Since the end of the war, Japan has been a multiparty democracy, long dominated by the Liberal Democratic Party. Yet despite the LDP’s near-continuous hold on power, Japan has largely avoided the “tyranny of the majority” that Tocqueville and Mill had foreseen plaguing many democracies. This resilience stems from a deeply ingrained culture of consensus, where social cohesion and tradition temper the excesses of majority rule. Japan’s political dynamics most resembled Singapore’s when the late Prime Minister Shinzo Abe held a supermajority in both chambers of the Diet.
It was during this time that the casino law was passed, a rare break from cultural norms, despite strong opposition across the political spectrum and widespread public disapproval. The brief spell of an unassailable Diet majority became a Maginot Line mistaken for carte blanche. The problem though was that Japanese leaders never had the unfettered mandate from voters that their Singapore counterparts enjoy. They began to drink their own Kool-Aid, doubling down and vociferously advocating the integrated resort bet to quell the naysayers, brushing aside concerns as throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
But if the average Japanese citizen is Alice peering through the proverbial looking glass, the ‘infant’ IR industry may look less like a newborn miracle and more like Rosemary’s baby. As in the fantastical Carrollian world where logic becomes inverted, the Japanese public sees not a path to prosperity, but a tumble down a rabbit hole of social decay and addiction—a chaotic Wonderland they never asked for. Ignoring this cognitive dissonance partly contributed to the LDP’s waning influence in subsequent national elections, leaving the party barely clinging to power.
The law, though passed with fanfare, began its life in a hesitant, piecemeal rollout, and what looked decisive in parliament trickled into reality slowly, unevenly, with public resistance largely unchanged, its implementation gradually succumbing to inertia. Instead of the expected fanfare, Osaka’s inaugural IR license drew heavy criticism, embroiling the prefectural government in a continuous cycle of legal challenges from the public.
The LDP’s Potemkin dawn, sparked by the novelty of appointing its first female Prime Minister, has provided the political cover needed to resume the IR licensing process. Sanae Takaichi is now doubling down, dissolving the Lower House today (January 23rd) in the expectation that her surging popularity will translate into votes in what will be the third national election in just one and a half years. A victory for the LDP on February 8th would mark a remarkable comeback and revive hopes of a return to the halcyon days of Shinzo Abe for the ruling party.
It would also, more or less, amount to a home run for two additional integrated resort licenses to be awarded in 2028. Hard Rock International, in particular, is betting that Takaichi has all her ducks in a row, clearing the way for the Native American entertainment powerhouse to finally make landfall in Hokkaido after a decade adrift. An LDP win would promise smoother seas through the politically delicate phase of the IR licensing process.
Yet none of this obscures the fact that a one-off legislative success is a far cry from any fundamental or permanent shift in the cultural landscape, with political leaders guilty of sitting on their hands like the storybook characters Tweedledum and Tweedledee, leaving largely unaddressed the profound disconnect between the political class on one side of the looking-glass and the Japanese public on the other.
Applying the Singaporean lens was faulty from the outset, as the two nations are chessboards with distinctly different pieces at play. In Japan, with its far more vocal civil society, ‘Alice’ is no mere White Pawn to be moved at will, as she was in the opening pages of Through the Looking-Glass. She demands a voice in the casino debate as fervently as she defends Japan’s pacifism or her right to retain her maiden name after marriage. It is fallacious to assume that because Singaporeans acquiesced to a lack of choice, the Japanese public will follow suit.
This is the LDP’s inherent blind spot: ignore it, and Humpty Dumpty will continue to dominate center stage, right up to the moment of a great fall from which no amount of political maneuvering will suffice to piece him back together. Instead, revising the closing narrative to cast the White Knight as the central figure through local referendums is the safest way to bring the storyline closer to making Alice’s dream a reality.
Dingnews.com 26/01/2026