Tokyo court says a voice can have publicity rights in Japan first
A Tokyo court has ruled that a voice can be protected under publicity rights in Japan, in a decision believed to be the first of its kind in the country.
The Tokyo District Court issued the ruling on Wednesday, 30 September. Presiding judge Aya Takahashi heard the case in Civil Division No. 46, according to the written judgment Tokyo District Court.
The case was brought by voice actor Kenjiro Tsuda, 55, against the operator of TikTok. Tsuda, who voices Kento Nanami in Jujutsu Kaisen and Seto Kaiba in Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters, filed suit in November 2025. He cited publicity rights, the right to control commercial use of personal identity, and Japan's Unfair Competition Prevention Act Music Business Worldwide.
At issue were videos posted by an anonymous account and allegedly narrated with an AI-generated copy of his voice. The ruling states the account posted at least 188 videos with narration carrying voice characteristics resembling Tsuda's between July 2024 and September 2025. The account had more than 210,000 followers.
Judge Takahashi held as a general rule that a voice falls within publicity-rights protection where the sole purpose of its use is to exploit its commercial appeal. She described a voice as a symbol of a person's personality, in the same way a likeness is.
The court stopped short of deciding the specifics. It did not rule on whether Tsuda's own rights had been infringed. It also dismissed his request for the videos to be deleted, because the anonymous poster had deleted the entire account at the end of May 2026 while the case was still being heard.
Tsuda did not seek damages and will not appeal.
No Japanese law explicitly creates a right in a person's voice. Publicity rights themselves are judge-made in Japan, recognised by the Supreme Court in 2012. Cases about voice rights have almost never reached court in the country Asahi Shimbun.
Tsuda's action was the first lawsuit filed in Japan over alleged voice-rights infringement using generative artificial intelligence, the technology that can create text, images or sound from learned patterns The Japan Times. An expert committee of Japan's Justice Ministry had already signed off on 27 July on a draft report finding that voices should fall under the right of publicity.
What makes this stand out for the music business is the practical question it answers. Singers, actors and narrators earn from the pull of a recognisable voice. The ruling gives them a legal starting point in Japan when that pull is copied by machine and put to work.
