What is the Japanese corporate number (houjin bango)?

Japan has no single commercial register you can query by API. What every corporation does have is a 13-digit corporate number from the National Tax Agency. Here: how the number is built and checked, what the T invoice number adds, which company kinds exist and what an API can serve from it.

In brief

The National Tax Agency (NTA, 国税庁) assigns every Japanese corporation a corporate number (法人番号, houjin bango) of 13 digits and publishes it, with the name and address, on the Corporate Number Publication Site. It is the identifier behind Prometiam's Japanese company records. Examples: 1180301018771 for Toyota Motor, 5010401067252 for Sony Group and 1130001011420 for Nintendo.

The number never changes when a company moves or changes its name, so it is the key to store for a Japanese counterparty. Names are in Japanese.

Who supplies what

• National Tax Agency (NTA): Assigns the corporate number and publishes it. The source of the name, address, kind and status of the Japanese records.
• Corporate Number Publication Site: The NTA's public site, where the corporate number data is published for reuse.
• Corporate number (法人番号): The 13-digit key, for example 1180301018771. Store this.
• T number (適格請求書発行事業者登録番号): The qualified invoice issuer number: T plus the 13 digits, for a corporation. It is accepted in a search and read as the corporate number, but the registration itself is not in the register data, so no VAT number is derived.
• Credit line: Japanese records carry the source line shown at the foot of this page, in English and Japanese, including the statement that the data was edited and processed.

The corporate number

A corporate number has 13 digits and does not start with zero. The first digit is a check digit over the other twelve: from the right-hand end of the twelve-digit base, the digits are weighted 1, 2, 1, 2 and so on, the products are added, and the check digit is 9 minus the remainder of the sum divided by 9. The check is strict; a number that fails it is refused.

Full-width digits, spaces and hyphens are read as ASCII digits, and a leading T is dropped. The twelve-digit base alone is not a corporate number and is refused. The identifier validator and the corporate number lookup run the same check in the browser before any call.

What a Japanese record contains

• Name: The corporation name in Japanese, as registered.
• Kana reading and romaji: The katakana reading (furigana) where the register holds one, and a romanised name derived from it. Both are in registry_details; a romaji search uses the second.
• English name: Only where the corporation registered one; most have none.
• Kind: Kabushiki kaisha (株式会社), yugen kaisha (有限会社, a legacy form), gomei kaisha (合名会社), goshi kaisha (合資会社), godo kaisha (合同会社) and foreign companies (外国会社等).
• Status: active, deregistered (the register closed the entry) or merged, with the number of the successor company in registry_details.
• Address: The registered address in Japanese with the postal code, the city, and the prefecture in region in English (Tokyo, Aichi, Osaka); an English address only where one is registered.

What Prometiam serves for Japan

Company records from the National Tax Agency corporate number publication site: name, corporate number, address, status and kind, with the kana reading and a romanised name where the register has a reading. Only joint-stock companies (kabushiki kaisha), limited companies (yugen kaisha), general partnership companies (gomei kaisha), limited partnership companies (goshi kaisha), godo kaisha and registered foreign companies are served; national and local government bodies, associations and other corporations are never served. Status is only active, deregistered or merged: the register has no liquidation or insolvency state and there are no insolvency notices. No founding date, activity code, share capital, VAT number or officers, and no registry-compliance signal. Register-change events (name, status, kind and address changes, dated when first seen in the register data, none before the first load in October 2026) and company monitoring are available.

In short: from a corporate number, a T number or a name you get the corporation, where it is registered and whether the register still lists it. You do not get founding dates, industry codes, capital or directors, and you do not get a liquidation or bankruptcy flag: the register publishes none. Updated each weekday.

Looking up Japanese companies by API

The same call as for every other country, with country=JP:

A value that cannot be a corporate number is a 400 validation error. The free corporate number lookup makes the same call without a key, and Japan company data API describes the response.

FAQ

What is a Japanese corporate number?
The 13-digit identifier the National Tax Agency assigns to every corporation and publishes on its Corporate Number Publication Site, for example 1180301018771 for Toyota Motor. The first digit is a check digit.

Is the corporate number the same as the T number?
For a corporation the qualified invoice issuer number is T followed by the corporate number. A search accepts either form and reads it as the corporate number. The invoice registration itself is not in the register data, so Prometiam gives no VAT number for Japan.

Can I search in English?
Names are in Japanese. A romanised search works through the katakana reading the register holds for many corporations, so it finds those and not every company; the English name exists only where a corporation registered one.

Which companies are included?
Kabushiki kaisha, yugen kaisha, gomei kaisha, goshi kaisha, godo kaisha and registered foreign companies. National and local government bodies, associations and other corporations are never served, and individuals have no corporate number.

Does the record show liquidation or bankruptcy?
No. The status is active, deregistered or merged. The register has no liquidation or insolvency state, and Japan is not one of the twelve insolvency markets, so there are no insolvency notices.

What does the Japanese record not carry?
No founding date, activity code, share capital, VAT number or officers, and no registry-compliance signal. It is a company record: name, number, address, status and kind.

How fresh is it?
The register is read each weekday, so a new corporation or a closure reaches the record within about a working day.

Does it have register-change events and monitoring?
Yes. Register-change events (name, status, kind and address changes, dated when first seen in the register data, none before the first load in October 2026) and company monitoring are available.

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Official source: Corporate Number Publication Site (National Tax Agency).

Source: National Tax Agency Corporate Number Publication Site (https://www.houjin-bangou.nta.go.jp/). Edited and processed by Prometiam; not a product of the National Tax Agency or the State. 出典：国税庁法人番号公表サイト（https://www.houjin-bangou.nta.go.jp/）。Prometiamが編集・加工して作成（国税庁が作成した情報ではありません）。