Japan
AI behavior law: bot and agent disclosure, crawler and training-data rules, automated-agent transactions, and algorithmic decision-making.
Summary
Japan is the most permissive major jurisdiction for commercial TDM and AI training. Copyright Act Art. 30-4 (added 2018) permits data extraction and analysis for information analysis purposes regardless of whether the work is protected and regardless of commercial purpose, subject only to a 'unreasonably prejudice' proviso. The Agency for Cultural Affairs' May 2024 guidance clarifies that AI training is covered and that respecting robots.txt is good practice — but the statutory right cannot be contracted away or opted out of. The Unauthorized Computer Access Act (Act 128/1999) requires bypassing an 'access control function' to trigger liability; public pages have no such function and are clearly outside scope. Japan has no sui generis database right (only compilation copyright, Art. 12-2). APPI covers personal data with purpose-specification requirements.
Automated-access legality
Carried forward from the crawler-law index. Governs whether automated clients may access public websites in this jurisdiction.
| Dimension | Value |
|---|---|
| Authorization test | security mechanism bypass |
| Public-page carve-out | yes |
| Terms-of-service browsewrap enforceable | notice dependent |
| Terms-of-service clickwrap enforceable | yes |
| Copyright exception model | tdm broad |
| Text and data mining — commercial status | permitted |
| Text and data mining — opt-out mechanism | na |
| robots.txt legal weight | non binding notice |
| AI training-specific law | guidance |
| Privacy regime | APPI |
| Trespass to chattels | not recognized |
Last reviewed: 2026-05-21. Confidence: high. Not legal advice.