The Spiel
By Ricki Chavez-Munoz
It’s the old Chinese adage about risks and opportunities; in this – in a very Asian way – the announcement by Yokohama Mayor Fumiko Hayashi last August that her municipal government would be moving forward with an IR bid, reshaped the licensing race in a way that few other events up to this point have done.
Major international IR operators and gaming industry analysts had been hoping that at least one of the governments in the Kanto region – with a population of about 38 million people being the most populous urban area in the world – would raise its hand and enter the race.
The fact that it was Yokohama, which is already a stylish and wealthy port city that draws millions of foreign tourists annually, made it a much more attractive prospect. Yokohama’s entry into the race was not such good news for rival Osaka, which had previously been drawing the lion’s share of attention. For many months it had looked as if Osaka would be there.
However, current polling shows that IR development remains deeply unpopular in Yokohama, but Mayor Hayashi and her conservative allies insist that they intend to push it through come what may. The danger here is that there is much opposition to Hayashi’s decision to support Yokohama’s IR.
Tomoko Abe, a Lower House member who heads the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan’s Kanagawa prefectural chapter, said “The mayor’s decision is nothing less than a deceptive attack,” when the IR decision was announced. “If an IR is as wonderful as she says, then she should seek the people’s will in an election, Instead, she’s trying to do it sneakily. I bet it’s because she’s conscious of having done it wrong.”
As Hayashi won the last mayoral elections by less than 1.7%, the national trend has those opposed to casinos consistently outnumbering those in favour by 2:1 in polls. One survey, conducted in Japan’s second biggest city, Yokohama, found that a staggering 94 percent of respondents had a negative viewpoint on the idea of a casino in their city. This is, indeed, where the risk lays, or as they say, chaos awaits.
