JAPAN Trends and Developments Contributed by: Norihiro Sekiguchi, Daisuke Mure, Yuki Kuroda and Ryosuke Sogo, Oh-Ebashi LPC & Partners
project implementation plans and monitoring, imposes safety regulations, and stipulates strict liability (liability without fault) on the part of stor - age operators for damages. Labour and Employment Support for balancing work with childcare and nursing care Concerns about the declining labour force are growing each year due to the falling birthrate and ageing population, as well as the changing demographics of society. Meanwhile, women are increasingly entering the workplace. Under this societal background, the Child Care and Family Care Leave Act has been revised in two stages, with the first one taking effect in April 2025 and the second in October 2025, to strengthen sup - port for balancing work and family life. The spe - cific revisions include: • expansion of the scope of child nursing care leave and the reasons for taking such leave (previously, the scope of leave was limited to children of pre-elementary school age, but now it is extended to the end of the third grade of elementary school, and the reasons for taking leave, which were limited to caring for a child’s illness, are expanded to include participation in the child’s school events and class closures due to infectious diseases, etc); • the scope of shortened working hours and restrictions on overtime work will be expanded (previously, this was limited to cases where a worker is raising a child under three years of age, but it will be expanded to include workers raising a child before elemen - tary school age); • telework is added to the list of desirable measures that employers are obligated to take for workers raising children under three years old or caring for family members; and
• introducing the employer’s obligation to listen and give consideration to the individual wishes of workers regarding balancing work and childcare at the time of pregnancy and childbirth notification. In addition, for the purpose of encouraging male employees to take childcare leave, the obligation to publicise the rate of male employees taking childcare leave has been expanded to employ - ers with 300 or more employees, up from the previous requirement of 1,000 or more. Customer harassment legislation Japan is famous for its culture of hospitality and the tourism industry is thriving. The num - ber of foreign visitors to Japan in April 2025 was 3,908,900, up 28.5% from the same month last year, setting a new record for a single month. The culture of demanding excessive service (“a smile is free” on the menus of McDonald’s is symbolic of this) has been contributing to customer har - assment and is becoming a social problem. In February 2022, the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (MHLW) published a manual for companies on measures against customer harassment, which led to discussions, and on 4 October 2024, the Tokyo Metropolitan Gov - ernment enacted a customer harassment pre - vention ordinance, which went into effect on 1 April 2025. The ordinance defines customer harassment as “significant disruptive behavior by a customer, etc. toward a worker in connec - tion with his/her work that is detrimental to the working environment”. Employers are obligated to establish the necessary systems to prevent customer harassment, provide appropriate con - sideration to workers who have suffered it, and prepare guidelines to prevent customer harass - ment, etc. If such duty is not properly fulfilled, it is considered a violation of the duty of care
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