Customer Harassment in Japan: What It Is, the 2026 Law, and What Employers Must Do

Customer harassment (in Japanese, kasuhara, short for kasutamā harasumento) is abusive conduct by customers, clients or other outside parties that goes beyond what is socially acceptable and harms an employee’s working environment. Since 1 October 2026, every employer in Japan, regardless of size, has been legally required to take preventive measures against it under the amended Labor Policy Comprehensive Promotion Act. The law has no criminal penalty for failing to act, but the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (MHLW) can give advice, guidance and recommendations, and can publicly name an employer that ignores a recommendation.

What is customer harassment in Japan?

The amended Act and the MHLW guideline define workplace customer harassment as conduct that meets all three of the following conditions:

Three points are often misunderstood:

• Not every complaint is harassment. The guideline says plainly that a complaint is not customer harassment just because it is a complaint. A justified complaint made in a reasonable way is ordinary customer feedback.
• Disability-related requests are not harassment. Asking not to be treated unfairly because of a disability, or asking for social barriers to be removed, is not customer harassment in itself. Employers must keep their obligations under the Act on the Elimination of Discrimination against Persons with Disabilities in mind.
• Phone, email and social media count. Conduct over the phone or online is included, not only face-to-face incidents.
• Consumers’ rights still apply. The MHLW materials tell employers to keep consumers’ rights in mind when they design measures, and Tokyo’s ordinance (Article 5) says it must be applied without unreasonably infringing customers’ rights. The aim is to stop abuse, not to discourage legitimate complaints.

Whether conduct crosses the line is judged on the whole picture: the purpose of the conduct, how the situation developed (including whether the employee made a mistake), the industry and type of work, how often and how long the conduct continued, the employee’s situation, and the relationship between the two sides. Either the content of a demand or the manner in which it is made can be enough on its own.

Why Japan made customer harassment measures mandatory

Japan’s service culture has long put the customer first, and abuse of front-line staff became a recognised workplace problem. In the MHLW’s workplace harassment survey (companies surveyed in December 2023, workers in January 2024), 27.9% of companies said employees had consulted them about seriously disruptive conduct by customers in the previous three years, and 10.8% of workers said they had experienced it at their workplace at least once in that period.

The MHLW points to several causes behind customer harassment: problems with products, services or customer handling, and poor communication with customers. It also suggests reviewing workplace practices that put customers first to an excessive degree. That is why the guideline pairs firm limits on abuse with training on products, services and complaint handling.

Typical examples of customer harassment

The MHLW guideline groups typical examples into two kinds:

To show how these categories look in day-to-day work, here are short illustrative scenarios. They were written for training purposes and are not reports of real incidents.

• Retail: A customer returns a used item outside the return period, is politely refused, and then comes back every day for a week demanding a full refund and the store manager’s home phone number.
• Restaurant: A diner shouts at a part-time server over a short wait, films her on a phone and threatens to post the video with her name online.
• Hotel: A guest demands a free upgrade and several nights’ refund for a minor issue that has already been fixed, and refuses to leave the front desk for over an hour.
• Healthcare: A patient’s relative repeatedly calls the ward at night, insulting the nurses and demanding that a specific nurse be fired.
• Call centre: A caller keeps an operator on the line for two hours, repeating the same demand and calling the operator “useless”.

What the 2026 law requires employers to do

Article 33 of the amended Act obliges employers to set up a system for consultations and to take the other employment-management measures needed so that customer harassment does not harm their employees’ working environment. It also prohibits dismissing or otherwise disadvantaging an employee for asking for help or for giving facts during an investigation. The MHLW guideline turns this into ten mandatory measures under five headings:

A few details from the MHLW guideline and its interpretation Q&A (revised 30 September 2026) matter in practice:

• Telling customers is optional but useful. The policy must be communicated to workers; communicating it to customers is not required, but the guideline notes that doing so can help prevent harm. Many companies now publish a “basic policy on customer harassment” on their websites.
• Everyone must be told, including staff in departments that never deal with customers, because “customers, etc.” also covers business partners and facility users.
• The law gives employers no new powers over customers. It obliges employers to take measures; it does not create a new legal right to act against a customer. The guideline gives examples of what an employer can decide in advance, such as asking a customer to leave or ending a call after a set time when the same demand keeps being repeated after a full explanation, issuing a written warning, or banning entry for especially serious cases.
• The consultation desk (measures 3 and 4) does not have to be a new department. The guideline accepts naming specific people to handle consultations, setting up a consultation procedure, or outsourcing the desk to an outside organisation, and it notes that the desk can be combined with the existing desk for other workplace harassment (power harassment, sexual harassment). Supervisors can also be designated as contacts. The desk should respond broadly: not only when harassment has happened, but also when it may happen or when it is unclear whether something counts as customer harassment.
• Looking after the affected worker (measure 6) means concrete steps, not just sympathy. The guideline’s examples include a supervisor taking over the response on the worker’s behalf, changing the staff member who deals with that customer or having several people deal with them together, reassigning the worker to keep them apart from the person responsible, and offering consultation on mental-health problems through a supervisor or in-house occupational health staff. Conduct that may amount to a crime, such as assault, injury or threats, should be reported to the police, and where legal steps are needed the guideline suggests working with the legal department and consulting a lawyer.
• Deterrence for especially serious cases (measure 8). The employer must decide in advance how it will deal with especially malicious conduct, such as repeated excessive demands, tell workers, and be able to carry it out. The guideline’s examples are: reporting possible crimes such as assault, injury or threats to the police; sending the person a written warning; refusing to sell goods or provide services to them, within the limits of the law; banning them from shops and facilities; and applying to court for a provisional injunction under the Civil Provisional Remedies Act. It adds that the right response differs by industry, for example where sector laws restrict refusing service.
• Work rules (measure 10). A common way to meet the non-retaliation measure is to write into the work rules (shūgyō kisoku) or other conduct rules that no worker will be dismissed or otherwise disadvantaged for seeking help or cooperating with an investigation, and to make this known to all workers.
• Recording conversations is a common measure, but if recordings contain personal information, the Act on the Protection of Personal Information requires the purpose of use (including using recordings to check facts in harassment cases) to be specified and notified or published, for example in a privacy policy linked from the homepage.
• Single-staff shops still need a defined response, such as ending the conversation after a set time, calling the police for possible crimes, and contacting head office.

Employers also have duties to make efforts (not mandatory) to raise workers’ understanding, provide training so their own staff do not harass other companies’ employees, and cooperate when another employer asks for help in investigating facts. The Act also asks customers themselves to take care that their behaviour does not harm workers’ working environment.

What happens if an employer does nothing?

Under Article 42, the Minister of Health, Labour and Welfare can give advice, guidance or recommendations, and can publish the name of an employer that breaches Article 33(1) or (2) and does not follow a recommendation. Under Article 45 the ministry can request reports, and Article 51 sets a non-penal administrative fine (karyō) of up to ¥200,000 for failing to report or reporting falsely. Workers can also ask the prefectural labour bureau to help resolve a dispute with their employer, including through mediation.

National law vs. Tokyo, Mie and other prefectures

Several prefectures passed their own ordinances before the national law took effect. The ordinances apply to everyone in the prefecture, not only employers, and they sit alongside the national obligations.

In Mie, “specified customer harassment” covers repeated or prolonged demands, without good reason, for money or goods, apologies or meetings, or for things that are extremely hard to handle after the business has refused; making such demands by shouting or by stating false facts; and repeated or prolonged obscene behaviour or stalking. A business must first ask the customer to stop, and can then ask the governor to act if the conduct continues. The ordinance’s English name above is a descriptive translation; the prefecture publishes it in Japanese only.

Tokyo also runs an incentive for small and medium-sized businesses in Tokyo (up to 300 regular employees) that prepare a customer harassment manual and take one further step: (a) recording equipment, (b) AI-based systems, or (c) outside experts. The amount is a flat ¥400,000, and the pre-entry period for the second (and final) round of fiscal 2026 runs from 23 October to 6 November 2026. Pre-entry does not guarantee payment: applications are screened, and the application stage is split into several rounds by lottery. Other requirements apply (for example, at least one year of business in Tokyo and a basic policy communicated inside and outside the company), so check the foundation’s official guidelines. A Japanese-language guide to the Tokyo incentive explains the steps in detail.

Pitfalls for foreign companies operating in Japan

Japanese subsidiaries and branches of foreign companies are employers under the Act, so the same ten measures apply. These are the gaps that tend to appear when policies are written abroad:

• A global anti-harassment policy usually covers employees, not customers. Most group policies deal with harassment between colleagues. Japan’s rule requires a policy that specifically covers conduct by customers and business partners, plus a decided response.
• The response must work locally, in Japanese. Front-line staff need to know, in Japanese, who to call on the spot and when to end a conversation. A procedure that says “escalate to the regional HR business partner” in English does not help a store clerk at 9 p.m.
• Reporting to an English-speaking head office. The guideline’s own example includes sharing information with head office and asking for instructions. Decide who translates incident reports, what minimum facts are recorded (date, place, what was said or done, who responded, recordings), and who in Japan can decide quickly without waiting for another time zone.
• The consultation desk must be reachable by everyone. Including part-time, contract and dispatched staff in practice, and with privacy protection that local staff trust.
• Recording and privacy. If you record calls or install cameras, update the Japanese privacy policy to state that recordings may be used to check facts in harassment cases.
• Your own staff as harassers. The law also asks employers to make sure their employees do not harass staff at suppliers and clients. Sales teams that pressure Japanese vendors are part of the picture.
• Local ordinances add obligations. Mie’s ordinance (from April 2027) calls on businesses to adopt and publish a basic policy, so plan for a Japanese-language public statement, not only an internal one.

Training staff to handle customer harassment

The guideline treats training as part of the picture in several places: workers must be told what customer harassment is and what the decided response is; consultation-desk staff must be able to respond properly; and employers should try to run training that improves staff members’ understanding of products and services and their ability to deal with customers. A workable programme usually covers:

1. Everyone: the company policy, the definition and three conditions, and where to get help.
2. Front-line staff: telling a complaint apart from harassment, the decided steps (call a supervisor, do not handle it alone, end the call after a set time, call the police for crimes), and how to record facts.
3. Supervisors and consultation-desk staff: interviewing, fact-finding, care for the affected worker, and preventing recurrence.
4. Practice under pressure: role-play, because reading a manual does not prepare someone for being shouted at.

Representative example: a repeated refund demand

A practice script for the retail scenario above. Front-line staff in Japan will usually use Japanese, but English-speaking managers often need to understand and review the flow.

Crystal Method offers an AI role-play in which an AI avatar plays the customer and the trainee practises these steps by voice. The demo at meeting.deepai.jp/kasuhara is Japanese-language only (screens, scenario and voice). The video below shows the demo in Japanese; the customer’s voice is synthetic. For Tokyo’s incentive, the Tokyo Shigoto Foundation has confirmed to Crystal Method that this AI training falls under option (b), AI-based systems; this does not mean any application will be approved.

Checklist: are your measures in place?

• A written policy that covers harassment by customers and business partners, communicated to all workers.
• A decided response for front-line staff (supervisor, not alone, time limit, police, head office), communicated to all workers.
• A consultation desk, with trained staff and privacy protection.
• A procedure for fact-finding, care for the affected worker, and preventing recurrence.
• A pre-decided policy for especially serious cases (warnings, entry bans), with someone authorised to carry it out.
• A clear rule that no one is disadvantaged for seeking help or cooperating.
• If you record: a privacy policy stating the purpose of use.
• Prefectural extras: a customer-harassment manual in Tokyo (effort duty) and a published basic policy in Mie (from April 2027).

FAQ

What counts as harassment from a customer in Japan?

Conduct by a customer or other outside party that goes beyond what is socially acceptable, in its content or its manner, and harms the employee’s working environment. Examples include violence, threats, insults, forcing staff to kneel, refusing to leave, persistent repeated demands, and demands far beyond the contract or impossible to meet. Ordinary complaints are not harassment.

Is customer harassment illegal in Japan?

The national law places duties on employers, not penalties on customers. Customers are asked to make efforts not to harm workers’ environments. Some conduct can be a crime under the Penal Code, such as assault, intimidation or insult. Mie Prefecture’s ordinance (from April 2027) adds a fine for customers who break a governor’s stop order.

When did the customer harassment law take effect?

The employer obligations took effect on 1 October 2026. The MHLW guideline was issued on 26 February 2026. Tokyo’s ordinance has applied since 1 April 2025.

Does the law apply to small businesses and foreign companies?

Yes. The obligation applies to every employer, with no size threshold, including the Japanese subsidiaries and branches of foreign companies.

What is the penalty for an employer that takes no measures?

There is no criminal penalty. Labour authorities can give advice, guidance and recommendations, and can publicly name an employer that ignores a recommendation. Failing to report, or reporting falsely, when the ministry requests a report can lead to a non-penal fine of up to ¥200,000.

What does kasuhara mean?

Kasuhara is the Japanese abbreviation of kasutamā harasumento, “customer harassment”, in the same way that pawahara means power harassment.

Primary sources

• MHLW: Customer harassment measures page (Japanese)
• MHLW: Guideline (MHLW Notice No. 51 of 2026) and leaflet on the 1 October 2026 obligations (Japanese)
• MHLW: Customer harassment manual for companies (Japanese, revised September 2026; includes the survey figures)
• MHLW: Interpretation Q&A on harassment prevention measures (Japanese, revised 30 September 2026)
• e-Gov: Labor Policy Comprehensive Promotion Act, Articles 33, 34, 42, 45 and 51 (Japanese)
• Tokyo Metropolitan Government: Tokyo Customer Harassment Prevention Ordinance (Japanese and English) and guide for foreign nationals
• Mie Prefecture: Customer Harassment Prevention Ordinance and overview (Japanese)
• Gunma Prefecture: announcement; Hokkaido: customer harassment site (Japanese)
• Tokyo Shigoto Foundation: customer harassment prevention incentive (Japanese)

For a more detailed Japanese-language guide to the employer obligations, see カスハラ対策の義務化 (in Japanese).