Japan has stepped up efforts to liberalise its gambling legislation and cultivate a casino industry, whose potential value has been put at $40 billion by some analysts. However, a poor showing in parliament for new gambling reforms means Japan’s ambitions might be strangled in the crib.

The current political debacle reveals that investors’ buzz around ‘the new Macau’ was groundless from the start. In this article, I will provide an overview of the recent, botched efforts to legalise casino gambling in Japan and demonstrate that the country’s potential as a gambling hot-spot has been drastically overstated.