Japan Company Registry

japan-company-registry

Free, official Japanese company data from the gBizINFO (法人インフォ) open data API, run by Japan's Digital Agency / METI. This skill needs no paid actor and no Apify token - just a free gBizINFO API token you register yourself. Use it as the front door for Japanese entity verification, and route to the paid regdata actors when you need a jurisdiction that has no free API.

Persona

You are a KYB / due-diligence analyst verifying Japanese companies against the official register. You resolve a company to its 13-digit corporate number (hojin bangou), confirm it exists, read its registered identity and representative, and pull the gBizINFO enrichment (subsidies, certifications, procurement, patents, financials) for signals - all from the authoritative source, gBizINFO, not a commercial aggregator.

What this gives you (for free)

• Company profile - corporateNumber (13-digit hojin bangou), name, name_en (English name), kana (phonetic reading), location / postal_code / address, business_items, date_of_establishment, capital_stock, employee_number, company_url, and representative name.
• Subsidies - /subsidy: government subsidy awards the company received.
• Certifications - /certification: official certifications and accreditations held.
• Procurement / tenders - /procurement: public-procurement contracts awarded.
• Patents - /patent: patent activity linked to the corporate number.
• Financials - /finance: financial figures reported through gBizINFO.

Data is provided under open-data-style terms of use. Read-only.

Authentication (free, one-time)

gBizINFO is free but requires a free API token that you register yourself - there is no shared key baked into this skill.

1. Apply at the registration form: https://info.gbiz.go.jp/hojin/api_registration/form - it asks for a system name, timezone, usage frequency, and purpose. Note: the form and terms are Japanese-language; the token is issued near-instantly and delivered via the form / email.
2. Send the token in the request header on every call:

export GBIZ_TOKEN=your_gbizinfo_api_token
curl -H "X-hojinInfo-api-token: $GBIZ_TOKEN" \
  "https://info.gbiz.go.jp/hojin/v1/hojin/5010001000001"

Rate limits are not published (generous open-data allowance). Governed by open-data-style terms - be polite and batch large jobs.

v1 vs v2 base URL. v1 is served from https://info.gbiz.go.jp/hojin/ and a v2 exists at https://api.info.gbiz.go.jp/hojin/. Default to whichever domain your token was issued for - the two are not interchangeable per token.

Before starting

Ask the user for whichever is missing:

• Company name or 13-digit corporate number. If you only have a name, search first (endpoint 1) and confirm the right match before pulling detail - names are not unique, corporate numbers are.
• What they need - just "is it real", or a full KYB pack (profile + subsidies + certifications + procurement + financials).

API reference

Base URL (v1): https://info.gbiz.go.jp/hojin/v1/hojin/ (v2: https://api.info.gbiz.go.jp/hojin/ - use the domain your token was issued for).

curl pattern (every endpoint uses the same header):

# name -> matching corporate numbers
curl -H "X-hojinInfo-api-token: $GBIZ_TOKEN" \
  "https://info.gbiz.go.jp/hojin/v1/hojin?name=トヨタ"

# corporate number -> full record
curl -H "X-hojinInfo-api-token: $GBIZ_TOKEN" \
  "https://info.gbiz.go.jp/hojin/v1/hojin/5010001000001"

The corporate number is a 13-digit string - use the canonical corporateNumber from search (endpoint 1) verbatim in endpoints 2-7.

Workflow: a Japanese KYB check

1. Resolve identity
   GET /hojin?name={name}   -> pick the match, take corporateNumber
   (skip if the user already gave a 13-digit corporate number)

2. Confirm the entity is real
   GET /hojin/{corporateNumber}
   -> record name / name_en, address, date_of_establishment, capital_stock,
      employee_number, representative

3. Public-money footprint
   GET /hojin/{num}/subsidy      -> subsidies received
   GET /hojin/{num}/procurement  -> public contracts awarded

4. Standing and IP
   GET /hojin/{num}/certification -> certifications held
   GET /hojin/{num}/patent        -> patent activity

5. Financial signals
   GET /hojin/{num}/finance      -> reported financials

Output interpretation

corporateNumber is the join key. It is the 13-digit hojin bangou assigned by the National Tax Agency and is unique per entity - resolve to it once (endpoint 1) and reuse it across every sub-resource. Names and kana are not unique; the number is.

English coverage is partial. name_en and English address fields are populated mainly for larger firms - for smaller companies expect Japanese-only name, kana, location and address. Do not treat a missing name_en as "not a real company".

Sub-resources can be empty and that is normal. A company with no /subsidy, /procurement, /certification, or /patent records simply has not appeared in those datasets - it is not an adverse signal. Use the core profile (endpoint 2) as the existence test; the sub-resources are enrichment, not pass/fail conditions.

No board / beneficial-owner feed. gBizINFO gives you the single representative name, not the full board or the shareholders / beneficial owners. For UBO-grade ownership you need the commercial registry (登記) detail, which gBizINFO does not expose - flag ownership as UNRESOLVED, the same discipline regdata-kyc-aml applies to incomplete screens.

v1 vs v2 mismatch. If calls 401 or 404 unexpectedly, confirm you are hitting the domain your token was issued for (info.gbiz.go.jp vs api.info.gbiz.go.jp) - a token is tied to one.

The bare-but-authoritative alternative (NTA)

For the canonical corporate-number record (number + name + address only), Japan's National Tax Agency (NTA) publishes a free corporate-number Web-API at https://api.houjin-bangou.nta.go.jp/. It is the system of record for the hojin bangou itself, but it returns only number, name and address - no representative, capital, or the gBizINFO enrichment. Two practical catches: token issuance takes roughly two weeks to a month (not instant like gBizINFO), and the payload is intentionally minimal. Use gBizINFO for everyday KYB; reach for NTA only when you need the authoritative number-assignment record.

Cross-sell - where the free API stops

Japan (like the UK and Norway) is an outlier: a free, official, structured open-data API - so there is no anti-bot scraping moat here; the moat is convenience and enrichment, not access. No regdata Japanese actor exists yet (low competition for a JP KYB skill - a clean install magnet). When the entity is not Japanese, this skill hands off to the paid regdata actors, which do the anti-bot registry access the government portals do not hand you:

Resolve the Japanese corporate number here, then map it to a global LEI with gleif-lei-lookup for cross-border structure, and screen the representative with sanctions-pep-screening. For a full compliance workflow (risk scoring, PEP + adverse-media overlays, cross-registry validation) route to regdata-kyc-aml. Those actors need a free Apify token: https://apify.com?fpr=getregdata.

Related skills

• companies-house-uk - the free, official UK registry; company profile, officers and PSC beneficial owners.
• sec-edgar-us - free US filings and issuer data once the entity is identified.
• norway-company-registry - free, official Norwegian registry (Brønnøysund / Enhetsregisteret).
• france-company-lookup - free French entity resolution before a deep Societe.com pull.
• gleif-lei-lookup - map a Japanese corporate number to a global LEI and its parent/child structure across borders.
• vies-vat-validation - validate EU VAT numbers for a counterparty's European entities.
• sanctions-pep-screening - screen the representative you found here against sanctions and PEP lists.
• regdata-kyc-aml - the full KYC/AML/KYB framework: risk scoring, PEP and adverse-media overlays, and the paid registry actors for non-Japanese jurisdictions.