Age rating for games in Japan

Japan has no state classification for games. The marks come from an independent non-profit set up by the industry in 2002 and recognised as such by the Tokyo authorities in 2003, and submitting to it is voluntary. Everything the mark then triggers is not, and that second half is what a release plan has to carry.

Why voluntary is not optional

The rating body says plainly that it examines content and has nothing to do with how games are sold. The selling rules come from elsewhere. The industry association, working with distribution, treats the adults band as barred to under-eighteens; makers print that restriction on the box; shops shelve those titles apart and check age at the till. Local authorities went further and wrote the same results into their youth ordinances. The system is voluntary at the door and binding once you are inside.

The five marks

All ages, then twelve, fifteen, seventeen, and a mark for adults only. The mark is printed at the lower left of the package front and repeated as a coloured band on the spine, and icons on the back say which expressions produced it. Two further marks sit outside the scale: one for educational and database software, which gets no age band, and one confirming that a pre-release demo holds nothing from the prohibited list.

What is examined and what is not

Inside the scope

Consumer software sold in Japan for listed consoles, personal computers, smartphones, headsets and cloud services, including hidden commands, and the package with what ships in it.

Outside the scope

Arcade software, the changeable parts of an online game such as boards written by players, and promotional material: leaflets, magazine advertising and commercials.

How the band is decided

Twenty-seven expression items in four families — sexual, violent, antisocial, and language and ideas. Each has a ceiling, and the examiners weigh not only what appears but how: directly or by implication, approvingly or not, as the subject or as background. Content above a ceiling is prohibited expression, and a game holding it receives no rating and a written explanation. Examiners are recruited from the public across four decades of age, trained, bound to confidentiality, and deliberately not drawn from the games industry.

For the questionnaire that answers several markets at once, see age rating evaluation. For what a paid random mechanic has to disclose, see loot box review. Our wider release work lives in publishing and gamedev.

What the body does not publish is a price list or a turnaround. Its public materials carry the code, the marks and the examiner rules, and nothing on what a submission costs or how long it takes; its own activity report shows only that the charge differs for members and non-members. Both come back with the answer to a request for materials, and we ask for them at the start rather than quote a figure that does not exist.

Sources: the ethics code in its revision of 23 May 2025, in force from 24 May — scope (art. 2), the two tracks (art. 3), prohibited expression and no rating (art. 4, 7, table 3), the duty to print the mark (art. 6), the twenty-seven items (table 2); marks, icons and examiner rules — the rating body; retail restriction from 31 May 2006 — Tokyo government.