What a Japanese corporate registry document actually contains

The certificate of registered matters — tōkibo tōhon, or more precisely tōki jikō shōmeisho — is the authoritative record of a Japanese company. It is public, anyone may request any company’s copy, and it costs ¥600 at a counter. It is also two pages of dense legal Japanese in a fixed layout that tells you almost nothing until you know where to look.

This is a guide to reading one: what each block contains, and which parts are actually informative about the company you are about to deal with.

Which version should you request?

The full historical version, unless you have a specific reason not to. The difference matters more than the price.

The historical version is the default request and the one worth reading. Struck-through entries remain visible, so you can see that the company was called something else, had a different director, or sat at a different address — and when it changed. A current-matters certificate hides exactly that.

What is in the identity block?

Company number, registered name, head office address, and the method by which the company publishes official notices.

The registered name (商号) is the legal one, including whether 株式会社 sits before or after — that position is part of the name, not a formatting choice. The head office address (本店) is where the company is legally domiciled, which is not necessarily where it operates; a company registered at an accountant’s office or a founder’s home address is common and not in itself suspicious, but it is worth knowing.

The method of public notice (公告をする方法) tells you where the company says it publishes statutory announcements — the Official Gazette, a named newspaper, or electronic notice at a URL. If it says electronic notice, that URL is where any published accounts should be, which is the cheapest possible route to a financial figure.

What does the incorporation date actually tell you?

The date the company was registered, which frequently differs from the founding date on the website — and the gap is informative in both directions.

Japanese businesses often trade for years as sole proprietorships before incorporating, so a site saying “founded 1962” alongside a registration date of 1987 is entirely ordinary. That is a company converting an established business into a corporation.

The reverse pattern deserves attention: a recent incorporation date attached to claims of decades of history, with no explanation. So does a long-dormant company that suddenly changed its name, its directors and its registered purposes within a few months of contacting you.

Why do the registered purposes matter?

Because they are an itemised list of what the company registered itself to do, and they date-stamp when each was added.

The purposes block (目的) is usually a numbered list of five to twenty activities. Japanese companies tend to register broadly, so a long list is normal and does not mean the company does all of it. What is worth checking is whether the business they are proposing to you appears at all — and if it does, whether it was added recently.

A trading company that added “import and export of foodstuffs” to its purposes last quarter, and is now offering to import your food product, is not necessarily a problem. It is a fact you would want to know before assuming they have done this before.

What does the capital figure mean in Japan?

Less than it does in many countries, but the round numbers still carry signals.

Since the 2006 Companies Act there has been no minimum capital requirement, so a company can be incorporated with ¥1. In practice you will see clusters: ¥1,000,000 to ¥3,000,000 for small owner-operated companies; ¥10,000,000, which is a common threshold; and ¥50,000,000 or ¥100,000,000 for larger firms, partly because certain tax and legal treatments change at those levels.

Capital is not cash in the bank and it is not a solvency measure. What it does indicate is scale of intent, and the history is again the interesting part: a capital increase shows investment, and a capital reduction — particularly a large one — is worth asking about.

How do you read the directors block?

Look at who is listed, who has been struck through, and how often that has changed.

The register lists directors (取締役) and, separately, representative directors (代表取締役) — the ones with authority to bind the company. Only representative directors have their home addresses recorded, which is why the register is a more revealing document than people expect.

What to look for: a single representative director is normal for a small company and tells you who you are really dealing with. Rapid turnover of representative directors is unusual and worth understanding. A change of every director at once, combined with a name change, generally means the company changed hands — the legal entity is continuous, but the people and often the business are not.

Directors in Japan serve fixed terms and must be re-registered when reappointed, so you will see routine re-appointment entries. Those are administrative, not events.

What is not in the register?

Anything about performance. This is the most common misunderstanding.

The register carries no revenue, no profit, no employee count, no customer list and no assets. It establishes that the company exists, who controls it, what it registered to do and how those facts have changed. It says nothing whatsoever about whether the company is any good, or solvent.

It also lags reality. Changes must be registered, generally within two weeks of the event, but the register reflects what has been filed — not what is true today.

How do you actually get one?

From any Legal Affairs Bureau, or online. You do not need a relationship with the company and you do not need to state why.

The commercial register is genuinely public. Under the fees effective 1 April 2025, a certificate costs ¥600 at the counter, ¥520 requested online and posted, or ¥490 requested online and collected in person. There is also the Registration Information Provision Service, which returns the same content as an immediate PDF for ¥330 as of 1 April 2026 — but with no seal, so it is information rather than evidence.

The practical obstacles for a foreign company are that the online request systems are Japanese-only, some require software or an account tied to a Japanese address, and postal delivery goes to a Japanese address. None of this is difficult for someone in Japan and all of it is awkward from outside.

What does a careful read look like?

Six questions, in order:

1. Does the registered name and address match what the company told you?
2. How long has it existed, and does that square with what it claims?
3. Do the registered purposes cover the business being proposed, and when were they added?
4. What has changed in the last three years — name, address, directors, capital?
5. Who is the representative director, and how long have they been in post?
6. Where does the company say it publishes notices, and is anything there?

Most companies come through this cleanly, which is the point: it is cheap to establish that there is nothing odd, and expensive to discover later that there was.

When is it worth having someone do this for you?

When you need the answer rather than the document.

The certificate itself is inexpensive. The cost is in requesting it from outside Japan, then reading legal Japanese closely enough to notice that a purpose was added last quarter or that every director changed in the same month. Those are the findings that matter, and they are not visible to a translation of the page.

Our company verification service starts at $290: we obtain the certificate, read the history, and send you a short report in English saying what it shows and what it does not. If you would rather have the raw document translated and interpret it yourself, we can do that too — say so when you ask.