Tomoki Yamada
Anderson Mori & Tomotsune, Tokyo
tomokitdy.yamada@amt-law.com

Introduction

How should law regulate rapidly advancing emerging technologies? This is a common challenge for all countries. Because examples of practical use remain limited, it is difficult to deepen discussion on the concrete legal issues that may arise. At the same time, if regulation does not anticipate technological progress, the law will fail to keep pace with technological evolution, which may ultimately lead to disastrous incidents and accidents. On the other hand, excessive regulation will result in reduced international competitiveness of that nation in that technological field, thereby weakening its national presence. As emerging technologies become increasingly dual-use in nature, the competitiveness of such technologies is directly linked to national security strategy, making this a more critical issue.

As is clearly the case with space technology, many emerging technologies easily transcend national borders. Ideally, then, at the level of international law, countries would convene in the same forum and coordinatively create a well-balanced regulation at the level of international law. However, as the current state of space law vividly demonstrates, under today’s international circumstances, it is no longer realistic for states to reach international agreement on hard law, at least in the form of binding international law. In response, within space law, states have sought, through international discussion and in the relatively short history of space activities, to develop ‘soft law’, as exemplified in the Long-term Sustainability of Outer Space Activities (LTS) Guidelines and other instruments, in an effort to realise orderly space activities.

What, then, is the situation at the level of domestic law? As stated above, the formulation of hard law is by no means easy even within domestic legal systems. To legislate regulation of emerging technologies requires navigating a complex mix of foreign policy, industrial policy, security policy and various political considerations, while overcoming many challenges such as difficult coordination within the administrative apparatus and the alignment of diverse stakeholder interests within the country. For this reason, more flexible regulation – soft-law approach – may also appear attractive in domestic law.

In this respect, developments surrounding the amendment of Japan’s Space Activities Act (SAA), which at the time of writing is under deliberation in the Diet, are highly suggestive. This would be the first amendment to the SAA since its enactment in 2018, taking into account subsequent advances in space technology, and has attracted considerable attention. Yet the content of the amendment bill currently under review has actually been scaled back to some extent from the revisions originally envisioned. At the same time, many legal issues not included in the bill are expected to be addressed outside the framework of hard law, through guidelines and casebooks. In this sense, Japan’s space legal regime may face a substantial shift toward a soft-law approach.

This article traces Japan’s path toward amending the SAA, and compares it with regulatory trends in other technologies, including Artificial Intelligence (AI), to consider what kind of approach Japan is taking with respect to the regulation of emerging technologies.

Amendments to the SAA

Japan’s space law framework was put in place through the enactment of the Basic Space Act in 2008 and the SAA in 2018. The SAA requires permission for: (1) the launch of artificial satellites; and (2) the operation of artificial satellites. It incorporates mechanisms commonly found in space legislation around the world, such as mandatory third-party liability insurance combined with government indemnification.^[1]

However, the law does not necessarily set out detailed licensing criteria. In addition, the licence framework for satellite launches and satellite operations has been criticised as being too simple to enable meticulous review that reflects the risks proper to each of the diverse space activities. Accordingly, since the enactment of the SAA, guidelines that set out in detail the matters to be considered during review in each authorisation process, as well as guidelines specifically addressing on-orbit services, have been published. These guidelines, developed outside the framework of hard law, have played an important practical role in implementation.

The SAA provides for periodic review approximately every five years. In Japan, when amending legislation in general, the usual process is first to narrow down the issues to be discussed in a committee involving a broad range of stakeholders, including researchers, practitioners and businesses, and then to have a smaller committee of experts deliberate based on that discussion for drafting the bill to be submitted to the Diet. The SAA followed this pattern too. First, from 2024 to 2025, issues were identified within a committee under the government’s Space Policy Committee. The resulting document titled ‘Interim Report on the Basic Direction for Reviewing the SAA’ identified a wide range of issues to be discussed in the review of the Act. The interim report aimed to create an environment in which businesses could engage in space-related activities with predictability by establishing appropriate legal regulation.

Then, in the Space Activities Act Amendment Working Group, which was launched in June 2025, the overall picture of the licensing system covering these broad issues was presented at its first meeting, which suggests a world-leading and unified legal framework for space activities. However, the subsequent meetings that had been planned to discuss the details of the licensing system were not held for some time, and at the second meeting, finally held in October 2025, a document summarising the status of discussions on each issue was released. This document indicates that the scope of the amendment would be limited to certain matters, such as the introduction of new regulations for launches of rockets solely carrying dummy payload, while other issues were to be addressed through manuals compiling licensing review standards, guidelines, recommendations or were to be considered further in the future. Based on this summary, the amendment bill to the SAA submitted to the Diet in March 2026 contains the content shown in the table below.

Regulation of emerging technologies and the soft law approach in Japan

Looking at this process toward the amendment of the SAA in Japan, arguably, while broad regulation through hard law was initially envisioned, a more realistic path was later chosen: to prioritise legal reform for items that are currently important in practice, while for more advanced issues, to first publish soft-law-based standards for businesses. Admittedly, a soft-law approach is inferior to hard law in terms of predictability for businesses. Moreover, given that soft law in Japan may in some cases carry practical importance comparable to that of hard law, there may be room for debate as to whether such rules should be formed outside the democratic legislative process, namely the Diet. That said, given the difficulty of regulating emerging technologies as noted at the outset, there is also significant value in adopting a soft-law approach. First, soft law is procedurally more flexible than hard law and can therefore be developed and revised more quickly. Second, while providing businesses with a certain degree of predictability, soft law can help identify problems in those standards, such as excesses or gaps, through the accumulated practical experience, thereby contributing in the future to the formulation of more appropriate hard law. For regulating emerging technologies whose future development is difficult to foresee, such a soft-law approach is highly fitting in many respects.

This point was explicitly recognised in Japan’s AI regulation. In Japan, the Basic Act on AI was enacted in 2025. It is a basic law that sets out fundamental principles regarding AI, but it does not impose detailed regulations on AI businesses. Detailed behavioural standards are set forth in numerous guidelines, including the AI Business Guidelines, which are widely referenced in practice. During the legislative process for the Basic Act on AI, discussions within the government’s AI strategy team deepened the debate on the appropriate form of AI regulation, and in ‘The Concept Regarding the AI Regulatory Framework’, published in May 2024, the direction was clearly indicated: maximising the use of soft law, while also considering the formulation of hard law for high-risk use of AI. Whereas Japan's space legal regime started from a somewhat different premise than discussion for AI regulation, it can be said that it is ultimately moving in a similar direction.

Of course, not all emerging technologies in Japan adopt a soft-law approach. For example, with a new type of air mobility, sometimes called ‘eVTOL’ or ‘UAM’, since the Aviation Act covers not only traditional aircraft but airspace activities more generally, their use requires legal reform based on a strict aviation-law framework consistent with international regulations such as the Chicago Convention. Due to delays in legislation concerning these activities, commercial operations of such mobility have not yet been realised. The same applies to autonomous driving, where amendments to the Road Vehicle Act, which governs vehicle safety, and the Road Traffic Act, which sets out traffic rules on public roads, have been implemented sequentially. Thus, for emerging technologies in areas where strict regulation already exists, the difficulty is inevitable in overcoming the hurdle of reforming the existing framework, rather than simply taking the soft-law approach. Given that safety deficiencies in these activities can have a serious impact on life of ordinary people on a daily basis, maintaining strict regulation may, in fact, be reasonable.

Conclusion

The process of amending the SAA in Japan suggests that the soft-law approach can serve as one desirable and realistic way of regulating emerging technologies in Japan. Looking ahead, as a wide variety of new emerging technologies continue to appear and regulation may be required each time, a deeper general discussion in Japan on what the legal regulation of emerging technologies should look like may help enable ourselves to rapidly respond to such technological advance.