Statute of Limitations in Japan: Civil Debts and Criminal Charges

The statute of limitations in Japan depends on whether the matter is civil or criminal, and within each track the deadline turns on the type of claim or the severity of the offense. For most civil debts and contract claims, the window is five years from when the creditor knew the right was enforceable, or ten years from when it first became enforceable, whichever ends first. Criminal prosecution runs from one year for the lowest-level offenses up to thirty years for the most serious, and murder has no deadline at all. One quirk shapes every civil case: a Japanese court will not throw out a time-barred lawsuit on its own. Under Article 145 of the Civil Code, the person who benefits from the expired deadline has to raise it as a defense. If the debtor stays silent, the case proceeds as if the clock never ran.¹

Civil Claims for Debts and Contracts

Article 166 of the Civil Code governs most debts, unpaid invoices, and contract disputes with a dual-clock system. A claim expires on whichever date arrives first:

Five years from the moment the creditor knows the right is enforceable (the subjective clock).
Ten years from the date the right actually became enforceable, regardless of what the creditor knew (the objective clock).

Both periods come from the same statute and run at the same time.¹ The five-year subjective window closes first for most commercial debts, because a creditor usually knows right away when an invoice has gone unpaid. The ten-year objective limit matters more when the creditor did not initially realize there was a claim, such as a shortfall buried in an accounting error.

This unified framework replaced a pre-2020 system under which doctors, lawyers, and tradespeople each had shorter windows of one to three years for collecting professional fees. Everyone now operates under the same clock, which simplifies planning but means receivables cannot sit untouched.

For property rights other than ownership, such as easements or leasehold interests, a different rule applies: the right expires if not exercised within twenty years from the date it became enforceable, with no subjective clock.¹

Personal Injury and Tort Claims

When someone causes harm through a wrongful act, Articles 724 and 724-2 of the Civil Code set the deadlines, and the length depends on what was injured:

Three years from the date the victim learns both the extent of the harm and who caused it, for property damage or financial loss.
Five years from that same discovery point, for bodily injury or death.

The longer window for physical injuries reflects the fact that medical conditions take time to diagnose. A person hit by a car may not understand the full scope of their injuries for months.¹

Both categories share a hard outer limit: twenty years from the date of the wrongful act, regardless of when the victim discovered it. Once that long-stop passes, even a victim who just learned of the harm has no recourse through the courts.¹

Product Liability

Claims against manufacturers, importers, and distributors of defective products follow a separate track under Article 5 of the Product Liability Act. The deadlines are tighter than general tort rules:

Three years from the date the victim learns of the damage and the responsible party.
Ten years from the date the manufacturer delivered the product.

The ten-year delivery-based cutoff is significantly shorter than the twenty-year long-stop for general torts. A product that sits in storage for years before causing harm may already be close to its deadline by the time someone gets hurt.²

There is one carve-out. When a product contains a substance that accumulates in the body or causes symptoms only after a latent period, the ten-year clock starts from the date the damage actually appears rather than from delivery. This exception was built specifically for cases involving toxic chemicals, contaminated materials, and similar slow-developing harms.²

Unpaid Wages and Employment Claims

Wage, overtime, and other employment claims follow the Labor Standards Act rather than the Civil Code. A 2020 amendment raised the statutory limitation for wage claims from two years to five years, but imposed a transitional cap of three years for the time being.³ Employees currently have three years from the payment date to file a claim for unpaid regular wages, overtime, or other compensation. The transitional period has no fixed end date; the government will decide later whether to let the full five-year period take effect.

Retirement allowances and severance pay sit under a separate rule with a five-year limitation that applies in full right now, with no transitional reduction. If you left a job and believe you are owed severance, that five-year window is firm.⁴

Pausing or Restarting the Civil Clock

Japanese civil law provides two kinds of actions that can extend a limitation period: renewal, which resets the clock to zero, and completion postponement, which temporarily freezes it.

Renewal Resets the Clock

When a creditor files a lawsuit and obtains a final judgment confirming the debt, the full limitation period starts over from the judgment date. The same reset happens when a debtor acknowledges the obligation, whether by making a partial payment, signing a repayment agreement, or asking for an extension. Any act that signals the debtor recognizes the debt will restart the clock.¹

Completion Postponement Buys Time

Postponement extends the deadline without wiping it clean. Several mechanisms trigger it:

Filing a lawsuit or payment demand freezes the clock while the case is pending. If the claim is ultimately not established by final judgment, the deadline extends six months from the date the proceedings end.¹
Sending a written demand outside of court (催告) postpones expiration for six months. A second demand within that six-month window has no additional effect; demands cannot be chained indefinitely.¹
A written agreement by both parties to negotiate the claim extends the deadline for up to one year from the agreement date. Successive agreements can push the deadline further, but the total postponement cannot exceed five years.¹
A provisional seizure or disposition extends the deadline six months from the date the measure ends.

Documentation matters here. A verbal promise to negotiate or an undocumented partial payment may not satisfy a court. Written records are the reliable way to prove a postponement or renewal event occurred.

Criminal Prosecution Deadlines

Criminal statutes of limitations are set by Article 250 of the Code of Criminal Procedure and follow a tiered structure based on the maximum punishment for the offense. A major 2010 amendment split the rules into two tracks: one for crimes that cause a person’s death, and another for everything else.

Crimes That Cause Death

For offenses that result in someone’s death, the 2010 reform extended or eliminated the deadline:

No time limit at all for crimes punishable by the death penalty, such as murder. These can be prosecuted at any point.
Thirty years for crimes punishable by life imprisonment.
Twenty years for crimes with a maximum sentence of twenty years.
Ten years for all other crimes causing death that carry imprisonment.

Removing the deadline for capital crimes was the headline change. Before 2010, even murder had a 25-year prosecution window, which meant cold cases could become legally unprosecutable.⁵

Crimes That Do Not Cause Death

For offenses where no one dies, the tiered structure scales to the maximum possible sentence:

Twenty-five years for offenses punishable by the death penalty where no death results, such as certain terrorism or treason crimes.
Fifteen years for offenses carrying life imprisonment.
Ten years for offenses with a maximum prison term of fifteen years or more.
Seven years for offenses with a maximum term under fifteen years.
Five years for offenses with a maximum term under ten years.
Three years for offenses with a maximum term under five years, or offenses punishable only by a fine.
One year for offenses punishable only by penal detention or a petty fine.

Common property crimes like theft and fraud carry a maximum sentence of ten years under the Penal Code, which places them in the seven-year tier.⁵

When the Criminal Clock Pauses

Under Article 255 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, the limitation period is suspended for any period during which the suspect is outside Japan or is hiding in a way that makes service of charges impossible. A suspect who flees abroad for five years does not benefit from those five years counting toward the deadline. The clock resumes only when the person returns to Japan or becomes reachable.⁵

Longer Deadlines for Sexual Offenses

A 2023 reform to the Penal Code extended the prosecution window for sexual crimes. The limitation for nonconsensual intercourse rose from ten to fifteen years, and for sexual assault causing injury or death, from fifteen to twenty years. The change that matters most to child victims: for anyone who was a minor at the time of the offense, the limitation period does not begin running until the victim turns eighteen. For a child assaulted at age ten, that effectively adds eight years to the applicable deadline, giving the victim time to reach adulthood before the clock even starts.

1
Japanese Law Translation. Civil Code
2
Japanese Law Translation. Product Liability Act
3
Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare. Outline of the Act on the Partial Revision to the Labor Standards Act
4
Japanese Law Translation. Labor Standards Act
5
Japanese Law Translation. Code of Criminal Procedure