Kirjahaku

An anonymous hamlet town on the southern shores of Hokkaido is on the cusp of changing its fortunes that may finally put it on the map, and match the renown of Sapporo and Niseko in the northern Japanese prefecture. The minority inhabitants of the town of Kabashiro will be forgiven for not being as elated, for many economics winds have come and gone but always passing the Ainus by. Why then would this mega-resort development be any different? Then the sleepy normalcy of Kabashiro is shattered by wailing sirens as North Korean ballistic missiles flew dangerously over their skies. Before the excitement has died down, a pod of minke whales beached themselves in mass suicide on the black sands of the town's shoreline. A growing sense of foreboding is spreading among the indigenous Ainus, and it all comes to a head with the discovery of a deliberate desecration to an Ainu ancestral burial site. These are all signs to the Ainus that the wrath of their ancient gods is about to be unleashed on the town of Kabashiro and its people.Precipitating a chain of events, the normally docile Ainus rise up in arms when another startling revelation uncovers yet another deception against their people. But there is much more that meets the eye where the Ainus are mere pawns and acceptable collateral damage in a high-stakes game between actors seen and unseen. The hapless Ainus find a paladin in an opaque organisation but their motives too may be less than noble. It is getting harder to tell who's friend and who's foe, even among their own. Regardless, the authorities are adamant the multibillion-dollar resort will not be derailed at any cost, which foreshadows an inevitable confrontation and where the tiny Ainu community are doomed to lose...again.There are however more deep secrets hidden within the dense forests bordering the seaside town where the Ainus once roamed and hunted freely in the days of old. Countless sightless dark eyes on towering white birch trunks glower at the intrusion of the resort construction on its hallowed grounds. Death begins to rear its ugly head under the dark shadows, but the rewards are too high for the conspirators to do anything but move forward. As the world slowly awakens to the unravelling events in Kabashiro, it is up to young Ainus-Haru, Shinji and Ryohei to turn the tide against their people. The odds look grossly insurmountable but they may yet have an ally in a distant kin, while an unwitting American university professor could hold the key to the source of hope and redemption from the gods to spare Kabashiro from a dark fate.

A vision of an integrated resort rising above the turquoise waters of Osaka Bay in 2025 will not come to pass. It dashed hopes for a $10 billion complement to the Osaka World Expo, which is expected to attract 28 million visitors from the world over. Another grand resort plan at Yokohama was abruptly shelved in a political upheaval.The euphoria was palpable when Japan finally legalised casino gambling in 2018 after trying for over twenty years. Up to ten casino resorts were to open across the country, which was touted to springboard Japan to become the world's largest casino market. It sparked a rush of Black Friday proportions by every casino company on the globe for the first three Japanese casino licences on the table. The casus belli on Japan's shores are twofold. It is home to a largely middle-class population of 125 million. The country is geographically in close proximity to China. Between the two, they checked all the boxes for a casino business. Where there is a large population, there is stable source of revenue. Where there is a middle-class demographic, there is disposable income. Where there is a casino in Asia, there is the ubiquitous Chinese gambler.The wheels began to turn in Japan during a time when the Asian region was undergoing a casino revolution. The industry was swinging from its crucible in the west and pivoting east. The Las Vegas market had been completely dwarfed by Macau. The introduction of "integrated resorts" in Singapore shifted the paradigm in casino gambling. It skyrocketed the Marina Bay Sands resort to become the most profitable casino in the world. The Singapore market duopoly was enough to generate $5 billion in annual revenue. If Singapore's integrated resorts were the yardstick, then Japan holds even greater promise. The land of the rising sun is the world's third largest economy and possesses all the underlying attributes, in scale and otherwise, to put the Singapore casino industry in the shade. CLSA had projected that a dozen integrated resorts in Japan could deliver $40 billion a year. Morgan Stanley posited that a Tokyo metropolitan casino alone is capable of generating $6 billion in gross revenue, more than the Singapore market in its entirety, while an Osaka casino is worth $4 billion. The late Sheldon Adelson branded his Marina Bay Sands resort a "warmup" to the casino property that his company, Las Vegas Sands, plans to build in Japan. With all the heady forecasts, a long queue of investors had formed outside the offices of the Japanese government nerve centre in Nagatacho. Lawmakers were ecstatic. Businesses in Japan were similarly elated, eager for a slice of the lucrative casino pie. It was all systems go.The picture turned vastly different over the course of four years. The investors are almost all gone except for two takers vying for the three concessions. The coronavirus had come and brought everything to a standstill. What was thought to be a walk in the park turned sideways for Japan every which way it turned. All these meant that the first integrated resorts in Japan will not welcome visitors until the next decade. Two of its primary actors, Sheldon Adelson and Shinzo Abe, did not live to grace their opening. What they had witnessed was the unprecedented uprising of the Japanese people, which thwarted their plans. For a country which brought the world the "Kanban" concept of just-in-time manufacturing, the dilatory pace to realise casinos in Japan is an oddity. The account between these covers is but the prologue of the Japan casino story.