A Tokyo court says your voice belongs to you. The actor who won still didn't get the videos taken down.

Kenjiro Tsuda’s own lawyer summed the verdict up better than any headline did. The ruling, Takashi Hirano told reporters, “ended up making both sides look victorious.”

That’s an odd thing to say after a landmark win. But it’s accurate, and it’s why this case is worth more than a quick “actor beats TikTok” item. I went through the Kyodo, AFP and Guardian reports, and a few questions kept coming up.

What did the court actually decide?

On September 30, the Tokyo District Court ruled that a person’s voice is protected under publicity rights, the same doctrine Japan already applies to a face or a name. Presiding judge Aya Takahashi said the unauthorized use of a performer’s voice “can be considered an infringement on publicity rights,” and described a voice as “as symbolic of one’s personality as portraits are.”

Kyodo says it’s the first ruling of its kind in the country. Japan doesn’t have a statute that spells out voice rights, so a court had to say it.

There’s a limit built in, though. The protection applies, Takahashi said, when “the purpose of using that voice is exclusively to take advantage of its commercial appeal.” Parody, a friend’s impression, a voice that just happens to sound similar: none of that was ruled on here.

Who is Tsuda, and what was he suing over?

Tsuda is 55 and very well known in anime. He voices Kento Nanami in Jujutsu Kaisen and Seto Kaiba in Yu-Gi-Oh!, and his deep baritone is a big part of why people recognize him.

According to his complaint, an anonymous TikTok account posted 188 videos between July 2024 and September 2025 about urban legends, the occult and conspiracy theories. The narration was an AI voice his side called “deep” and “lustrous,” and the profile picture resembled Nanami. The account reached more than 200,000 followers. His lawyers argued it only took off because “its dubious, sordid content was narrated by the attractive voice of a popular actor.”

He sued TikTok’s operator in November 2025, asking it to remove the videos.

So why weren’t the videos taken down?

Because they were already gone. The poster deleted the account, and the court said TikTok was “no longer obliged to delete” anything. That’s the half of the ruling Tsuda lost.

The reports don’t agree on when the account disappeared. Kyodo, via Nikkei Asia, says it was deleted by June 29. AFP says the user took the videos down “several months after the lawsuit began.” The Guardian says “soon after” the suit was filed. June is about seven months after a November filing, so I’d go with Kyodo’s date, since it’s the most specific.

The money figure is messy too. Nikkei puts the poster’s alleged income at 500,000 to 750,000 yen a month, roughly $3,200 to $4,800. The Guardian’s version reads “¥500,000 (£2,395) and ¥75,000,” which looks like a dropped zero.

What did TikTok and the poster say?

TikTok argued the narration was a “generic male voice” and that any resemblance to Tsuda was subjective. The poster said the AI had been trained on a friend’s voice. After the verdict, TikTok said it would “respect the court’s judgment” while it studies the details, and would keep working on “the balance between technology development and rights protection.”

As far as I can tell from the reports, the court didn’t publicly settle whether this particular voice was a clone of Tsuda’s. It settled that a voice can be protected. Those are different findings, and the second is the one that’ll get cited.

Does any of this matter outside Japan?

Legally, no. A Tokyo district court doesn’t bind anyone in the US.

In practice, I think it does. Tennessee added “voice” to its likeness law with the ELVIS Act in March 2024, and Japan’s Justice Ministry has published guidance saying that monetizing videos with a voice similar to a real person’s may violate their rights. Now a court has said the same thing in a real case, against one of the biggest platforms there is. Washington’s own answer this week was a voluntary AI accord with no enforcement behind it, which says nothing about voices at all.

My take

I’m glad the principle landed where it did. Voice actors in Japan have been campaigning under the name “No More” since 2024, and actor Bin Shimada told AFP the industry “can be crushed” if a loss here opened the door to unlimited cloning. That fear now has a court ruling on its side.

What bothers me is the remedy. The system that’s supposed to protect Tsuda took ten months to reach a verdict, and by then the account had made whatever it made and vanished. A cloner who deletes before the judge rules walks away, and the right exists mostly on paper until someone wins damages. TikTok says it’s still weighing its next step, so an appeal is possible. That’s the date I’d watch.

Sources

1. The Guardian: AI tool that copied actor’s ‘lustrous’ voice violated his rights, Tokyo court rules, September 30, 2026
2. Nikkei Asia (Kyodo): Japan court rules voice is protected as publicity right in AI cloning case, September 30, 2026
3. The Standard (AFP): Japan court rules human voice is protected in TikTok AI case, September 30, 2026
4. NHK World: Japanese voice actor files lawsuit over AI-generated narrations, May 24, 2026
5. Office of the Governor of Tennessee: Gov. Lee signs ELVIS Act into law, March 21, 2024