Article

Two deadlines

One ticket, two clocks, two different days to start counting from.

[ 画像 ]int-kiji-kigen4:3

Read alongside

One ticket, two clocks, two different days to start counting from.

The two tickets

Blue ticket, red ticket — the colour IS the legal category

aokippu 青切符 (blue)

hansokukin 反則金

Road Traffic Act, Art. 125 onward (the traffic-violation notification system)

An administrative track. Pay the stated amount within the deadline and no prosecution follows. It is not a criminal record.

akakippu 赤切符 (red)

bakkin 罰金

Road Traffic Act, Chapter 8 (penal provisions)

A criminal track. A court sets the amount within the statutory range. There is no fixed schedule to read it off.

The surprise

Why one ticket has two deadlines at all

Most penalty systems have one deadline: something happens, a clock starts, you have until a date. A Japanese blue ticket has two, and they are not a main deadline with a grace period attached.

They exist because two separate documents are involved, issued at different moments by different parts of the process, and the Act attaches a window to each. The windows are different lengths, they start on different days, and they do different jobs.

This is the single most common place for a reader to go wrong, and the mistake is not carelessness. Counting the longer window from the day you were stopped is the natural thing to do, and it produces a date that is simply wrong.

The first document

The roadside citation, and the optional window

The citation — 告知, kokuchi — is the slip handed over at the stop. From the day after it, a window of 7 days runs.

What that window offers is a PROVISIONAL payment: something a driver MAY do, before the formal notification has issued at all. It is an option the Act makes available, not a requirement, and not a step anyone is failing by ignoring.

Because it is optional, letting it pass is not the same kind of event as missing the payment deadline. Nothing is lost from the main route by not using it.

The second document

The written notification, and the window that matters

The notification — 通告, tsūkoku — arrives separately, after the citation. From the day after THAT document, a window of 10 days runs.

This is the payment window in the ordinary sense. It is the one that determines whether the matter is concluded through the notification system, and it is what the rest of this site means when it refers to "the deadline" without qualification.

Note what it is counted from. Not the stop, not the date of the violation, not the day the slip was written — the day after the notification was received. The two documents can be separated by a meaningful interval, and the window does not begin until the second one lands.

The shared rule

Both windows count from the day after

Each provision counts from the day AFTER its triggering event, not from the event itself. The day the document is received is not day one.

This is a small mechanical detail that decides the answer by a day, which is precisely the sort of margin that matters when the consequence of being late is leaving the administrative route entirely.

The calculator on this site applies that rule to both windows, and takes two separate date fields rather than one, because one field cannot produce both answers.

And one rule that binds both

Whichever window applies, the amount is not divisible

The Cabinet Order states that a hansokukin may not be paid in instalments, with no exception, no hardship provision and no discretion for whoever receives it.

So neither window is a window for paying part of the amount. A part-payment does not reduce what is owed or buy time — it is not a smaller payment but a payment the provision does not recognise, and the deadline continues to run as if nothing had been paid.

Two clocks, then, and one indivisible sum. Working out which clock you are on is the first question; the answer to the second is the same either way.

What this system does not cover

What this site does not answer, and why

These are content, not gaps. Each is a bounded statement that a NAMED instrument does not contain something — never a claim that "the law is silent".

Death and injury by driving is a different Act

The Act on Punishment of Acts Causing Death or Injury by Driving was amended by the same Act that amended the Road Traffic Act (Act No. 52 of 2026), but its offences and penalties are its own. This site has not transcribed them. A case involving death or injury is outside this calculator.

自動車運転死傷行為処罰法, in force 2026-07-21