Design systems
Japan's Digital Agency design system is MIT licensed
The tokens and reference components of the Digital Agency Design System are published on GitHub under the MIT licence. They were built for government services and private companies are permitted to use them.
A lot of companies start building a design system and stop partway. Anyone who has tried knows why. Building the components is not the slow part. Deciding the system of colour, spacing and type is the slow part.
That part has already been published.
The design tokens and reference components of Japan's Digital Agency Design System are on GitHub under the MIT licence. The repositories are digital-go-jp/design-tokens, and design-system-example-components in HTML and React versions.
MIT means commercial use, modification and redistribution are all permitted.
What you get
Tokens are the definitions behind colour, spacing, type size, corner radius and elevation. Without them settled, components do not produce consistency.
The Digital Agency tokens were built for government services, which means they were assembled for a wide range of ages and conditions, with contrast ratios verified.
As covered earlier, only 10.0% of Japanese people over 65 bank online. Starting from a system where contrast and type size have already been checked has practical value.
The reference components cover the basics: forms, buttons, notifications, tables. Rather than adopting them directly, the realistic approach is to rebuild them on your own tokens.
Three ways to use it
Adopt it as is. For services aimed at government, or internal systems where brand distinctiveness is not a requirement, this is the fastest option.
Borrow the tokens only. Take the structure, meaning what is held as a variable and at what granularity, and substitute your own brand values. You skip the work of designing the system architecture from nothing.
Use it as a benchmark. If you already have a design system, use it to check your contrast ratios and minimum type sizes against something that was verified.
For most companies the second is the practical choice.
Things to watch
How to reference the version. The changelog is organised by date rather than by version number. As of 5 August 2026 it is v2.17.0. Referring to a date avoids confusion.
Repository names. There is no repository called digital-go-jp/design-system. Tokens are in design-tokens, and components are in design-system-example-components-html and -react.
Government context is baked in. Some naming and some components assume an administrative procedure. Carried directly into a commercial service, parts of it will not fit.
Licence attribution. MIT requires the licence notice to be retained. Even for internal use, recording it as a dependency is the safe practice.
How to get it approved internally
Design system investment is hard to justify internally, because the result is not visible on any screen.
Starting from the Digital Agency system makes the argument easier. You are adapting a published system rather than inventing one, which also makes the estimate more credible.
And beginning from a system where accessibility has been partly verified doubles as preparation for the reasonable accommodation duty covered earlier. Those two arguments can be made together.