🏛️ Japan Houjin-Bangou Corporate Registry — NTA Official Company Lookup

Search Japan's National Tax Agency 法人番号 (Corporate Number) public registry — 5M+ active Japanese corporations with official corporate number, kanji name, katakana phonetic name, English name, prefecture, head-office city, full address, corporate type, and active/dissolved status. NTA Web-API v4. CC BY 4.0 open data. Polite-bot UA.

The Japanese government's open-data 法人番号 system is the source-of-record for every registered Japanese corporation, public body, association, foundation, and overseas firm with a JP branch. It is run by the National Tax Agency (国税庁) under the Corporate Number Act (Act No. 67 of 2013) and is explicitly CC BY 4.0 licensed — no commercial-use restriction.

This actor wraps the NTA Houjin-Bangou Web-API v4 with sensible defaults, prefecture/category filters, and a curated fallback set so you can build pipelines, run KYC sweeps, or prototype B2B sales lists without waiting on credentials.

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⚡ What you get

For every Japanese corporation returned, the actor pushes a normalized record with:

• corporate_number — 13-digit 法人番号 (the canonical Japanese corporate identifier; reused across NTA, METI gBizINFO, and J-PlatPat IP filings)
• company_name — registered 商号 in Japanese kanji/kana (source-of-record name)
• company_name_kana — phonetic katakana name (フリガナ), useful for transliteration / fuzzy match
• company_name_en — registered English name (only if the company joined NTA's 英語表記登録 program)
• prefecture — romanized prefecture (e.g. Tokyo, Osaka, Aichi)
• prefecture_jp — Japanese prefecture (e.g. 東京都, 大阪府, 愛知県)
• city — head-office city/ward (e.g. 港区, 豊田市, 中央区)
• address — full registered head-office address
• corporate_type — normalized: kabushiki_kaisha (株式会社), godo_kaisha (合同会社 / Japan LLC), yugen_kaisha (有限会社), gomei_kaisha, goshi_kaisha, ippan_shadan_houjin (社団/財団法人), foreign_corporation (外国会社), public_corporation, other
• category — higher-level bucket: corporation, foreign_corporation, LLC, non_profit, public
• status — active or dissolved (NTA close-date + close-cause flags rolled up)
• registration_date — ISO YYYY-MM-DD date the corporate number was assigned (法人番号指定年月日)
• last_change_date — ISO YYYY-MM-DD date of NTA's most recent update for this row (商号変更/所在地変更/閉鎖など)
• source_url — stable canonical NTA detail-page URL for this corporate number
• data_source — nta_webapi_v4 (live API row) or curated (well-known reference corporation, returned when no application ID is provided)

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🎯 Use cases

• KYC / customer due diligence — Verify that a Japanese counterparty has a valid 法人番号 and matches the kanji name + address on file before onboarding. The 13-digit corporate number is the canonical identifier reused across NTA tax filings, METI procurement, and J-PlatPat IP records — making it the right primary key for any Japan-touching compliance system.
• B2B sales list building — Pull every active corporation in Osaka of type kabushiki_kaisha registered since 2020 — clean source-of-truth for SDR outreach, account-based marketing, or territory planning. Free at scale (NTA bulk data is uncapped under the CC BY 4.0 license).
• M&A target shortlisting — Find every active 株式会社 in a specific prefecture + city pair, then enrich with TSE / EDINET / J-PlatPat data using the same 法人番号 as the join key.
• Japan subsidiary mapping — Trace the JP entities behind a global parent (e.g. all Amazon, Google, Meta entities in Japan) using name search + foreign_corporation filter.
• Corporate-change monitoring — The actor's curated set demonstrates the dissolved status output; with a live API key, the diff endpoint reveals name changes, address moves, and closures inside any 50-day window.

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🔑 NTA application ID (optional but recommended)

NTA Houjin-Bangou Web-API v4 requires a free id (application ID) on every request. Register at https://www.houjin-bangou.nta.go.jp/webapi/ — the form is in Japanese (a Romaji-friendly English version is linked at the top of the page), there is no commercial-use restriction, and IDs are typically issued within 1 business day. With an ID, this actor calls:

• GET https://api.houjin-bangou.nta.go.jp/4/num — lookup by 13-digit corporate number (up to 10 numbers per call)
• GET https://api.houjin-bangou.nta.go.jp/4/name — search by 商号 (kanji / kana / Romaji, up to 100 results per page; the actor paginates automatically up to max_records)
• GET https://api.houjin-bangou.nta.go.jp/4/diff — date-range diff for newly assigned / renamed / dissolved corporations within any 50-day window (used internally for delta monitoring)

Without an application ID, the actor returns a curated reference dataset (well-known Japanese corporations spanning Tokyo / Osaka / Aichi / Kyoto / Hokkaido / Hiroshima / Yamaguchi / Chiba prefectures and all major corporate types — 株式会社, 合同会社, 一般財団法人, 公共法人, 外国会社). The curated set is plenty for schema validation, KYC-pipeline development, demo runs, and Apify QA. Rows are tagged data_source: "curated" so you can filter them out before persisting to a real CRM.

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📊 Sample output

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🚀 How to use

Quick demo (no application ID — returns curated reference set)

{
    "company_name_filter": "Sony",
    "max_records": 50
}

Returns Sony Group Corporation (法人番号 7010401088724) and other matching curated entries.

Live NTA lookup by exact corporate number

{
    "nta_api_key": "<your-NTA-application-id>",
    "corporate_number": "7010401088724"
}

Live name search restricted to Tokyo

{
    "nta_api_key": "<your-NTA-application-id>",
    "company_name_filter": "三菱",
    "prefecture_filter": "Tokyo",
    "category_filter": "corporation",
    "max_records": 200
}

Python client

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("YOUR_APIFY_API_TOKEN")
run = client.actor("nexgendata/japan-houjin-bangou-corporate-registry").call(
    run_input={
        "nta_api_key": "<your-NTA-application-id>",
        "company_name_filter": "Toyota",
        "prefecture_filter": "Aichi",
        "max_records": 100,
    }
)
for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(item["corporate_number"], item["company_name"], item["address"])

cURL

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/nexgendata~japan-houjin-bangou-corporate-registry/runs?token=YOUR_APIFY_API_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"nta_api_key":"YOUR_NTA_APPLICATION_ID","company_name_filter":"Nintendo","max_records":50}'

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日本語の説明

国税庁の法人番号公表サイト（CC BY 4.0ライセンス）から、日本の全法人情報を構造化データとして提供します。法人番号、商号、所在地、設立年月日、法人区分などの公的情報を一括検索できます。

主な用途：

• KYC（顧客確認）
• B2B営業リスト作成
• M&A企業デューデリジェンス
• 日本支社・子会社マッピング

国税庁Web-API v4の3つのエンドポイントをラップしています：

• /4/num — 法人番号（13桁）による単体・複数（最大10件）照会
• /4/name — 商号（漢字・カナ・ローマ字）によるあいまい検索、ページネーション自動処理
• /4/diff — 50日以内の指定・変更・閉鎖差分の取得

国税庁アプリケーションIDの登録：

NTA Web-APIは無料の id（アプリケーションID）が必要です。登録は https://www.houjin-bangou.nta.go.jp/webapi/ から。商用利用制限はありません。アプリケーションIDなしの場合は、本Actorは主要日本法人のキュレーション済みリファレンスセット（47都道府県・全法人種別を網羅）を返します。スキーマ検証やKYCパイプライン開発、デモ実行に十分なデータです。

注意事項：

• 国税庁ポリシーに準拠した識別UAを使用：Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; NexGenDataBot/1.0; +https://thenextgennexus.com/bot; contact: hello@thenextgennexus.com)
• 1リクエストあたり最大100件、1.2秒以上の間隔で礼儀正しくページネーション処理
• 出力スキーマには漢字商号 + カナフリガナ + 登録英語名（あれば）の3言語フィールドを保持

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⚖️ Legal & data sources

• Source-of-record: National Tax Agency (国税庁) Houjin-Bangou Web-API v4 — https://www.houjin-bangou.nta.go.jp/webapi/
• License: CC BY 4.0 (NTA's open-data declaration — see https://www.houjin-bangou.nta.go.jp/setsumei/operation/). Attribution to the National Tax Agency is recommended when republishing.
• Statutory basis: Corporate Number Act (Act No. 67 of 2013) — mandates that every Japanese corporation has a public 13-digit 法人番号 and that the registry is freely accessible.
• Bot etiquette: This actor sends a Japanese-government-friendly polite-identified UA — Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; NexGenDataBot/1.0; +https://thenextgennexus.com/bot; contact: hello@thenextgennexus.com) — per NTA open-data convention. Default name-search pagination throttles to 1 request per 1.2 seconds.

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❓ FAQ

Q. Why is company_name_en null for most rows? A. Only Japanese corporations that explicitly enroll in NTA's 英語表記登録 program (the "registered English name" program at https://www.houjin-bangou.nta.go.jp/eigotouroku/) have an en_name field populated. Roughly 50,000 of the 5M+ registered corporations have done so — mostly TOPIX-listed and foreign-affiliated firms. For other rows the actor returns null rather than fabricate a transliteration; downstream consumers can run furigana → Hepburn conversion on company_name_kana if needed.

Q. What's the difference between corporate_type: foreign_corporation and a godo_kaisha like Google G.K. / Amazon Japan G.K.? A. foreign_corporation (外国会社) is the NTA category for an overseas-parent firm registered as a JP branch under the Companies Act §817. A godo_kaisha (合同会社 / Japan LLC) is a JP-domiciled limited liability company — many global tech firms (Google, Amazon, Meta) operate in Japan via a G.K. subsidiary rather than registering as a 外国会社, so they show up with corporate_type: godo_kaisha and category: LLC. Filter on category: foreign_corporation for the strict 外国会社 case, or on category: LLC to include the G.K. structure.

Q. How do I monitor newly-registered corporations? A. Pass a date-range via the underlying NTA /4/diff endpoint (the actor uses it internally for any rolling-window updates). At scale, schedule this actor daily with max_records: 2000 and dedupe against your warehouse on corporate_number. NTA publishes diffs same-day for new registrations and within 1-2 business days for name/address changes and closures.

Q. Is the curated dataset enough to ship? A. For demos, schema validation, and KYC pipeline development — yes. For production B2B sales / actual KYC sweeps, register a free NTA application ID (takes 1 business day, no commercial restriction). The data_source field on every row makes it trivial to filter curated vs live rows.

Q. What does the NTA kind code mean? A. NTA's kind field is a 3-digit corporate-type code. The actor normalizes it via the published NTA mapping table: 101/201 → public_corporation, 301 → kabushiki_kaisha, 302 → yugen_kaisha, 303 → godo_kaisha, 304 → gomei_kaisha, 305 → goshi_kaisha, 401 → ippan_shadan_houjin, 399/499 → other. Raw kind codes are preserved on every row via the source-URL link.

Q. Why a polite-bot UA instead of a generic crawler UA? A. Japanese open-data agencies (NTA, INPIT/JPO, MoF, BoJ) explicitly invite identified crawlers in their open-data policies. A polite-UA with contact email is the published convention and avoids the rate-limit tightening that anonymous traffic occasionally triggers during peak hours.

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🔗 Related Actors

Other NexGenData actors that pair naturally with Japan corporate-registry lookups:

• 🇯🇵 TSE Japan Stock Screener — Tokyo Stock Exchange-listed Japanese equities with sector + market-cap filters. Join with this actor on company name to map TSE tickers to their 法人番号.
• 🇯🇵 Japan EDINET Insider Filings — Same-day EDINET disclosures for Japanese listed entities. The 法人番号 is the join key from this actor's output to EDINET's securityCode.
• 📑 SEC Form 13F Tracker Pro — Institutional investor LEI + 13F equity holdings. Use to identify which US institutional shareholders are holders of TOPIX-listed Japanese names you've enriched via this actor.
• 🇸🇬 Singapore ACRA Company Lookup — Sister-jurisdiction company registry for cross-border APAC compliance / M&A diligence. Same KYC schema shape (UEN + corporate type + status), making cross-jurisdiction joins straightforward.

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🏷️ About NexGenData

NexGenData publishes production-grade actors for finance, compliance, KYC, IP, and regulatory data — sourced directly from government and exchange portals, with stable schemas, polite-bot etiquette, and the same cross-actor join keys (corporate numbers, LEIs, CIKs) wherever possible. Find the full fleet at https://apify.com/nexgendata.