep with Hard Rock International since 2015. Other hopefuls (Aichi, Mie, Nagasaki, among them) appear more likely to turn in formulaic and anemic bids. Without the proper structural framework in place, it is difficult to imagine any of them striking a chord or realizing the world-class integrated resort that Japan deserves.

Yet all is not lost if only the government turns to harness the considerable untapped resources of the Japan Casino Regulatory Commission. With nearly 200 bureaucrats available to reinforce the process, Japan could still recover from the stasis of Winter Daydreams into the triumph of Swan Lake and avert the ignominy of the older Mendelssohn sibling, bookmarked in posterity as a cautionary example of unrealized potential.