Recording and consent
Recording a session in Japan.
Japanese law does not prohibit a participant from recording their own conversation, and the Act on the Protection of Personal Information governs what follows. That is the Act on the Protection of Personal Information, and the sentence a practitioner says out loud before recording is the same one in every country on this site.
This is a plain summary, not legal advice. Laws change. If the answer matters to your business, check with a lawyer in your own country.
01The sentence
Say this, out loud, before anything else is said.
I am going to record this session so I can write you a proper report afterwards. Is that all right with you?
It is the same sentence everywhere, because a specific disclosure followed by a direct question is what recording guidance favours over a vague notice, and because everybody in the session agreeing is safe in every jurisdiction on this site. What changes by place is who has to answer it.
02Who has to agree
In Japan the rule is one party.
The statute the Act on the Protection of Personal Information
There is no Japanese statute making it an offence for a person in a conversation to record it, and Japanese courts have admitted such recordings in evidence for decades. The Wiretapping Act is directed at interception by investigators. What binds a practitioner is the Act on the Protection of Personal Information, which requires the purpose of use to be specified and notified or publicly announced, and forbids use beyond that purpose without fresh consent.
Specify the purpose and say it. The Japanese obligation is about the purpose of use rather than about the act of recording, so the sentence that names why you are recording is doing the statutory work.
03A client under 18
What changes when the person in the session is a child.
The Personal Information Protection Commission's guidance is that consent from a person under about 15 should generally be obtained from a guardian, and Japanese practice around education is conservative. Ask the guardian, in writing, and give the young person their own explanation. Where a report will be sent to a parent, say so when you ask rather than after the first one arrives.
04The data law
The recording is personal data under the Act on the Protection of Personal Information.
The Act was amended in 2022 to add a breach reporting duty to the Commission and to the individual, to create a category of personal related information, and to tighten cross border transfers by requiring information about the destination country's regime. A practitioner whose tool processes recordings outside Japan has to be able to say where, which is a question Japanese clients do ask.
05What Slide Practice does
The audio goes as soon as the report is written.
At upload the practitioner confirms on screen that everyone in the session agreed. That confirmation is stored, and the footer of the report prints the date it was given.
Session audio is deleted as soon as the write-up is made. The The text of what was said, written out from the recording. stays with the The written page a client receives after a session: what was covered, what went well, what they agreed to do, and what is next., on the client's own page, and both are kept until the account is closed. Closing an account starts a 30 day window, at the end of which everything is deleted rather than archived.
Nothing is drafted from a recording until the practitioner has confirmed that everyone agreed, and nothing reaches a client until a person has read it. The whole of what is kept, and for how long, is on the security page and in the privacy policy.
06Where this came from
Two primary sources, and neither of them is us.
- Act on the Protection of Personal Information, Japanese Law Translation
- Personal Information Protection Commission, Japan
This is a plain summary, not legal advice. Laws change. If the answer matters to your business, check with a lawyer in your own country.
Nearby
- Recording a session in Hong Kong
- Recording a session in California
- Every jurisdiction, and how permission works in the product
- What the report itself looks like, practice by practice
Bring one recording you already have permission for, and read what comes back. No account and no card.