No article of Japan’s Public Bath Houses Act keeps a tattooed person out of a bath. The Act has twelve articles in its main text, and the only refusal it orders an operator to make is in Article 4, which covers a person recognised as having a communicable disease. Searching that main text for the four Japanese words for tattoo returns nothing. What exists instead is a letter the Japan Tourism Agency sent to four industry bodies in March 2016, and the house rules each facility writes for itself.
Tattooing stopped being treated as a medical act on 16 September 2020
Article 17 of the Medical Practitioners Act is one sentence: a person who is not a physician may not practise medicine as a business. Article 31 paragraph 1 attaches up to three years of confinement or a fine of up to 1,000,000 yen, or both, and paragraph 2 raises the fine to 2,000,000 yen where the offender used the title of doctor or something like it.
A tattooist was prosecuted under that article. The Supreme Court decision, case number 1790 of 2018 in the Second Petty Bench, records that the defendant was not a physician, that between July 2014 and March 2015 he worked on three clients on four occasions at a tattoo shop in Suita City, Osaka Prefecture, and that he inserted pigment into skin with an instrument fitted with a needle. The first-instance court fined him 150,000 yen. The Osaka High Court quashed that judgment on 14 November 2018 and acquitted him. On 16 September 2020 the Supreme Court dismissed the prosecutor’s appeal, and the justices were unanimous, with a supplementary opinion attached from one of them.
The reasoning matters for anyone reading the word legal. The court defined a medical act as one belonging to medical care and health guidance which would risk harm to health if performed by someone other than a physician, and it said the question has to be decided in the light of ordinary social understanding, weighing the purpose, the relationship between the parties, the circumstances, the actual practice and how society receives it. Tattooing, it held, has been received as a social custom with decorative, symbolic and artistic meaning, calls for knowledge and skill in art rather than medicine, is not taught on the route to a medical licence, and has been carried out for many years by tattooists who hold no licence. The last line of that passage is the one the decision leaves standing: the health risks that come with tattooing have to be prevented by some means other than giving physicians a monopoly on it.
| Stage | Date printed in these judgments | Outcome |
|---|---|---|
| Conduct charged | July 2014 to March 2015 | Three clients, four occasions |
| First instance | Not printed in either judgment | Fine of 150,000 yen |
| Osaka High Court | 14 November 2018 | Judgment quashed, acquittal |
| Supreme Court, Second Petty Bench | 16 September 2020 | Appeal dismissed |
The Public Bath Houses Act orders one refusal, and it is about disease
The Act dates from 1948. Article 1 defines a public bath house as a facility that uses hot water, sea water, a hot spring or something else to let the public bathe, and defines the bath house business as running one under a permit from the prefectural governor, or from the mayor or the ward head where a city or a special ward runs its own public health centre. Article 2 makes that permit compulsory and lets the governor withhold it where the site or the structure is unsuitable from a public health point of view, or where the placement is inappropriate; the placement standards themselves are set by prefectural ordinance. Article 3 tells the operator to take measures on ventilation, daylight, lighting, warmth and cleanliness, and on anything else needed for the hygiene and the public morals of bathers, and again sends the standards to prefectural ordinance.
Article 4 is the only one of the twelve articles that compels a refusal. An operator must refuse bathing to a person recognised as having a communicable disease, with an exception, on terms a ministerial ordinance sets, for a bath used for medical treatment that the governor has approved. Article 5 works the other way: a bather must not badly foul the tub or do anything else likely to harm public health, and the operator or manager must stop anyone who does.
The penalties sit in Articles 8 to 10. Article 8 sets up to six months of confinement or a fine of up to 20,000 yen for operating without the permit or ignoring an order to suspend. Article 9 sets a fine of up to 20,000 yen for failing to report, reporting falsely or refusing an inspection. Article 10 sets detention or a petty fine for breaking Article 4 or Article 5, and it reaches the bather as well as the operator. None of these numbers has anything to say about ink. Searching the Act as published on the government legal database for the words irezumi, shisei, tattoo and bunshin returns zero hits across the twelve articles of the main text, which are numbered from Article 1 to Article 11 and include one inserted article.
Two ministries wrote about tattoos in the same week of March 2016
On 16 March 2016 the Japan Tourism Agency sent a notice to four bodies: the Japan Hotel Association, the All Japan City Hotel Federation, the Japan Ryokan Association and the Japan Spa Association. The notice, the sheet attached to it and the ministry letter that carried it are all titled for the bathing of foreign travellers who have tattoos. The sentence that carries the policy says that refusing bathing on the sole ground that a person has a tattoo is not appropriate. Two days later, on 18 March 2016, the hygiene division of the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare forwarded the same material to the prefectures, the designated cities and the special wards, and asked them to make sure that refusals for unjustified reasons do not happen in the bathing facilities under their jurisdiction.
The agency’s notice also dates itself with visitor numbers. It describes annual foreign visitors as having climbed from 8.36 million four years earlier to 19.74 million in the previous year, which it calls a record. It names two sections for enquiries, with direct lines 03-5253-8924 and 03-5253-8329, and it says travellers are being told about Japanese attitudes to tattoos through the national tourism organisation.
The attached sheet lists three handling patterns, not a rule
The second half of the agency’s sheet is the part facilities actually copy. It opens with three points to note: that people have tattoos for reasons including religion, culture and fashion; that understanding between bathers needs to be built; and that the presence of a tattoo does not itself create a hygiene problem. Then it gives examples under three headings.
- Asking for a measure: covering the tattoo with a sticker or similar so other bathers cannot see it, with hygienic bathing wear named as another possibility; and no special measure at all where the tattoo is small, with the palm of a hand given as the example of small, and does not intimidate other bathers.
- Adjusting the hour: steering the visit to a time when fewer families are bathing.
- Pointing to another bath: splitting the baths where a facility has more than one, guiding the guest to a private bath where one exists, or to a guest room with its own bath.
Every line in that list is an example. The sheet does not set a size limit in centimetres, does not require stickers, and does not tell a facility which of the three to choose.
The agency’s own ryokan question sheet says the answer differs by inn
The Japan Tourism Agency also runs a ryokan question-and-answer page, and the second question on it is whether a guest with a tattoo can use the large shared bath. The answer states plainly that treatment differs greatly from inn to inn. It explains the history in one line, that tattoos have been associated with antisocial organisations and that inns refused entry so as not to unsettle other guests, and then lists what some inns now do: place no restriction at all, or judge case by case, with a single small design given as the example that passes. It closes by telling the guest to ask the inn.
The same page answers two neighbouring questions with harder facts. The large bath normally needs no reservation and is often open late at night and early in the morning apart from cleaning hours, and some inns offer a bath booked for one party only, which does need a reservation. The conduct list is short: rinse and wash before getting in, use a bucket of water to let the body adjust, keep towels out of the tub, tie long hair, do not take photographs, do not talk loudly, and do not wear a swimsuit. For what the bath water itself has to be labelled as, the Ministry of the Environment standard is a separate matter, covered in the Environment Ministry’s onsen notice and its one exception.
The agency’s own English text on tattoos records a ban in 1871
The agency keeps a database of commissioned multilingual explanation texts, and one of them, prepared in the 2024 fiscal year for a tourism board in Hokkaido at 11 Kitamoncho in Asahikawa City, is titled simply Tattoos. It is under 250 words and is written for an app or QR code rather than a sign.
Its facts are dates and ages. In Ainu culture tattoos were for women only, and the tattooist was always a woman, usually a grandmother or a maternal aunt. The work began at about twelve or thirteen, at puberty, with fine incisions along the upper lip rubbed with a mixture made from birchwood soot and mugwort, which produced a dark blue colour. A second tattoo was added to the lower lip at about fifteen or sixteen, alongside an embroidered headband and a beaded necklace. The tattoo was finished by about twenty, and marked readiness for marriage. In 1871 the government prohibited the tattooing of Ainu women as part of a policy of assimilation, and the text says records of the time show many women refused to comply, because they believed that without the tattoos they could neither marry nor reach the afterlife.
What none of these documents covers
The documents read here are about bathing. The Public Bath Houses Act applies to facilities that let the public bathe, and the 2016 notices were addressed to hotel, ryokan and spa bodies and to the officials who license bathing facilities. None of the documents read here sets a rule for a gym, a swimming pool, a water park or a beach, and none of them overrides a private facility’s own house rules, which is why the ryokan answer sheet ends by telling the guest to telephone the inn.
Prices and sizes are also absent. The agency sheet names the palm of a hand as an example of a small tattoo and never converts it into centimetres, and no document read here prices a cover sticker or a private bath. The court decision settles only the question it was asked, which is whether tattooing is a medical act under Article 17. The supplementary opinion goes further, saying there is room to debate whether a tattoo may be shown in a public space, and that tattooing can amount to the offence of injury depending on the work’s content and method.
The figures that will move first are the visitor numbers inside the 2016 notice, which are already a decade old, and the penalty ceilings in the 1948 Act, which revising legislation has lifted in other statutes of the same vintage. The three handling patterns and Article 4 have not changed since they were written.
Sources Checked
e-Gov law search, the government database of current Japanese law — Medical Practitioners Act, Act No. 201 of 1948
Confirmed that Article 17 forbids the practice of medicine as a business by a person who is not a physician, that Article 31 paragraph 1 sets up to three years of confinement or a fine of up to 1,000,000 yen or both for breaching it, and that paragraph 2 raises the fine to 2,000,000 yen where the title of doctor was used.
https://laws.e-gov.go.jp/law/323AC0000000201
e-Gov law search, the government database of current Japanese law — Public Bath Houses Act, Act No. 139 of 1948
Confirmed the definition of a public bath house and of the bath house business in Article 1, the permit and placement standards in Article 2, the hygiene and public morals measures in Article 3, the compulsory refusal of a person recognised as having a communicable disease in Article 4 with the exception for approved therapeutic baths, the bather’s duty and the operator’s duty to stop breaches in Article 5, and the penalties in Articles 8, 9 and 10, including the 20,000 yen ceilings and the six month term. Confirmed that the main text has twelve articles numbered from Article 1 to Article 11, one of them an inserted article, and that it contains no occurrence of the Japanese words for tattoo.
https://laws.e-gov.go.jp/law/323AC0000000139
Supreme Court of Japan — decision of the Second Petty Bench, case number 1790 of 2018, 16 September 2020
Confirmed the dismissal of the appeal, the conduct charged between July 2014 and March 2015 at a tattoo shop in Suita City, Osaka Prefecture, involving three clients on four occasions, the first-instance fine of 150,000 yen, the quashing of that judgment and the acquittal by the court below, which this decision names neither by court nor by date, the definition of a medical act, the factors to be weighed in the light of ordinary social understanding, the findings on art knowledge and on unlicensed tattooists, and the statement that the health risks of tattooing must be prevented by means other than a physicians’ monopoly, and the supplementary opinion of one justice, which says there is room to debate whether a tattoo may be shown in a public space and that tattooing can amount to the offence of injury depending on its content and method.
https://www.courts.go.jp/assets/hanrei/hanrei-pdf-89717.pdf
Courts of Japan judgment database — judgment of the Osaka High Court, Fifth Criminal Division, case number 1117 of 2017, 14 November 2018
Confirmed that the judgment is dated 14 November 2018, that it quashed the judgment below and acquitted the defendant, and that the judgment below had fined him 150,000 yen under Article 31 paragraph 1 item 1 and Article 17 of the Medical Practitioners Act. Confirmed that neither this judgment nor the Supreme Court decision prints the date of the first-instance judgment.
https://www.courts.go.jp/assets/hanrei/hanrei-pdf-88686.pdf
Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, hygiene division — administrative communication of 18 March 2016, carrying the Japan Tourism Agency communication of 16 March 2016
Confirmed that the agency wrote to the Japan Hotel Association, the All Japan City Hotel Federation, the Japan Ryokan Association and the Japan Spa Association, that the notice, its attached sheet and the ministry letter are all titled for the bathing of foreign travellers who have tattoos, that the notice states refusing bathing on the sole ground of a tattoo is not appropriate, that it reports visitor numbers of 8.36 million four years earlier and a record 19.74 million in the previous year, that it gives the direct lines 03-5253-8924 and 03-5253-8329, the three points to note including that a tattoo does not itself create a hygiene problem, and the three groups of handling examples covering stickers and bathing wear, a palm-sized tattoo needing no measure, choosing a quieter hour, and splitting baths or using a private or in-room bath. Confirmed that the ministry asked prefectures, designated cities and special wards to prevent refusals for unjustified reasons.
https://www.mhlw.go.jp/content/001165667.pdf
Japan Tourism Agency — ryokan questions and answers, question 2 and the neighbouring questions on the shared bath
Confirmed that treatment of guests with tattoos differs greatly by inn, the explanation of the association with antisocial organisations, the examples of placing no restriction and of judging case by case with a single small design, the pointer to private and in-room baths, the statement that the shared bath normally needs no reservation and is often open late and early apart from cleaning, and the conduct list covering washing first, keeping towels out of the water, tying long hair, not photographing, not talking loudly and not wearing a swimsuit.
https://www.mlit.go.jp/kankocho/ryokan/list_ja-6.html
Japan Tourism Agency — multilingual commentary database, English text titled Tattoos, prepared in the 2024 fiscal year for a Hokkaido tourism board at 11 Kitamoncho, Asahikawa City
Confirmed that Ainu tattooing was for women only and performed by women, that it began at about twelve or thirteen on the upper lip using birchwood soot and mugwort, that a second tattoo followed on the lower lip at about fifteen or sixteen, that the work was complete by about twenty and marked readiness for marriage, and that the government prohibited the tattooing of Ainu women in 1871, with records showing many women refused to comply.
https://www.mlit.go.jp/tagengo-db/en/R6-00294.html
Last updated: October 2026
