⚖️ In Japan, you can vote at 18. But if you are 17 and urge your friends to back a candidate, or even share a campaign post online, you risk up to a year in prison. On September 25, 2026, the Tokyo District Court ruled for the first time that this ban is unconstitutional. The four young people who brought the case lost anyway.

A repost can break the law

Article 137-2 of the Public Offices Election Act, the law that governs how Japanese elections are run, says people under 18 may not engage in "election campaigning." The term is narrower than it sounds in English. It means asking people to vote for a particular candidate in a particular election, not talking about politics in general.

Even so, the election board of Tokyo's Shinjuku ward warns that under-18s can break the law just by reposting or sharing a campaign message on social media. The penalty is up to one year in prison or a fine of up to 300,000 yen (about $1,900), and the offender can lose the right to vote and run for office for up to five years. A second paragraph of the same article bans anyone from using minors to campaign.

The rule dates from 1952. According to the plaintiffs, the government's original bill that year did not punish minors themselves. That was added during debate, after a lawmaker argued that the mere possibility of police action would deter them.

The four plaintiffs, who live in Tokyo, Aichi, Hokkaido and the Kansai region, were all high school students aged 16 to 18 when they sued on February 28, 2025. They are now 17 to 20. One of them had offered to help a candidate while still in junior high school, was told that minors could not, and later gave up for fear of arrest, the legal news site Bengoshi JP News reported.

Where the court drew the line

The government defended the ban on two grounds: keeping elections fair and protecting minors. It said that when the rule was adopted, minors were being mobilized in large numbers to do legwork for campaigns.

The court answered that other parts of the election law already regulate organized mobilization in detail, so there was no strong need to shut every minor out of campaigning. The presiding judge described the ban, as quoted by Kyodo News, as "a serious restriction on freedom of expression, a freedom of the mind." Both the ban on minors' own campaigning and the criminal penalty attached to it were found to violate Article 21 of the Constitution, which guarantees freedom of expression.

The court did not throw out the whole article, though. According to Jiji Press, it upheld the separate ban on using minors in campaigns, along with the penalty for the adults who do so, finding that protecting minors in that situation still justifies a flat prohibition.

Why winning the argument isn't winning the case

The plaintiffs had asked for two things: confirmation that they have the right to campaign, and damages of 100,000 yen (about $630) each from the state. The court rejected both.

Japan has no separate constitutional court. Judges rule on whether a law is constitutional only while deciding a concrete dispute, so citizens who want to challenge a law usually have to sue for something tangible, such as compensation. And a finding of unconstitutionality does not automatically bring compensation. Plaintiffs also have to show that the Diet, Japan's parliament, was legally at fault for leaving the law in place. According to Jiji, the court said the rights violation was not clear-cut when the rule was created in 1952, and it did not find the Diet at fault.

Japan's Supreme Court has gone both ways on this. In 2005, it ruled that restrictions on voting by Japanese citizens living abroad were unconstitutional and ordered the state to pay 5,000 yen (about $32) per person. In 2015, it found part of a rule barring women from remarrying for six months after a divorce unconstitutional, but refused compensation.

In Japanese civil cases, the side that formally wins generally has no standing to appeal, even if it dislikes the court's reasoning. The government therefore has no way to challenge the finding of unconstitutionality, while the plaintiffs can take the case higher if they choose. Outside the courthouse, the plaintiffs held up a banner that read "Unconstitutional ruling."

Old enough to vote, too young to help

Japan lowered its voting age from 20 to 18 on June 19, 2016. That created an odd gap inside high school classrooms. A student who turns 18 before an election can vote and campaign. A classmate a few months younger cannot even share the candidate's post.

South Korea has a similar rule: its National Election Commission lists minors under 18 among the people who may not campaign. Other countries have moved the voting age itself. Austria lowered it to 16 in 2007. Scotland and Wales let 16-year-olds vote in some elections, and a bill introduced in February 2026 would extend that across the UK; as of September 2026 it had not become law.

In New Zealand, the Supreme Court in November 2022 ruled that setting the voting age at 18 was age discrimination the government had failed to justify under the country's Bill of Rights. That ruling did not change the law, and in January 2024 the government withdrew a bill that would have let 16-year-olds vote in local elections.

What happens next

This is a district court judgment, not a final one. Even if it stands, the article remains on the books until the Diet amends it. Until then, a 17-year-old who reposts a candidate's message is still taking a legal risk.

Where you live, can teenagers who are too young to vote still hand out flyers or post for a candidate?

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