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Japan's MIC has revised its Article 26 illegal information guideline to name impostor-type fake investment ads and solicitation of remittance crime as examples of illegal information
A guideline revision is a small instrument. This one changes what a platform can be asked to look at, and it landed the day before seven ministries asked five platforms to look faster.
Bottom line: The guideline itself is interpretive guidance, not a statute, and it does not create a new offence. What it does is add two categories to the worked examples of illegal information under Article 26 of the Information Distribution Platform Act, which is the provision platforms operate their illegal-content handling against.
Who this affects: Content policy counsel and platform regulatory teams at large specified telecommunications service providers in Japan, and the outside lawyers who draft their takedown criteria. Financial crime teams have a secondary interest through the remittance crime limb.
Issue date: 6 August 2026. The consultation on the draft revision ran from Friday 3 July 2026 to Thursday 16 July 2026 and drew 21 submissions. The revised guideline is published, so no further deadline attaches.
What changed: Two categories are newly written in as examples of illegal information: impostor-type fake investment advertising, which may fall within the use of forged private electromagnetic records criminalised by the Penal Code amendment in force since June 2025, and the request for or inducement of so-called remittance crime, made unlawful by the amendment to the Act on Prevention of Transfer of Criminal Proceeds in force from July 2026.
Analysis: MIC did not legislate here, it synchronised. Two criminal law amendments had already changed what is unlawful; until the guideline caught up, a platform receiving a removal request about a deepfake investment ad had no listed example to reason from. The revision closes the gap between what the criminal law says and what the takedown machinery recognises.
Primary sources: MIC release with consultation results and revised guideline (JA) · Revised guideline, annex 2 (JA, PDF) · Comments received and MIC responses, annex 1 (JA, PDF)
- Instrument (EN)
- Guideline concerning Article 26 of the Act on Dealing with Infringement of Rights and Similar Harms Arising from the Distribution of Information by Specified Telecommunications (working translation)
- Authority
- Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, Information Distribution Administration Bureau, Information Distribution Promotion Division, Information Distribution Appropriateness Promotion Office
- Jurisdiction
- Japan
- Status
- Revised and published following public consultation
- Bindingness
- Guidance interpreting a statutory provision. It does not itself create obligations or offences
- Issue date / next deadline
- Published 6 August 2026; consultation closed 16 July 2026; no further deadline
- Consultation record
- 3 July to 16 July 2026; 21 submissions received; comments and MIC responses published as annex 1
- Statutory triggers for the revision
- The Penal Code amendment in force June 2025 and the amendment to the Act on Prevention of Transfer of Criminal Proceeds in force July 2026
- Primary source
- https://www.soumu.go.jp/menu_news/s-news/01ryutsu02_02000485.html
What Article 26 does, and why a list of examples matters
Article 26 sits in the law that Japan rebuilt in 2024 out of the old provider liability limitation framework, and which now governs how large platforms handle information that infringes rights or is unlawful. The guideline attached to it is where the abstract category illegal information gets turned into examples a reviewer can recognise.
That makes the example list operationally load-bearing in a way statutory text is not. A trust and safety reviewer in Tokyo at two in the morning is not reasoning from Article 161 of the Penal Code. They are reasoning from a category in a guideline.
The first addition: impostor-type fake investment advertising
MIC's own framing is precise about the legal route. The conduct is described as impostor-type fake investment advertising that may fall within the use of forged private electromagnetic records and similar documents, an offence made unlawful by the amended Penal Code that took effect in June 2025.
Deepfakes are the mechanism, not the legal category. The offence is about circulating a forged electromagnetic record relating to proof of fact, and a synthetic video of a well-known investor endorsing a scheme is one way of producing one. Written that way, the entry does not depend on the technology used, which is why it will survive the next generation of tooling.
The second addition: soliciting remittance crime
The other new entry covers requests for and inducement of so-called remittance crime, made unlawful by the amendment to the Act on Prevention of Transfer of Criminal Proceeds that took effect in July 2026.
This is the recruitment layer of fraud rather than the pitch layer. It is the post asking for someone's bank account, not the ad promising returns. Adding both in one revision means a platform can treat the funnel as a single content problem instead of two unrelated ones.
A two-week consultation and twenty-one submissions
The window ran from Friday 3 July to Thursday 16 July 2026. That is two weeks, and it drew 21 comments, which MIC published together with its responses.
A short window on a narrow amendment is defensible and common. It is also the reason to read annex 1 and not just the announcement: where a regulator has resisted a proposed change, the response document is usually the only place it explains why.
Read this alongside the joint ministerial request
One day after this guideline was published, seven ministries jointly wrote to Google, LINE Yahoo, Meta, TikTok Japan and X asking for stronger measures against impostor scam ads. That request expressly cross-references this revision, recording that MIC's Article 26 guideline was revised on 6 August 2026 and the Internet Hotline Center's operation guideline on 7 August 2026, in each case to newly specify the conduct as illegal information.
Reading the two together, the sequence is deliberate. Define the category, equip the reporting channel, then ask the platforms to move faster on what arrives. None of the three steps is a binding rule. Together they change what a removal request looks like when it lands.
What we did not verify
I opened the MIC release of 6 August 2026, which states the revision, the consultation dates, the number of submissions and the two statutory amendments behind the change. I also opened the 7 August joint ministerial request, whose footnote independently confirms the 6 August revision date and its subject matter.
I did not open annex 1, the comments and responses, or annex 2, the revised guideline text itself. I did not open the Information Distribution Platform Act, the June 2025 Penal Code amendment, or the July 2026 amendment to the Act on Prevention of Transfer of Criminal Proceeds.
So I will not quote the new wording, state where in the guideline the examples were inserted, characterise what the 21 submissions asked for, or claim any change to platform obligations or timeframes under Article 26. The English name of the Act used here is a working translation, not an official one.
The substantive change is small and the practical one is not. Two new named examples give reviewers and requesters a shared category for deepfake investment ads and for money mule recruitment, which is what a removal request needs in order to be actioned quickly. If you advise a platform operating in Japan, the work is to map these two categories into your own review criteria, and the joint ministerial request of the following day asks you to describe those criteria in writing by 16 October 2026.
Source File
https://www.soumu.go.jp/menu_news/s-news/01ryutsu02_02000485.html
Open the MIC release and confirm three things: the date line reads Reiwa 8, 6 August 2026; section 1 states the revision adds impostor-type fake investment ads under the June 2025 amended Penal Code and requests or inducement of remittance crime under the July 2026 amended Act on Prevention of Transfer of Criminal Proceeds; and section 2 records 21 submissions received between 3 and 16 July 2026.
Twenty-one comments were submitted as a result of the public consultation on the draft revision of the illegal information guideline, conducted from Friday 3 July to Thursday 16 July of Reiwa 8. Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, press release of 6 August 2026, section 2, author's translation from the Japanese
FAQ
Does this revision make deepfake investment ads illegal?
No. The criminal law already did that. The June 2025 Penal Code amendment criminalised use of forged private electromagnetic records, and the guideline now names impostor-type fake investment advertising as an example of illegal information under Article 26.
Is the guideline binding on platforms?
It is interpretive guidance attached to a statutory provision, not a statute. It shapes how illegal information is identified in practice rather than creating a fresh obligation.
What is the second new category?
Requests for and inducement of so-called remittance crime, which the amendment to the Act on Prevention of Transfer of Criminal Proceeds made unlawful with effect from July 2026.
How long was the consultation, and can I read the responses?
It ran fourteen days, from 3 to 16 July 2026 inclusive, and drew 21 submissions. MIC published the comments and its responses as annex 1 to the 6 August release; that annex is in Japanese and I have not read it.
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