The composition of the bacterial communities in the contents of the foregut and hindgut of the sea cucumber Apostichopus japonicus and in the ambient surface sediment was surveyed by 16S rRNA gene 454-pyrosequencing. A total of 188,623 optimized reads and 15,527 operational taxonomic units (OTUs) were obtained from the ten gut contents samples and four surface sediment samples. The sequences in the sediments, foregut contents, and hindgut contents were assigned to 38.0±4.7, 31.2±6.2 and 27.8±6.5 phyla, respectively. The bacterial richness and Shannon diversity index were both higher in the ambient sediments than in the gut contents. Proteobacteria was the predominant phylum in both the gut contents and sediment samples. The predominant classes in the foregut, hindgut, and ambient sediment were Holophagae and Gammaproteobacteria, Deltaproteobacteria and Gammaproteobacteria, and Gammaproteobacteria and Deltaproteobacteria, respectively. The potential probiotics, including sequences related to Bacillus, lactic acid bacteria (Lactobacillus, Lactococcus, and Streptococcus) and Pseudomonas were detected in the gut of A. japonicus. Principle component analysis and heatmap figure showed that the foregut, hindgut, and ambient sediment respectively harbored different characteristic bacterial communities. Selective feeding of A. japonicus may be the primary source of the different bacterial communities between the foregut contents and ambient sediments.