In early 2026, police in Gifu Prefecture arrested two men who never ran a casino. They ran a website. It was called Onkaji Hisshō — roughly, "Online Casino Sure Win" — and it did one thing: it funnelled Japanese users to a Curaçao-licensed gambling site, collecting a commission on everyone it sent. Over four years, investigators say, the pair pulled in around 670 customers who wagered close to ¥7 billion (about $47 million). They had also built a paid Discord community: ¥10,000 to join, roughly 300 members, sold on betting tips and "strategies."
It was the first time Japanese police cracked down on someone for promoting an overseas online casino rather than operating or playing one. And it was only possible because the rules had just changed.
Is it illegal to promote online casinos in Japan?
As of September 25, 2025, yes. Online casino play was already illegal in Japan — all online gambling is, outside the state-run exceptions like horse racing and the public sports lottery. What changed is the target. An amendment to the Basic Act on Countermeasures Against Gambling Addiction, passed in June 2025, explicitly prohibits launching online casinos (including app-based ones) and — the decisive part — the act of directing people toward them: social-media promotion, affiliate links, "recommended casino" ranking pages, influencer endorsements, even framing a site as merely "informational." Posting "register here" or "Japanese support available" is now enough to fall foul of the law.
The law is unusual in one respect: it carries no specific criminal penalties of its own. Its power is that it gives police, internet providers and platforms a clear legal basis to demand removals and to build prosecutions under existing gambling-facilitation statutes — which is exactly what happened in Gifu. That also explains the gap between the law taking effect in September 2025 and the first promotion arrests arriving in early 2026: a framework that took months to translate into cases.
Why Japan shifted from players to promoters
The numbers explain the pivot. A National Police Agency survey estimated that about 3.37 million people in Japan have used online casino sites, wagering roughly ¥1.24 trillion (about $8.4 billion) a year — despite it all being illegal. Close to 60% of those users are in their twenties and thirties. And the enforcement data shows where the activity now lives: arrests for online gambling offences rose from 59 in 2022 to 107 in 2023 to 279 in 2024 — and of that 2024 figure, 227 involved no physical premises at all. The business had gone almost entirely digital, which meant the people building the audiences — the affiliates and streamers — had become the load-bearing part of the structure.
Chasing 3.37 million users one at a time is impossible. Chasing the promoters who deliver them is not. The recent wave of high-profile cases reflects the same logic: prosecutors this year moved against a member of the pop group JO1 and six Yoshimoto comedians over online play, precisely because visible figures function as advertising.
The cross-border half of the strategy
Enforcement at home only reaches the domestic layer — the affiliate in Gifu, not the casino in Willemstad. So in June 2025, Tokyo asked eight jurisdictions that license offshore operators — Canada, Costa Rica, Georgia, Malta, Anjouan (Comoros), Curaçao, the Isle of Man and Gibraltar — to help block access and share intelligence. It is the same recognition every market in this region eventually reaches: the operator sits offshore, beyond domestic law, so the state goes after what it can touch — the promoter, the payment rail, the access.
We saw the recruitment layer surface in enforcement across the region this year: teenage referral agents in Korea, Telegram administrators and a celebrity endorser in Hong Kong, private betting apps and closed social groups in China. Japan is the market that has now written the recruitment layer into law as a crime in itself. The promoter, not just the platform, is the target.
We track how money, players and regulation move across East Asia's gaming markets. If you operate in this space and see something we should be watching, reply to this email.
Web eastasiareports.com · Email [email protected] · LinkedIn East Asia Reports · Author Adrià Mas