Companies in Japan are recorded in the commercial register (商業登記) kept by the Legal Affairs Bureaus (法務局) of the Ministry of Justice. The standard document is the certificate of registered matters (登記事項証明書), which shows the company's trade name, head office, purpose, capital, shares, directors and representative director, and the history of changes. Every company also has a 13-digit corporate number (法人番号) issued by the National Tax Agency, which is free to look up.
Fill Easy returns the certificate of registered matters and the registry information extract as PDFs by email or through the API, with the source, retrieval time and request ID recorded on each result. Turnaround is confirmed with the order. Records are in Japanese, and an English summary can be ordered with the document.
Registry
商業・法人登記（法務局）
Ministry of Justice (法務省)
The commercial register is kept by the Legal Affairs Bureau for the district of the company's head office, under the Companies Act and the Commercial Registration Act. Certificates are requested at any bureau, by post, or online through the Ministry's Touki-net service, and the registered information can be viewed online through the Registry Information Provision Service (登記情報提供サービス) operated for the Ministry.
The register is open to anyone: a certificate of registered matters is issued without showing a reason, in four forms (current matters, full history, closed matters and representative matters). It records the company's trade name, head office, purpose, capital, total and issued shares, officers with the representative director's address, and the dates of each change. Shareholders are not registered. Shareholder information is held in the company's own shareholder register (株主名簿).
Corporate number (法人番号)
13 digits: a 1-digit check digit followed by a 12-digit base number, which for a registered corporation is the company registration number (会社法人等番号) recorded in the commercial register (a 4-digit registry office code, a 2-digit organisation code and a 6-digit serial number). The National Tax Agency assigns it to every registered corporation and publishes the number, name and head office address on its Corporate Number Publication Site. It does not change when the company changes name or address.
| Document | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Certificate of registered matters, all current and historical matters (履歴事項全部証明書) | Trade name, head office, date of incorporation, purpose, method of public notice, capital, total shares authorised and issued, share transfer restrictions, directors, representative director with address, auditors, and changes recorded from 1 January three years before the request to the present. This is the version banks and counterparties usually ask for. |
| Certificate of registered matters, current matters (現在事項全部証明書) | The same registered matters as currently in force, without the history of changes. |
| Certificate of closed registered matters (閉鎖事項全部証明書) | Matters closed from the register, for a dissolved or merged company or for changes older than the current certificate covers. |
| Certificate of representative matters (代表者事項証明書) | The name and address of the representative director and the authority to represent the company, used to confirm signing authority. |
| Registry information extract (登記情報) | The full registered matters (全部事項) viewed online through the Registry Information Provision Service, as a PDF without the registrar's certification, for a quick check before ordering a certificate. The service does not offer the current-matters, representative-matters or summary forms. |
| Corporate number record | The company's corporate number, registered name and head office address, with the history of name and address changes, from the National Tax Agency's publication site. |
No. The commercial register records directors, capital and shares but not who holds them. Shareholders are kept in the company's own shareholder register, which only shareholders and creditors may inspect. Fill Easy can request a shareholder list from the company where the client has its cooperation.
The certified extract of a company's entry in the commercial register, issued by the Legal Affairs Bureau. The full-history version (履歴事項全部証明書) shows the current registered matters and the changes over roughly the past three years; the current version (現在事項全部証明書) shows only what is in force now.
The 法人番号 is a 13-digit number the National Tax Agency assigns to every registered corporation: a check digit followed by the 12-digit company registration number from the commercial register. The number, name and address are published free on the Corporate Number Publication Site.
Yes. The commercial register is public and a certificate is issued to anyone who requests it, at a counter, by post or online, for a fee of 600 yen on a paper request, 520 yen requested online and posted, or 490 yen requested online and collected at a counter (Ministry of Justice fees from 1 April 2025).
The register and its certificates are in Japanese only. Fill Easy returns the Japanese certificate as a PDF and, on request, an English summary of the registered matters.