Push for Japanese casinos comes with high financial and political stakes

Tokyo

JAPANESE Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's government is playing a very high stakes game in its push to legalise casinos in Japan, with not only huge sums of direct and tourism-related income involved, but also with the risk of a political backlash against gambling addiction and organised crime.

Some very high-level political figures, in Japan and also in the US, appear to have been involved either directly or indirectly in the move to get Japan into the casino "game" - which ended with a law finally being passed in the early hours of Thursday, against strenuous opposition