Overview
- Justice Minister Takashi Yamashita announced on Tuesday that the Ministry of Justice has convened a ten‑member expert research panel chaired by Waseda professor Keizo Yamamoto and that the group will hold its first meeting on Sept. 30.
- The panel will review how courts set慰謝料 — compensation for emotional harm — including whether to factor perpetrators’ profits from SNS posts into damage calculations.
- Members will also seek to clarify legal standards for差し止め, or court-ordered takedowns and injunctions, because current law offers no clear statutory criteria.
- The Supreme Court will join the work as an observer, and the Ministry says the panel will not set specific monetary amounts but may整理論点 and refer proposed Civil Code amendments to the Law Reform Council for formal consideration.
- The effort responds to long‑running criticism that Japan’s tort rules, largely unchanged since 1896, yield low awards for online defamation and that changes could expand victims’ remedies and alter how courts and platforms handle harassment, though outcomes remain undecided at this early stage.