The overturn of Japan's law from prohibiting gambling

on a usual ordinary night, the streets on the west side of Tokyo's Shimbashi Station are busy by means of action. Jewelry sales men hocking bracelets and necklaces struggle for footpath gap with lottery ticket booths. Mixed in are middle aged men advertising sandwich boards. They slowly pace the streets and sidewalks. The boards are decorated with playing cards or roulette wheels. The boards promise betting action for as little as 10 yen. little maps give instructions to the location of each "game kingdom," or casino.

at the moment, legal gambling in Japan is limited to bicycle, horse, motorboat and racing. Casinos though are prohibited in Japan. Reikichi Sumiya, a yakuza expert and journalist, explains of their continuation, "Wherever there's gambling in Japan, there's the yakuza." But unlike days gone by, the yakuza's participation in gambling is not the big story. Sumiya relate, "Before the yakuza boss drove a BMW. Declining interest and a declining economy are to blame. To fix these shortfalls, legal casinos are being anticipated in Japan. Generally, the yakuza manage the casinos and they are all illegitimate. Indeed, the yakuza and gambling in Japan have become one and the same over the years. One losing combination in the game is the card numbers 8, 9, 3, or in Japanese: ya, ku, sa.

The casinos are slackly run on the same exchange of goods for money principal as pachinko parlors. Casino chips used in the gambling action are exchanged for cash at a shop close by. The casinos are usually found in the same sorts of buildings that provide accommodation, hostess clubs and massage parlors. Each casino is about as big as a bar or restaurant. One frequenter of the Shimbashi casinos, Hideki Yamamoto (not his real name) says of the casino industry in general, "The police will go out and bust a different place once a week. Young apprentice yakuza with mobile phones gaze at the moves of the officers at Atago Police Station - the station accountable for Shimbashi. Yamamoto says, "If the owner of the casino is given information that the police are on the move, then the private club might close for a while."

Most casinos are losing funds. Since the usual casino patron loses, he winds up piling up huge debts. Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara has has made the most noise on the legalized casino front by announcing his intentions of constructing one or more casinos in hotels on Tokyo's waterfront in Odaiba. The hope is that a sequence of trendy, stylish, and exhilarating Las Vegas style casinos marketed to young people would spur fresh interest in gambling and replenish government coffers.

A preliminary estimation from the Japan Casino Academy has indicated that between 50 billion yen and 120 billion yen in tax revenue would be generated per year if six public casinos were to open in Odaiba. Ishihara would first have to overturn Japan's law prohibiting gambling.