Tokyo court says performers’ voices can have publicity rights in Kenjiro Tsuda case

Kenjiro Tsuda’s case against TikTok’s operator ended at Tokyo District Court on 30 September 2026 with a ruling that a performer’s voice can receive publicity-right protection in Japan. The court dismissed the voice actor’s request to remove videos from the platform because the account and videos had already been deleted. The decision sets out a legal standard for commercial use of a voice, but the reported outcome does not establish that the specific videos infringed Tsuda’s rights.

What the Tokyo court said about voice rights

The court described a human voice as a symbol of personal identity comparable to a portrait, according to TV Asahi. It said unauthorised use of a performer’s voice may infringe publicity rights when the purpose is to exploit the voice’s commercial appeal. That condition matters: the ruling described when such use can breach a right, rather than treating every imitation or use of a voice as an infringement.

The Guardian, reporting with Agence France-Presse, described the decision as Japan’s first ruling to recognise protection for a voice under publicity rights. Tsuda’s lawyer, speaking to legal news outlet Bengo4 after the judgment, called it the first ruling explicitly placing a voice within the scope of those rights. The court’s full judgment was not among the materials available for this account, so those descriptions of its reasoning rest on the published reports.

The distinction between the legal standard and the result of this case is central. Bengo4 reported that the court stated the standard in general terms, then rejected the requested removal because the videos were no longer available. On the reporting available, the dismissal should not be read as a finding that the disputed narration was Tsuda’s voice, or that these particular videos infringed his publicity rights.

Why Kenjiro Tsuda sued TikTok’s operator

The account used an image resembling a character Tsuda had voiced, Bengo4 reported. The Guardian said TikTok argued that the narration was a generic male voice and that any perceived similarity to Tsuda was subjective. Those competing positions explain why identifying the voice mattered to the case, even though the court ultimately disposed of the removal request after the account’s deletion.

The account had reached 100,000 followers by January 2025, according to Tsuda’s lawyer as reported by Bengo4, which also put its average views at about 1.47 million. The Guardian reported that it had more than 200,000 subscribers at one point. Bengo4 attributed an estimated ¥700,000 in monthly revenue to the lawyer; the Guardian relayed a complaint estimate of ¥500,000 to ¥750,000 a month. These are reported estimates, not independently verified earnings.

How the removal case ended

Bengo4 reported that Tsuda sought information to identify the person behind the account in June 2025. An August disclosure order did not lead to an identification because the relevant IP-address logs had expired, according to his lawyer. Tsuda then sought deletion outside court in September and sued TikTok’s operator in November after the platform did not comply, the outlet reported.

While the suit was pending, the poster deleted the account around May 2026, according to Bengo4. By the time of the September ruling, the court found there was no remaining obligation to remove the videos and dismissed Tsuda’s request. His lawyer told Bengo4 that deletion of the whole account had achieved the client’s original objective. The outlet reported that Tsuda had not sought damages and did not plan to appeal; that account of his plans does not itself confirm the case’s final procedural status.

The wider legal context for AI voice imitation

The case followed a Japanese Ministry of Justice study of unauthorised use of images and voices. In August 2026, the ministry published a report from a five-session group examining publicity rights, damages, injunctions and other questions under existing law. Bengo4 reported that the group considered voices potentially within publicity-right protection. The ministry presented its work as legal analysis based on current law and case law, rather than a new statute.

Tsuda’s lawyer also described a practical difficulty for voice cases: proving that one recording is sufficiently similar to another in a court process built around written records. Bengo4 reported that Tsuda’s side submitted comparisons made with multiple deep-learning models, along with the code used for the analysis. The lawyer said the ruling could help frame arguments in later disputes. Whether another court reaches the same result would depend on the facts and claims before it.