The Tokyo District Court dismissed Tsuda’s takedown demand against TikTok but held, for the first time in Japan, that a person’s voice falls under publicity rights.
Kenjiro Tsuda lost his case against TikTok on Wednesday. Performers across Japan may still count it as a win.
The Tokyo District Court on Sept. 30 dismissed the voice actor’s demand that the platform remove videos he says used an AI clone of his voice, because the videos had already been deleted. But in the same ruling, Presiding Judge Aya Takahashi found that a person’s voice is covered by publicity rights, the protection Japanese law has until now applied mainly to names and likenesses. No Japanese court had said that before.
Tsuda, 55, is best known outside Japan as the voice of Kento Nanami in “Jujutsu Kaisen” and for his work on “Yu-Gi-Oh!” He sued in November 2025 over an anonymous TikTok account that narrated videos about urban legends and conspiracy theories in a deep baritone he said could only be his. According to Kyodo News, the account posted 188 videos between July 2024 and September 2025.
TikTok argued that the narration was a generic male voice and that any resemblance to Tsuda was subjective. Court records cited by AFP show it also questioned whether he was famous enough nationally for Japan’s unfair competition law to apply. The uploader reportedly said the AI had been trained on a friend’s voice. After the ruling, TikTok said it respected the court’s judgment and was reviewing the details.
Takahashi set out when an imitation crosses the line: when a voice has commercial appeal and is used specifically to exploit it. She did not rule on whether Tsuda’s own rights had been violated.
The decision comes a month after a Justice Ministry expert panel issued non-binding guidelines saying voices deserve the same protection as images. It also gives momentum to “No More,” a campaign by Japanese voice actors, backed by the Japan Actors Union, against unauthorized AI mimicry.
For the music business, the reasoning carries over directly. For many artists, their voice is the most valuable thing they own, and AI covers and cloned vocals now circulate on every major platform. Japan now has a court on record saying that a voice belongs to the person it came from. Labels and artists elsewhere will be watching what the next case does with that.
Sources: The Japan Times · France 24 / AFP · Digital Music News · Anadolu / Kyodo
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