Gambling addiction help in Japan

Verified helplines

Helplines and online chat

The Gambling Addiction Prevention and Recovery Support Center (ギャンブル依存症予防回復支援センター) answers 0120-683-705 around the clock, 365 days a year. Calls and consultation are free, and its counsellors hold clinical psychology and comparable qualifications.

For pachinko and pachislot specifically, the Recovery Support Network — a certified non-profit funded by the pachinko industry's social contribution body — takes calls on 050-5846-3952 from 10:00 to 22:00 on weekdays, with intake closing at 21:30. The counselling is free; you pay only the call charge. RSN also runs group consultation sessions and publishes material for hall staff.

Both services operate in Japanese. Lines in other countries are listed in the helplines directory.

Self-exclusion

Japan has no single register that shuts a person out of every operator at once. Exclusion is arranged sector by sector, and in most sectors a family member can apply as well as the person gambling.

Horse racing, keirin, auto racing and boat racing

All four public-sports operators run access restrictions: a ban on entering venues and ticket shops, suspension of telephone and internet betting accounts, and deposit or spending limits. Either the person or a relative can apply.

Boat racing documents its scheme most fully. A member can set a deposit ceiling — including ¥0 — or suspend internet betting through the official site. A cohabiting adult relative (a spouse, a blood relative within the sixth degree, or an in-law within the third) can apply for a venue entry ban or an internet betting suspension by submitting the form together with a residence certificate and a medical certificate. A venue ban takes at least two months to come into effect, so it is not a same-day measure.

Pachinko and pachislot

Participating halls operate a self-declaration and family-declaration program. Applying for yourself, you choose one of four limits: a cap on what you spend in a day, a cap on visits per month, a cap on playing time per day, or a declaration that you will not enter the hall at all. A family member — a spouse or an adult relative within two degrees — can only ask the hall to approach the person and encourage them to leave. Forms are downloaded, printed and handed in at the hall, and the restriction binds only halls that have joined the program, not the industry as a whole.

Casinos

No casino is open in Japan. The Osaka integrated resort is targeting an opening around autumn 2030. Under the IR Act, Japanese residents will pay ¥6,000 per entry, be limited to three entries in seven days and ten in 28, be identified by My Number card, and be able to request use restrictions either for themselves or through a family member.

Blocking gambling payments and sites

Running an online casino from Japan, and advertising one, became explicitly unlawful when the revised Basic Act on Gambling Addiction Countermeasures took effect on 25 September 2025. The ban reaches listing casino apps in app stores and posting links to casino sites on social media. Playing was already an offence: the National Police Agency states that connecting from within Japan to a casino licensed abroad is still gambling under the Penal Code.

Japanese banks do not offer the customer-requested gambling transaction blocks that UK and Irish banks provide. The closest equivalents are the deposit ceilings and account suspensions described above for licensed betting, plus device-level blocking — see apps that block gambling sites.

Free treatment and counselling

Every prefecture and designated city runs a mental health and welfare centre (精神保健福祉センター) that takes addiction consultations, gambling included. The National Center for Addiction Services Administration keeps a searchable directory of those centres and of specialist medical institutions by prefecture.

Medical treatment goes through public health insurance like any other psychiatric care. For people who need continuing outpatient psychiatric treatment, the 自立支援医療 scheme reduces the patient's share and caps the monthly amount according to income; applications are made at the municipal office, and the treating clinic can say whether a particular diagnosis qualifies.

The framework behind all of this is the Basic Act on Gambling Addiction Countermeasures of 2018, which obliges national and local government to provide prevention, consultation and treatment. The current national plan was approved by cabinet on 21 March 2025.

Support for family and friends

Relatives are written into the Japanese schemes rather than left outside them. A family member can apply for venue entry bans and betting-account suspensions across the four racing sports, can ask a pachinko hall to intervene under the family-declaration program, and will be able to request casino use restrictions once the Osaka resort opens.

Gam-Anon Japan (ギャマノン) holds free meetings nationwide for families and friends of people with a gambling problem. No booking is needed and no fees are collected; its office line is 03-6659-4879 on Mondays and Thursdays, 10:00–12:00. Gamblers Anonymous Japan runs meetings for people who gamble, listed by region on its site.

The 0120-683-705 line takes calls from family members too. If you are working out how to raise it at all, see how to help someone with a gambling problem.

Gambling law and the regulator

Gambling is a criminal offence in Japan. Penal Code Article 185 punishes it with a fine of up to ¥500,000; Article 186 punishes habitual gambling with up to three years' imprisonment. Everything lawful is an exception carved out by its own statute: horse racing, keirin, auto racing and boat racing, the toto sports lottery, and the public takarakuji lottery.

Pachinko sits outside that list. Halls are licensed as amusement businesses under the Entertainment Business Act rather than as gambling, and prizes are exchanged for cash away from the machines. Because they are amusement businesses, Article 22 of that Act bars anyone under 18 from being admitted as a customer.

There is no single gambling regulator. Each sector answers to its own ministry, and the Japan Casino Regulatory Commission, created under the 2018 IR Development Act, will license and supervise casinos once any exist. Betting ages come from the individual statutes: the Horse Racing Act and the Motorboat Racing Act both bar anyone under 20 from buying tickets, and the Sports Promotion Voting Act sets 19 for toto.