Japan e-Gov Law Search (Law API v2)

List Japanese laws by type, run a full-text keyword search across the statute book, or download any law's full text as clean, structured 編/章/条/項 articles — in JSON, with no API key.

This Actor is a thin, polite client for the official e-Gov 法令API バージョン2 (laws.e-gov.go.jp/api/2) operated by the デジタル庁 (Digital Agency) behind e-Gov 法令検索. It is not a scraper — it calls the documented government JSON API, needs no registration and no API key, and returns each result as a flat record with a legal envelope (source / sourceUrl / license / retrievedAt) on every item.

The index of laws is a directory; the value here is get_law: point it at a law and it downloads the official full text and flattens it into one record per article — the statute, structured, not just a link.

Unofficial tool. Independently built and maintained. Not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to the Digital Agency or the Government of Japan. Law data is provided under the 政府標準利用規約（第2.0版） (Government Standard Terms of Use 2.0), which permits commercial reuse with attribution; the required 出典 statement 「出典：e-Gov法令検索（デジタル庁）」 is embedded in the license of every record. The text of a law is not subject to copyright (著作権法第13条). Provided for reference only — this is not legal advice; confirm the accuracy and currency of any law against the official e-Gov Law Search.

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Quick start — verified input

Copy, paste, run. This exact input is verified on the platform (SUCCEEDED, items > 0):

{
  "mode": "search",
  "keyword": "個人情報保護"
}

Running with no input at all also works (same defaults). To download a law's full text, take a lawId from the search output and run {"mode": "get_law", "lawId": "415AC0000000057"}; to list all statutes of a type run {"mode": "list", "lawType": "Act"}.

No API key required

The e-Gov Law API v2 is public and unauthenticated. Pick a mode and run. The Actor keeps a single connection, spaces requests ≥ 1.2 s apart, backs off exponentially on HTTP 429/5xx, and fails visibly on a persistent block — it never attempts rate-limit evasion.

License, source-display obligation & the law-text point

• e-Gov law data is offered under the 政府標準利用規約（第2.0版）: 出典表示を条件に、複製・公衆送信・翻訳・改変・商用利用が認められています (attribution required, commercial reuse permitted).
• The credit 「出典：e-Gov法令検索（デジタル庁）」 is embedded verbatim in the license field of every record. If you display or republish the data, keep that credit visible.
• The text of statutes themselves (憲法・法律・政令・省令 等) is excluded from copyright by Article 13 of the Copyright Act (著作権法第13条 — 憲法その他の法令), so full-text reproduction and redistribution are free.
• This tool is for reference. Law data can lag or be mid-amendment. The authoritative source is the official e-Gov Law Search; verify anything you rely on there. Nothing here is legal advice.

Three modes

1. list — law index by type (e-Gov /laws)

Give a lawType (Constitution / Act / CabinetOrder / ImperialOrder / MinisterialOrdinance / Rule / Misc) and get back matching laws: lawId, lawNum (法令番号), lawName, kana reading, promulgation & enforcement dates, category, current/repealed status, and an e-Gov deep link. lawType is required (a targeted index, not a full-corpus dump).

2. search — full-text keyword search (e-Gov /keyword)

Give a keyword (optionally narrowed by lawType) and get back matching laws, each with the matched snippets (matches[] — the position and the plain text where your term appears). The <span> highlight markup from the API is stripped.

3. get_law — download a law's full text (e-Gov /law_data)

Give a lawId (e.g. 415AC0000000057, 個人情報保護法) — or a lawNum like 平成十五年法律第五十七号 — and the Actor downloads the official full text and returns one record per article/provision, preserving the hierarchy: partTitle (編), chapterTitle (章), sectionTitle (節), articleCaption (条見出し), articleTitle (条番号), and paragraphs[] (項) in document order. 附則 (supplementary provisions) are flagged with supplementary: true. maxItems bounds how many articles a single run emits.

Sample output

search (one hit):

{
  "lawId": "322AC0000000073",
  "lawNum": "昭和二十二年法律第七十三号",
  "lawName": "会計検査院法",
  "lawNameKana": "かいけいけんさいんほう",
  "lawType": "Act",
  "promulgationDate": "1947-04-19",
  "enforcementDate": "2025-06-01",
  "category": "行政組織",
  "status": "現行",
  "lawUrl": "https://laws.e-gov.go.jp/law/322AC0000000073",
  "matches": [
    { "position": "toc", "text": "第五節　会計検査院情報公開・個人情報保護審査会" }
  ],
  "source": "e-Gov法令検索（デジタル庁）/ e-Gov Law Search (Digital Agency, Japan)",
  "sourceUrl": "https://laws.e-gov.go.jp/",
  "license": "出典：e-Gov法令検索（デジタル庁）… 政府標準利用規約（第2.0版）… 著作権法第13条 … Unofficial … not legal advice.",
  "retrievedAt": "2026-08-26T12:00:00.000Z"
}

get_law (one article):

{
  "lawId": "411AC0000000127",
  "lawNum": "平成十一年法律第百二十七号",
  "lawName": "国旗及び国歌に関する法律",
  "supplementary": false,
  "partTitle": null,
  "chapterTitle": null,
  "sectionTitle": null,
  "articleCaption": "（国旗）",
  "articleTitle": "第一条",
  "articleIndex": 1,
  "paragraphs": [
    { "num": null, "text": "国旗は、日章旗とする。" },
    { "num": "２", "text": "日章旗の制式は、別記第一のとおりとする。" }
  ],
  "source": "e-Gov法令検索（デジタル庁）/ e-Gov Law Search (Digital Agency, Japan)",
  "sourceUrl": "https://laws.e-gov.go.jp/",
  "license": "出典：e-Gov法令検索（デジタル庁）… 政府標準利用規約 … 著作権法第13条 … not legal advice.",
  "retrievedAt": "2026-08-26T12:00:00.000Z"
}

Input reference

Field	Mode	Description
mode	all	search (default), list, or get_law. Case-insensitive; a bare lawId switches to get_law, a bare lawType to list.
keyword	search	Free-text query (e-Gov keyword), Japanese, e.g. 個人情報保護. Required in search mode.
lawType	list / search	Constitution / Act / CabinetOrder / ImperialOrder / MinisterialOrdinance / Rule / Misc (Japanese 法律, 政令 … also accepted). Required in list mode.
lawId	get_law	e-Gov law id, e.g. 415AC0000000057. A law_revision_id also works.
lawNum	get_law	法令番号 in kanji numerals, e.g. 平成十五年法律第五十七号 (used when lawId is absent).
maxItems	all	Max records, 1–100000 — laws (list/search) or articles (get_law). Default 1000.
maxApiRequests	all	Hard per-run upstream request cap, 1–25 (default 10).
proxyConfiguration	all	Optional Apify proxy; default is a direct connection.

Values are validated before the first request; an invalid value fails the run immediately with a message that lists the valid values.

Common input mistakes

Mistake	Correct
{"mode": "list"} with no lawType	add "lawType": "Act" (法律) — or use "mode": "search" with a keyword
"lawType": "PrimeMinisterOrder" / "Cabinet Order"	one of the seven values, e.g. "CabinetOrder" (spaces/case are tolerated; other names are not)
{"mode": "search", "lawId": "415AC0000000057"}	"mode": "get_law" — lawId is a get_law field
"lawId": "個人情報保護法" (a law name)	search for it first: {"mode": "search", "keyword": "個人情報保護"} → use the lawId from the output
"lawNum": "Act No. 57 of 2003"	the Japanese form: "平成十五年法律第五十七号" — or use lawId
"maxItems": "all"	a number, e.g. 1000

Empty results?

A run that finds nothing completes with 0 items and a warning in the log (not a failure). Typical causes: an English or romaji keyword (the full-text index is Japanese — try 労働時間 instead of working hours), a lawType filter that excludes every match (e.g. Constitution with an unrelated keyword), or a get_law target that is an image-only / attachment-only law (no article text). Broaden the keyword or drop the lawType filter and retry.

Notes & limits

• category is not a filter. The e-Gov v2 /laws endpoint ignores a category parameter (it returns the full corpus regardless), so this Actor does not expose it as a filter — to avoid a silently-ignored option. The law's category is still reported in the category output field.
• search paginates by matched sentence, so a law with several hits may appear more than once across a large maxItems; dedupe on lawId if you only want distinct laws.
• get_law emits provisions in document order. Table-like content (号/欄) is concatenated into the paragraph text. Attached files (別表 images, PDFs) are not downloaded.
• A very large law can exceed maxItems; raise it (and maxApiRequests isn't consumed per article — one law is one request) to capture the whole text. Truncation is logged.

Disclaimer

1. Unofficial — not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to the Digital Agency or the Government of Japan.
2. Public data, your responsibility — data is provided under the 政府標準利用規約（第2.0版）. Keep the 出典 credit visible when you republish. The text of laws is excluded from copyright (著作権法第13条).
3. Not legal advice / verify against the source — provided for reference only. Law data may lag or be mid-amendment; the accuracy and currency of any law must be confirmed against the official e-Gov Law Search.
4. Polite by design — one connection, ≥ 1.2 s spacing, exponential backoff, a hard request budget, and a visible failure on a persistent block. No rate-limit evasion.

Search terms

japan law api, japanese laws english, e-gov laws data, japan legal database, japanese statutes api, japan law full text, e-gov法令検索 api, japanese law search, japan act text json, japanese legislation data, 法令 api, japan government law data