Japan Liquor License Leads & Signals

Research potential Japanese alcohol wholesale and ecommerce partners using official liquor-license events. Built for overseas alcohol brands, distributors and Japan-market-entry teams that need to check a business's published license category before deciding whether to investigate a partnership.

Inspect the free, dated partner-research CSV and step-by-step guide. No account or Actor run is needed to inspect the static sample. It contains corporate records only, with no contact details or street addresses.

Try without choosing Japanese filters: keep Hokkaido and the 10-result limit, then click Start. The prefilled historical month and ecommerce, wholesale and import/export filters are under Customize. This demo reproduces July 2026 records; it is not a live buyer list. Expected PPE price: $0.12 for one parsed PDF and 10 results.

Run the 10-record demo — $0.12 · View the free CSV — no account or run

Can I try it again? Yes, while you have enough Apify credit, but every Actor run uses the published PPE pricing again. Available account credits may cover a run; this is not an unlimited free trial. Viewing the static CSV or a saved result does not start another run. Check your credit before clicking Start.

Example: inspect the output before running

These three records appeared in the 2026-07 Hokkaido publication, published 2026-08-31 and rechecked on 2026-10-10. The English event labels below describe the official processing categories.

Corporate number	Official event	Relevant licence	Effective date
4011001009265	Incorporation	Wholesale	2026-07-01
3430001026519	Relocation	Online sales	2026-07-08
8430001089379	Licence-condition change	Import/export wholesale	2026-07-08

Inspect the official NTA PDF. Each full Dataset row also contains the published business name and address, Japanese licence categories, an English summary, publication date and source link.

These are licence events, including changes to existing businesses. They are not necessarily newly founded companies, pre-opening leads or verified buyers.

Turn the export into a partner-research shortlist

1. Choose your channel. Use import_export_license and wholesale_license for overseas-brand/distributor research, or online_sales_license for ecommerce-operator research.
2. Keep the evidence columns. Export the corporate number, published business name, prefecture, original license/processing categories, effective date, publication date and PDF link. Leave missing corporate numbers blank; do not guess them from names.
3. Review the event, not just the category. A relocation or relaxed condition can concern a long-established business. A license is not evidence that the business wants a new supplier or partner.
4. Record your own review separately. Check the original PDF, assess category and geographic fit, and record an internal decision. Do not overwrite the official fields with a score or sales claim.

The public sample shows three incorporated businesses in the July 2026 Hokkaido publication: wholesale, online sales and import/export wholesale. It is an illustration of the workflow, not a complete nationwide shortlist or a current-license certificate. Rechecked directly against the official source on 2026-10-10: the pinned historical demo returned 10 rows from one successfully parsed PDF (49 source rows), with no failed publications. At existing PPE prices that scope is $0.12; this was direct-source release QA, not a customer run.

Problem

Japanese liquor-sales licensing records are distributed across monthly NTA PDFs and regional pages. Finding commercially relevant changes requires checking Japanese licence and processing labels across those sources.

What you get

A structured Dataset of online-sales, wholesale, import/export and material licence changes. Export CSV, Excel or JSON and assess the businesses in your own research workflow. One official row is emitted once; eventTypes retains every applicable signal, while eventType identifies the primary event.

Who it is for

• Alcohol importers and distributors researching Japanese counterparties.
• Ecommerce, fulfilment, packaging and logistics providers studying licensed operators.
• B2B market-research and Japan-market-entry teams.

Email addresses, telephone numbers and contact enrichment are not included. A corporate number is returned only if printed in the official source.

Quick start: preview up to 10 records

{
  "prefectures": ["北海道"],
  "sourceMonth": "2026-07",
  "signalTypes": ["online_sales_license", "wholesale_license", "import_export_license"],
  "includeGeneralRetailNewLicenses": false,
  "maxSignals": 10
}

1. Keep the prefilled Hokkaido / 10-result demo and click Start without changing it. If you have used the Actor before, click Restore example input to replace your saved input with the demo.
2. Open Dataset and inspect the businesses, licence categories and official PDF links.
3. Check Run coverage summary for parsed publications, emitted rows and any failures.
4. For your own current research, open Customize, clear sourceMonth, and choose the prefectures you need. Keep 10 results for the first check; increase the limit only after reviewing scope, pricing and available credit.

The demo deliberately uses one retained historical publication to make the example reproducible. NTA retention is limited, so it must be refreshed when that source expires. The preview stops at the limit and is not full coverage. With multiple prefectures, source discovery order, rather than your input order, determines which is processed first. Current publications and custom filters may return fewer records or no matches; do not treat the historical demo as current coverage.

How to find Japanese alcohol wholesalers and ecommerce operators

Select wholesale_license, online_sales_license and import_export_license to identify records carrying those licence categories. These filters can include a relocation or condition change at an existing business. Inspect the processing category and eventTypes to understand why a record appears.

Set sourceMonth to a retained month, such as 2026-07, to reproduce a historical publication. Clear it for each prefecture's newest available month. The source is monthly; running it daily does not make the publication newer. Compare corporate number, location, event, effective date and source PDF with your prior export before adding a repeated record to a research list.

Setting	Purpose
Prefectures	Hokkaido is prefilled for the demo. English labels keep the original Japanese API values. Blank selects all 47 and can increase scan fees.
Source month	July 2026 is prefilled under Customize. Clear it for the newest publication per prefecture.
Signal types	The preview selects ecommerce, wholesale and import/export. Other material changes are also available.
General-retail-only new licences	Off for the focused preview; enable for broader retail research.
Maximum results	10 in the first-use form; up to 10,000 for larger jobs.

Why this data is hard to collect manually

The national index links to 12 regional tax bureaux, prefecture pages and monthly PDFs. Japanese processing labels distinguish a new licence from incorporation, transfer, relocation or condition changes. The Actor extracts these facts and preserves the evidence link.

Official source

National Tax Agency liquor-sales-license publication index. Regional lists are normally updated monthly and retain historical publications for a limited period.

Outputs include source attribution and processing disclosure under the NTA terms of use. Some source records identify sole proprietors. Use the data for an appropriate research purpose and follow the rules that apply to your downstream use. The Actor makes no legal determination or assessment of buying intent.

Pricing example

Example	Calculation	Price
1 parsed PDF, 10 results	$0.02 + 10 × $0.01	$0.12
3 parsed PDFs, 10 results	3 × $0.02 + 10 × $0.01	$0.16
3 parsed PDFs, no matching results	3 × $0.02	$0.06

Only successfully parsed PDFs and emitted records are billed. PDFs skipped after reaching the result limit are not counted. A parsed PDF can still incur its scan fee when filters produce no matches. The Pricing tab is the current authority; platform usage is currently included.