e-Stat Japan Government Statistics API Scraper

Pull official Japanese government statistics from the e-Stat API — Japan's unified national statistics portal aggregating data from all major ministries. Covers 6,000+ survey tables across population, GDP, labour, trade, agriculture, and health, with bilingual Japanese/English labels. Registration for a free API key takes under two minutes at e-stat.go.jp/api — there is no cost and no credit card required.

What does the e-Stat Japan Statistics Scraper do?

The scraper operates in two modes. In catalog mode, it searches the statistical table index by keyword, subject area, or publishing ministry, returning metadata you can use to discover table IDs. In data mode, it fetches the actual data cells for one or more table IDs you specify. Wareki (Japanese imperial era) dates are automatically converted to Gregorian equivalents so you don't need to handle era arithmetic downstream.

Example end-to-end workflow: Population by prefecture

1. Run in catalog mode with searchWord: "population" and lang: "E" to find tables. Look for a record with stats_name_en matching the Census or Population Estimates survey — copy its stats_data_id (e.g. 0003448237).
2. Run in data mode with statsDataIds: ["0003448237"]. Each output record is one data cell: a prefecture (area_label_en), a year (time_gregorian), a category label (cat01_label_en), and a numeric value.

What data does it extract?

Catalog mode output fields:

Field	Description
stats_data_id	Unique e-Stat table ID (use in data mode)
stats_name / stats_name_en	Survey series name (JP/EN)
statistics_name	Specific table name within the survey
title / title_en	Full table title (JP/EN)
government_org / government_org_en	Publishing ministry or agency (JP/EN)
cycle	Survey frequency (annual, quarterly, monthly, one-time)
survey_date	Survey period code (e.g. 202400)
open_date	Date the table was published (YYYY-MM-DD)
small_area	True if the table contains municipality-level data
overall_total	Total number of data cells in the table

Data mode output fields:

Field	Description
area_code / area_label / area_label_en	JIS area code and label (prefecture or municipality)
time_code / time_label / time_gregorian	Time dimension — raw label plus ISO 8601 Gregorian date
cat01_code / cat01_label / cat01_label_en	Category dimension 1 (JP/EN)
cat02_code / cat02_label / cat02_label_en	Category dimension 2 (JP/EN)
unit / unit_en	Measurement unit (JP/EN)
value	Numeric data value
annotation	Annotation flag (e.g. * for suppressed, - for not applicable)

How to use it

Required: A free appId from e-stat.go.jp/api. Registration is free and takes under two minutes — name, email, and intended use. Paste your key into the appId field.

Catalog search example:

{
  "appId": "YOUR_APP_ID",
  "mode": "catalog",
  "searchWord": "population",
  "lang": "E",
  "statsField": "02",
  "maxItems": 20
}

Data fetch example:

{
  "appId": "YOUR_APP_ID",
  "mode": "data",
  "statsDataIds": ["0003448237"],
  "lang": "E",
  "maxItems": 1000
}

Field	Type	Description
appId	string	Your e-Stat API application ID
mode	string	catalog or data
searchWord	string	Keyword search (catalog mode)
statsDataIds	array	Table IDs to fetch (data mode)
lang	string	E for English, J for Japanese
statsField	string	Subject area code: 02 = Population, 03 = Labour, 04 = Agriculture
governmentOrg	string	Ministry code filter (e.g. 00200 for Statistics Bureau)
maxItems	integer	Maximum records to return

Use cases

• Academic and policy research — Pull multi-year prefecture-level population, employment, or GDP data for quantitative analysis without manually downloading CSV files from the e-Stat web UI.
• Business intelligence — Track Japanese industry statistics (production indices, trade flows, corporate survey data) for market entry or competitive analysis.
• Demographic modeling — Use municipality-level (small_area: true) census tables to build population projections by age cohort and geography.
• Automated reporting pipelines — Schedule recurring data pulls for indicators that update monthly or quarterly (e.g. labour force survey, consumer price index).
• Cross-ministry data joining — Catalog mode lets you discover tables from multiple ministries (MHLW, MoF, MAFF) and pull them with consistent bilingual field names for cross-dataset joins.

FAQ

Is the e-Stat data free to use? Yes. e-Stat publishes official Japanese government statistics under a permissive open-data policy. The API key is free. Check the e-Stat terms of service for commercial use conditions.

What formats can I export the data in? Apify stores results as a dataset you can download as JSON, CSV, or Excel directly from the Apify console or via the API.

What is the statsField code for my topic? Common codes: 02 Population/Households, 03 Labour/Wages, 04 Agriculture/Forestry/Fisheries, 05 Mining/Manufacturing, 06 Commerce/Services, 07 Trade/International Balance, 08 National Accounts/GDP.