JAPAN Trends and Developments Contributed by: Norihiro Sekiguchi, Daisuke Mure, Yuki Kuroda and Ryosuke Sogo, Oh-Ebashi LPC & Partners
for safety. On 11 March 2025, a bill requiring employers to take measures against customer harassment was submitted to the Diet and has been enacted and promulgated on 11 June 2025. Discussion of the definition and scope of employees The Freelance Protection Act (officially named the “Act concerning the Proper Treatment of Transactions with Specified Fiduciary Business Operators”) went into effect in November 2024, and freelancers who are eligible for protection under the Act are defined as ”business operators who are the counterparty of outsourcing and do not use employees”. In practice, however, the boundary between freelancers and employees, who are protected by labour laws, is ambigu - ous. Moreover, in recent years, platform workers have been expanding just like any other country, and there is growing momentum that the defini - tion, scope and framework for what constitutes an “employee” subject to labour laws should be reviewed. In the Uber Japan case (Tokyo Metropolitan Labour Relations Commission 4 October 2022 ordered), regarding the relation - ship between Uber and its platform workers (delivery partners), the delivery partners were considered to be employees under the Labour Union Act, and Uber has filed an appeal, which is currently being heard by the Central Labour Relations Commission. Within MHLW, a study group of scholars and others has been estab - lished to intensively discuss this point. Personal Information Protection Summary of Japan’s APPI amendment proposals Japan’s Personal Information Protection Com - mission (PPC) is reviewing the Act on the Protec - tion of Personal Information (APPI), following a mandated three-year review cycle. Based on the
Interim Report (June 2024), Study Group Report (December 2024), and “Next Steps” document (January 2025), significant amendments are being considered. In this section, we introduce several important topics discussed in the docu - ments. While specific amendments may be published as early as autumn 2025, implementation time - lines and topics remain uncertain. Therefore, it is uncertain whether all topics in this section will be implemented. Administrative monetary penalty system While specific amendments may be published as early as autumn 2025, implementation time - lines remain uncertain. The current APPI enforcement includes PPC measures (reports, inspections, guidance, advice, recommendations and orders) and criminal penalties (fines up to JPY1 million and imprisonment up to one year). Despite hundreds of guidance cases annually and several dozen being publicly disclosed, no orders have been issued against normal businesses. Criminal con - victions have occurred mainly for employees misappropriating personal data, but no penalties have been imposed on businesses themselves. This situation has raised concerns about the APPI’s deterrent effect. The proposed administrative monetary penalty system targets two violation categories. • Violations likely to lead to serious rights infringement, such as: (a) processing personal data beyond speci - fied purposes (Article 18); (b) using personal data to encourage illegal conduct (Article 19); (c) collecting personal data through decep -
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