This study aimed at investigating the “Filling-in” function of pointing gestures in Japanese utterances, using an experiment and time-course analysis of participants’ eye gaze. The study used two types of utterances, one with an obvious missing element and the other with a non-obvious missing element, and participants judged whether a presented pointing gesture indicated the missing element. The results showed that participants interpreted the pointing gesture as indicating the missing element only when the utterance included an obvious missing element. The study suggested that the role of deictic gestures can change depending on the existence of obvious missing elements in speech, indicating the language-dependent nature of co-speech gestures.