Selling into Japan

Japan’s Pharmaceuticals and Medical Devices Act separates cosmetics from a second class of quasi-pharmaceutical products, defined as items with mild effects on the human body used for certain listed purposes, and a person who intends to market a quasi-pharmaceutical product must obtain the approval of the Minister of Health, Labour and Welfare for each item.

Deodorant, anti-hair-loss and depilatory products cross a legal line in Japan that they do not cross in the United States, so a range that ships as one catalogue at home arrives as two regulatory workstreams with different lead times.

Japan’s PMD Act treats advertising, describing or circulating statements that lead to the false impression that a physician or other person has certified the efficacy, effects or performance of a cosmetic as falling within its prohibition on false or exaggerated advertisement, and that prohibition binds any person rather than only the seller.

The dermatologist endorsement is the single most portable device in Western beauty marketing and it is the one that does not port here, and because the rule reaches any person it reaches the affiliate and the paid creator too.