Japanese Lawmakers Form New Parliamentary Group To Tackle Trading Card Industry

Over the past few years, trading cards have boomed into a massive industry in Japan, fueled by franchises such as Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh, and other multimedia properties from the country.

Now, Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has announced they will be forming a new parliamentary group to tackle the challenges brought on by the boom. The Japan Toy association estimates that the domestic trading card market has grown every year since 2017 for Japan, reaching  around 338.4 billion yen (US$2.3 billion) in fiscal 2025.

The challenges the group seeks to address include three major issues that have been plaguing the industry: counterfeit cards, scalping, and money laundering schemes. All three of these are enable by the massive amount of money rare trading cards are worth on the secondhand market, not only enabling criminal activity in the case of counterfeiting and money laundering, but also harming the enjoyment of genuine fans in the case of scalping. The Pokemon Company even recently considered asking buyers to use their National ID cards as a form of verification to deter such activities.

The LDP’s new Trading Card group intends to hold their inaugural meeting on 23 July, where lawmakers will hear from industry organizations and the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) about the state of the market. Stay tuned for more as it comes.

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