Gambling & Prohibition

One of the earliest records of a ban on games in this archipelago is the prohibition of sugoroku in the twelfth month of 689, the third year of Empress Jito's reign (see Ban-sugoroku and Prohibition). What is interesting is that four years earlier, in 685, there is a record of Emperor Tenmu watching gambling games. A game watched at court is banned a few years later. Games of chance have always been treated the same way — the rulers enjoy them, and crack down on them, at the same time. In Europe too, 12th-century church law banned dice gambling and caught chess in the same net. A ban is never the end of the story — each time, the game survives by changing its name and shape. The two hundred years of hanafuda (see Flower Cards and Prohibition), and the regulation of gacha (see Gacha and Its Regulation), are both part of this long chase.