Japan's biggest-ever lottery offering went on sale July 9. The 2012 Summer Jumbo Takarakuji has 26 grand prizes of ¥400 million each — tax free. The last Jumbo lottery was in February, with a top prize of ¥300 million, but in March the authority that oversees the contest increased the maximum possible prize from ¥300 million to eventually reach ¥750 million. The strategy is to gradually increase the amounts of the jackpots in order to boost sales on a continuing basis.
The authority is called the Zenkoku Jichi Takarakuji Jimu Kyogikai, or Zenkokukyo for short. It means, literally, national self-government lottery administration council, and is made up of finance section heads of prefectural governments and large cities. The headquarters are located in the Tokyo Metropolitan Government offices, which makes sense. More lottery tickets are sold in Tokyo than anywhere else.
According to research carried out by the Nihon Keizai Shimbun, ¥173 billion worth of lottery tickets were sold in Tokyo in 2007, meaning per capita sales were ¥14,278. The next largest sales amount was recorded by Osaka, with ¥98 billion. About 46 percent of nationwide revenue becomes prize money, with 40 percent going to prefectural and city governments, and the remainder is used for administrative and other costs. The amount that each local government receives is determined by how many tickets each has sold.