Kenjiro Tsuda case yields landmark ruling on voice rights in Japan

A Japanese court has done something no court there had done before: it ruled that a person’s voice is a protected part of their identity, the same way their name or face is. The Tokyo District Court delivered that verdict on September 30, 2026, in a case brought by voice actor Kenjiro Tsuda against an anonymous TikTok account that had used AI to clone his famously deep, distinctive baritone. Japan now has case law affirming that commercially exploiting someone’s voice without permission, through AI or any other means, can constitute a violation of publicity rights. What happened, and why it went to court Tsuda filed the lawsuit in November 2025 after discovering a TikTok account publishing videos that mimicked his voice using AI generation. The account had posted 188 such videos before the content was removed. By the time the case reached a verdict, those videos were gone, which is why Judge Aya Takahashi ultimately dismissed Tsuda’s specific claims against TikTok. But the court was clear on the underlying question: the voice is legally protectable. The TikTok account in question had amassed around 210,000 followers and was generating estimated monthly revenue of between ¥500,000 a...