Japan Strengthening Consumer Education for High Schoolers

June 13, 2018

Tokyo- Japan's Consumer Affairs Agency is strengthening consumer education for high school students as the country is set to lower the adult age from the current 20 to 18.

A Civil Code revision to lower the adult age passed parliament on Wednesday. The new adult age will be implemented on April 1, 2022.

Under the revised code, 18- and 19-year-olds will be able to take out loans and conclude contracts for other services without consent from their parents.

Individuals in this age group have been protected by special cancellation rights that allow minors to annul contracts to which they did not get consent from their parents.

In a bid to prevent new adults from becoming victims of scams, a bill to amend the consumer contract law was enacted in this year's ordinary Diet session.

The revised law added clauses allowing the cancellations of contracts taking advantage of people's romantic feelings and worries about employment and marriage that are signed by consumers with little social experience.

In order to strengthen consumer education for new adults, the agency created a booklet for high school students explaining credit card payment systems and how a contract is established and can be canceled.

The agency hopes to distribute the booklet to all high schools in the country for use in class by fiscal 2020, in cooperation with the education ministry and other entities.

In fiscal 2017, which ended in March this year, all high schools in the western prefecture of Tokushima started classes with the booklet.

The study material will be used in eight prefectures in fiscal 2018.

In March, a debriefing meeting on lessons using the booklet was held in Naruto, Tokushima.

"I will think hard so I don't lose money," a student said in feedback submitted to the meeting.

"The material covers what children need to know in order to live, in a way that is easy to understand," a teacher who attended the event said. Jiji Press