Overview of Customer Harassment and the Background to Its Rise 

The term “customer harassment” (kasutamā harasumento in Japanese, commonly abbreviated as kasuhara) is widely used in Japan to refer to situations in which customers, business counterparts, facility users, or similar parties engage in significantly disruptive behavior or make unreasonable demands toward employees. The concept came into widespread use in the latter half of the 2010s and has in recent years been recognized as a significant policy issue in the field of labor relations. 

 

According to a 2023 survey conducted by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, 27.9% of companies reported having received complaints related to customer harassment over the preceding three years, representing an increase of 8.4 percentage points compared to 2020. A 2024 survey by Persol Research and Consulting similarly found that 35.5% of respondents had personally experienced customer harassment, while 32.6% reported that incidents of customer harassment in their workplace had increased over the past three years. 

 

Multiple factors have been identified as contributing to the rise of customer harassment in Japan. These include the longstanding cultural values of “customer-first” and “the customer is god,” which have been taken to extremes as consumer rights awareness has grown, as well as the structural dynamic in which exceptionally high service standards have become the norm, raising customer expectations to a level where unmet expectations readily give rise to dissatisfaction. 

 

Legislative Background 

In response to these developments, the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare published the “Customer Harassment Countermeasures Manual for Businesses” in 2022, setting out typical examples of customer harassment and guidance on how companies should respond. In addition, a number of local governments, including Tokyo and Hokkaido, have enacted and brought into force ordinances aimed at preventing customer harassment, requiring businesses to establish appropriate frameworks. Prior to the recent legislative changes, however, no clear legal regulation of customer harassment had existed at the national statutory level. 

 

Against this backdrop, amendments to the Act for the Promotion of Comprehensive Measures for Worker Dispatching Businesses and Others (and related legislation; collectively referred to hereinafter as the “Amendments”) were enacted in June 2025 and will come into effect on October 1, 2026. Through the Amendments, obligations relating to customer harassment prevention have been formally incorporated into the existing framework for workplace harassment prevention. 

 

Contents of the Amendments 

1. Definition of Customer Harassment

Under the Amendments, customer harassment is characterized as conduct that satisfies all three of the following requirements: 

(1) It constitutes speech or conduct by a customer or equivalent party occurring in the workplace; 

(2) Having regard to the nature of the duties performed by the employees concerned and other relevant circumstances, such speech or conduct exceeds the scope of what is socially acceptable; and 

(3) It causes harm to the working environment of the employees concerned. 

Typical examples include: unreasonable demands made without legitimate justification; improper claims for damages; physical or psychological attacks; threatening, persistent, or repeated conduct; and coercive behavior such as refusing to leave or confining an individual. 

 

2. Obligations of Employers

According to materials published by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, the measures that employers are required to implement following the Amendments can be summarized under five main headings: 

(1) Clarification, dissemination, and promotion of the employer’s policy: Employers must clearly articulate a policy of responding to customer harassment with a firm stance and protecting their employees, and must communicate to all employees both the nature of customer harassment and the procedures that have been established for addressing it. 

(2) Establishment of a consultation framework: Employers must designate a consultation point of contact in advance and inform employees accordingly, while also ensuring that those responsible for the consultation function are equipped to respond appropriately. 

(3) Prompt and appropriate post-incident response: When an incident of customer harassment occurs, employers must promptly verify the facts, take appropriate measures to support affected employees, and implement measures to prevent recurrence. 

(4) Deterrence measures necessary to ensure the effectiveness of the response: Employers must establish in advance a policy for dealing with particularly serious cases of customer harassment and communicate it to employees, while also putting in place systems capable of implementing that policy in practice. 

(5) Accompanying measures: Employers must take measures to protect the privacy of those who make complaints; they must also establish and communicate a rule prohibiting any disadvantageous treatment of employees on the grounds that they have made a complaint. 

In addition, with a view to addressing customer harassment in business-to-business (BtoB) transactions, the Amendments introduce a best-efforts obligation to cooperate when another employer requests assistance in this regard, and it is considered inappropriate to subject the requesting party to any disadvantageous treatment — such as termination of contract — on account of having made such a request. 

 

3. Penalties

No direct criminal penalties have been established for failure to comply with the above obligations. However, where a violation occurs and the employer fails to follow a recommendation issued by the Minister of Health, Labour and Welfare, the employer’s name may be made public. For businesses, therefore, this matter carries significance not only from a compliance standpoint but also in terms of reputational risk. 

 

Conclusion 

Challenges in managing customer interactions are by no means unique to Japan and are commonly encountered across many jurisdictions, including Taiwan. Japan’s recent legislative measures can be viewed as a reference example of how such challenges may be addressed through formal legal frameworks. Ahead of the Amendments taking effect on October 1, 2026, companies with operations in Japan will need not only to ensure compliance with the revised legislation but also to review and develop their internal frameworks in light of their actual customer-facing practices. Customer harassment prevention is an issue of considerable importance that extends well beyond mere regulatory compliance — it is also integral to protecting employees, improving staff retention, and building trust in the company as an organization. 

 

(References) 

Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, “Survey on the Actual Situation of Workplace Harassment” (accessed May 28, 2026, https://www.mhlw.go.jp/stf/seisakunitsuite/bunya/0000165756.html) 

Persol Research and Consulting, “Quantitative Survey on Customer Harassment” (accessed May 28, 2026, https://rc.persol-group.co.jp/thinktank/data/customer-harassment/) 

Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, “Partial Amendments to the Act for the Promotion of Comprehensive Labour Policy and Related Legislation (2025)” (accessed May 28, 2026, https://www.mhlw.go.jp/stf/seisakunitsuite/bunya/koyou_roudou/koyoukintou/zaitaku/index_00003.html)