In Japan, bicycles ride on the left side of the roadway as a rule. Cars and trucks pass close by, and the noise of them gets into your ears. I ride, and I have wondered whether I could cut down that road noise somehow. This article is what I found when I went looking.
If you live in Japan or are visiting and riding here, this is worth knowing in a practical way, because the rule is not the one most people assume it is.
The short answer first.
- There is no nationwide law in Japan that says "you must not use earphones on a bicycle"
- What each prefecture's regulation prohibits is not a device but a state of your hearing — riding in a condition where you cannot hear the sounds and voices of traffic
- So wearing earphones does not decide it by itself. If you are judged to have been unable to hear, it is an offence; if you can hear, the type of device is not the question
- That offence (violation of a public safety commission regulation) has been subject to the on-the-spot ticket system since April 2026. The fine is ¥5,000, riders aged 16 and over are covered, and it is the same amount as riding while holding an umbrella
- The National Police Agency has told officers not to decide on outward appearance alone. Its notice names one-ear use, very low volume, open-ear earphones and bone-conduction headphones specifically
- Some prefectures write an explicit exemption for hearing aids; others do not. Even where there is none, the wording of the rule does not appear to reach a hearing aid
- Cochlear implants do not appear anywhere in the texts I checked
- For earplugs, I could not find any official position at all
Below, the primary sources for each of those.
The substance of the prohibition sits somewhere the Road Traffic Act delegated it to: the prefectures. That is why the wording differs from prefecture to prefecture, and why the treatment of hearing aids differs too.
This article organises the content of laws and public documents. Whether a particular case is an offence is for the police to judge. The regulations quoted were checked against each prefecture's own published statute collection as of 11 August 2026. Amounts are in Japanese yen; at the time of writing US$1 was about ¥159 (11 August 2026).
1. There is no law that bans earphones
Read the Road Traffic Act from end to end and the words "earphone" and "headphone" never appear. What appears is this.
(vi) In addition to the matters listed in the preceding items, matters that the public safety commission finds necessary and prescribes, in light of the condition of the road or of traffic, in order to prevent danger on the road and otherwise secure the safety of traffic. Road Traffic Act (Act No. 105 of 1960), Article 71, item (vi). Translation mine.
"Matters that the public safety commission prescribes." The substance is not written down. This is the article by which the law hands the question of what must be observed to each prefecture's public safety commission. From here, the regulation of earphones descends into each prefecture's own rules, called enforcement regulations or road traffic regulations depending on the prefecture. It is a two-storey structure.
That structure shows up as a difference in how two kinds of distracted riding are handled. For smartphones, the Act itself names bicycles directly.
Smartphones are named by the Act, uniformly, nationwide. Earphones are not named at all and have fallen through to prefectural regulations. Same "while riding" problem, entirely different legal storey.
For the record, a violation of Article 71 item (vi) carries a fine of up to ¥50,000 (about US$310) under Article 120, paragraph 1, item (x).
2. What the rule prohibits is not the device but the state of your ears
Line the prefectural texts up and the phrasing varies, but the skeleton of the sentence is shared. Tokyo's regulation, for example.
What is prohibited is not "using earphones etc." It is "driving in a state in which they cannot be heard." Earphones and car radios appear only as examples of things that produce that state.
Once that is clear, a lot falls into place. Whether you have earphones on is not the question being asked. The question is whether the sounds and voices of traffic are reaching you.
And how each prefecture puts "a state in which they cannot be heard" into words differs.
3. Writing the same thing, prefecture by prefecture, differently
Here are the texts I was able to confirm. Translations are mine; the Japanese originals are linked in the sources at the end.
| Prefecture | Text (excerpt) |
|---|---|
| Tokyo | …in a state in which the sounds or voices relating to traffic necessary for safe driving cannot be heard, such as by listening to a car radio etc. at high tone or listening to the radio using earphones etc. (proviso follows) |
| Hokkaido | …such as by listening to a car radio etc. at high tone, or listening to music using earphones or headphones… in a state in which they cannot be heard. (proviso follows) |
| Aichi | At large volume, listening to a car radio etc., or listening to music etc. using earphones etc.… in a state in which they cannot be heard. |
| Kyoto | At large volume listening to a car radio etc., or because of using earphones, headphones etc., in a state in which they cannot be heard. (proviso follows) |
| Miyagi | At high volume listening to a car radio, car stereo etc., listening to music using headphones or earphones… in a state in which they cannot be heard. (proviso follows) |
| Ehime | Same construction as Tokyo. (proviso follows, with different wording) |
| Saitama | Same construction as Tokyo, with no proviso for hearing aids in the text I could confirm. |
| Osaka | At a volume at which the horn, an emergency vehicle's siren, a police officer's instruction and other sounds or voices relating to traffic necessary for safe driving cannot be heard, not to drive while listening to music etc. using a car audio, headphone stereo etc. |
| Hyogo | Not to listen to music etc. at a volume at which it is impossible, or markedly difficult, to make out the sounds necessary for safe driving. |
Read side by side, the differences sort into two.
Whether the device is named
Most prefectures write "earphone" into the text. Even the spelling splits, between two competing Japanese transliterations.
Osaka's text, however, contains no word for "earphone" at all — it says "car audio, headphone stereo etc." And Hyogo names no device whatsoever. "Not to listen to music etc. at a volume at which it is impossible, or markedly difficult, to make out the sounds necessary for safe driving." That is the whole of it.
Whether volume is built into the requirement
Aichi and Kyoto say "at large volume," Miyagi says "at high volume." In those prefectures the loudness looks like part of what has to be established.
Tokyo, Hokkaido, Saitama and Ehime say "at high tone," with no phrase equivalent to "large volume." That reads as a text in which, regardless of how loud or quiet the sound is, the requirement is the state of not being able to hear.
Osaka and Hyogo put volume itself at the centre of the standard. Hyogo's "impossible, or markedly difficult" was the most distinctive formulation among those I checked.
There is one more thing that splits by prefecture: the proviso about hearing aids. That is section 5.
4. The police agency has told officers not to judge on appearance alone
What about open-ear earphones and bone-conduction headphones? What about one ear only? There is a public answer to this, in a notice the National Police Agency issued on 25 July 2023.
The same notice then addresses open-ear and bone-conduction types by name.
One-ear use is treated the same way.
Worth being careful here: the notice does not say "one ear is lawful." It says as far as "there is a possibility that they are being heard." So the instruction lands here.
Rather than judging the existence of an offence uniformly, focusing solely on the outward fact of earphone use, officers are to judge according to the specific facts of the individual case. That is the method the National Police Agency asks of the field.
Not whether they are worn, but whether you can hear. The structure of the regulation and the instruction in the notice point at the same thing.
5. Some prefectures write a hearing-aid proviso, some do not
Picture someone riding with a hearing aid who is mistaken for an earphone user and stopped for it. It is worth knowing where the legal footing is.
The footing comes in two layers.
First: prefectures with an explicit proviso
Tokyo, Hokkaido, Kyoto and Ehime exclude hearing aids head-on, in a proviso.
Ehime uses the same construction, but its second excluded category is "a public official receiving instructions for official duties" — the detail differs. Hokkaido and Kyoto also carry a hearing-aid proviso.
Second: even without one, the rule does not appear to reach a hearing aid
Miyagi's proviso, by contrast, covers only "a person carrying out a public purpose." The hearing-aid clause is absent. Its text is otherwise almost identical to Tokyo's, and only that part differs. I could not find a hearing-aid proviso in Aichi, Osaka or Hyogo either.
The absence of a proviso does not mean hearing aids are prohibited. Look at what the prohibited conduct actually consists of, and a hearing aid does not seem to fit inside it.
- Aichi and Miyagi: "in a state in which the sounds or voices cannot be heard" — a hearing aid is a device that improves hearing
- Osaka: "while listening to music etc." — a hearing aid is not a device for listening to music
- Hyogo: "not to listen to music etc." — again, the object of the listening is music
The natural reading is that the proviso is confirmatory, placed there so that no doubt arises. That said, this is a reading of the text, not an official interpretation that has been published anywhere.
In practice, something else bites before the question of interpretation does: the notice above. The National Police Agency has instructed the field not to judge uniformly on outward appearance. If someone wearing a hearing aid is stopped on appearance alone, that is the first footing to stand on.
Cochlear implants do not appear in the texts
Not one of the texts I checked contains the words "cochlear implant." What the provisos say is "where a person with hearing loss uses a hearing aid."
Even so, the same reading applies as for prefectures with no proviso. What is prohibited is a state of not being able to hear, or the listening to music, and a device that supplements hearing does not seem to fall inside that.
A cochlear implant's sound processor sits behind the ear or on the head, so it is visible from outside. On appearance alone it looks like a worn device. Which is precisely the situation in which the instruction not to judge on appearance ought to do its work.
6. For earplugs, I found no official answer
Back to the question I started with. What about earplugs?
As far as I could search, I was unable to find any official position on earplugs from the police, a public safety commission or a local authority. The National Police Agency notice and the bicycle rulebook both speak consistently of "earphones etc." and "music etc." Nothing addressed earplugs.
What can be said is that the reach may differ depending on the type of text.
The Tokyo / Hokkaido / Saitama / Ehime type — "in a state in which the sounds or voices relating to traffic necessary for safe driving cannot be heard, such as…". Because "such as" opens onto a general description of a state, an earplug that stops you hearing traffic looks, on the wording, as though it could fall within reach.
The Osaka / Hyogo type — "while listening to music etc.", "not to listen to music etc." The requirement is the listening to music. An earplug produces no sound, so on the wording there is room to read it as not applying.
Either way, riding in a state where you cannot hear what is around you remains open to assessment from a different direction — the safe-driving duty in Article 70 of the Road Traffic Act. Article 70 is a general provision requiring drivers to drive "at a speed and in a manner that does not endanger others," and it exists to catch dangerous riding that no specific regulation happens to cover.
In the end, I think the question to ask before asking whether a text is being breached is a single one: can you hear the car coming up behind you? Some earplugs attenuate very little; some are designed to cut wind noise specifically. How much still gets through is not something you can know without putting them in and riding.
7. Since April 2026 this has carried an on-the-spot ticket
From 1 April 2026, Japan's traffic infraction notification system — the "blue ticket" — applies to bicycles. Riders aged 16 and over are covered.
The Article 71 item (vi) violation this whole article has been about, that is, violation of a public safety commission regulation, is on the list of infractions for which bicycles are covered. The fine is ¥5,000, the same as riding while holding an umbrella.
Worth being careful: this does not mean "¥5,000 if you have earphones in." Local government notices tend to summarise it as "use of earphones etc.," but what the regulation asks, as we have seen throughout, is whether you were in a state of not being able to hear. The order is: if you are judged to have been in that state, the fine is ¥5,000.
(about US$31)
(about US$75)
For reference, other amounts on the same list: running a red light ¥6,000 (¥5,000 for a flashing signal), entering a closed level crossing ¥7,000, failing to stop where required ¥5,000, riding on the wrong side ¥6,000, riding two abreast or carrying a passenger ¥3,000. The amounts are set on the same basis as those for mopeds.
The safe-driving duty violation under Article 70, mentioned earlier, sits as its own separate line on that list. It is the catch-all: the provision that receives dangerous riding which the specific wording of a regulation does not reach.
8. Helmets and insurance have the same structure
Looking into bicycle rules in Japan, you keep running into the same split: things the Act decides uniformly for the whole country, and things each prefecture decides. Helmets and insurance are the clearest example.
Helmets are in the Act itself.
2. When a rider of a bicycle carries another person on that bicycle, the rider shall endeavour to have that person wear a bicycle helmet.
3. A person responsible for protecting a child or infant shall endeavour to have that child or infant wear a bicycle helmet when the child or infant rides a bicycle. Road Traffic Act, Article 63-11. Translation mine.
All three paragraphs end in "shall endeavour to." There is no penalty and it is not on the infraction list. A nationwide duty of effort is what a helmet is, in Japanese law.
Bicycle liability insurance, on the other hand, is decided by prefectural ordinance. According to the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, as of 1 April 2024, 34 prefectures require enrolment by ordinance and 10 make it a duty of effort. Whether it is mandatory for you depends on where you live.
Workplace rules may also require a helmet or insurance. That is a different layer from the law, and no amount of reading the statute will surface it. Separating which layer a rule comes from makes it easier to see what you are actually complying with.
Closing
Settle it with the one line "earphones are illegal" and this entire structure disappears. See the structure, and you can go and read the regulation for your own prefecture. Searching the prefecture's name together with 道路交通法施行細則 or 道路交通規則 will usually get you to its published statute collection.
What is written here is one way of looking at it. Texts get amended, and practice varies from place to place. If you notice something, or you have information about the text in the prefecture where you live, I would be glad to hear it through the contact form.
Sources
- Road Traffic Act (Act No. 105 of 1960) e-Gov (Japanese)
- National Police Agency, "Points to note in traffic guidance and enforcement regarding bicycle users using earphones or headphones (notice)," 25 July 2023 PDF (Japanese)
- National Police Agency Traffic Bureau, Bicycle Rulebook, September 2025 PDF (Japanese)
- National Police Agency, "The new system for bicycles" Bicycle portal / list of infractions covered PDF
- Tokyo Metropolitan Road Traffic Regulations Tokyo statute collection
- Hokkaido Road Traffic Act Enforcement Regulations Hokkaido Police PDF
- Aichi Prefecture Road Traffic Act Enforcement Regulations Aichi Police
- Kyoto Prefecture Road Traffic Regulations Kyoto statute collection
- Osaka Prefecture Road Traffic Regulations Osaka statute collection
- Hyogo Prefecture Road Traffic Act Enforcement Regulations Hyogo Police PDF
- Miyagi Prefecture Road Traffic Regulations Miyagi Police PDF
- Ehime Prefecture Road Traffic Regulations Ehime Police
- Saitama Prefecture Road Traffic Act Enforcement Regulations Saitama Prefecture
- Aichi Prefecture, "On-the-spot tickets introduced for bicycle traffic violations" fine schedule
- Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, "Promoting enrolment in bicycle liability insurance" status by prefecture