How to Access Japanese Company Financial Data

Japan is the largest economy this series had not covered, and it produces a paradox that no other jurisdiction here matches. Japanese law requires nearly every joint-stock company to publish its balance sheet every year. The obligation — kessan kōkoku — sits in the Companies Act, applies to essentially all kabushiki kaisha regardless of size, and has done for decades. It is also very widely ignored. Enforcement is minimal, publication in the Official Gazette costs money, and the practical result is a country where the legal disclosure standard is close to universal and the actual disclosure rate is not. Alongside that sits a second structural feature: the gōdō kaisha, Japan's LLC equivalent introduced in 2006, carries no publication requirement at all — and foreign investors and private equity sponsors increasingly choose it for precisely that reason. Add a two-system registry split, a genuine language barrier, and a credit-bureau market with no Western equivalent, and Japan becomes the most demanding major market in this series to work with.

Two systems, two numbers

Japan's company data is split across two official systems that serve different purposes, and you generally need both.

The Corporate Number: Japan's identifier is actually good

The Corporate Number (法人番号, hōjin bangō) is a 13-digit identifier assigned at registration to every legal entity in Japan, and it is consistent across the National Tax Agency, tax, and registry databases. The NTA publishes it through the Corporate Number Publication Site at houjin-bangou.nta.go.jp:

• Free to search, with a partial English interface.
• A free public API returning XML or JSON — genuinely open, unlike the registries in Hong Kong, Australia, or Canada.
• The underlying database covers roughly 5.77 million active corporations, with monthly diff updates, returning corporate number, name, entity kind, prefecture, city, street, postcode, and assignment date.

This puts Japan alongside Singapore, Norway, and Finland in having solved the identifier problem that defeats the United States and Canada — with one wrinkle worth knowing: the Corporate Number is distinct from the 12-digit commercial registration number used in the Ministry of Justice's Touki system for certified document requests. Use the Corporate Number as your primary key for system integration; use the registration number when ordering official extracts.

The Touki registry: certified, paid, and Japanese-only

Official company registration sits with the Ministry of Justice, through the Legal Affairs Bureau (法務局, Hōmu-kyoku) network of 50 regional offices and 232 local offices. Certified extracts are ordered through the Touki system:

• Cost: roughly ¥331 to ¥600 per extract, around USD 2.20 to 4.00.
• Account required, but no local ID — so foreign users can register. Payment by credit card, internet banking, or ATM.
• No English interface. This is the sharpest access barrier in the guide.
• Turnaround: instant download online, or one to three business days at a counter.
• Japan also retains the company seal (印鑑, hanko) as the official signature on corporate documents, with a Seal Certificate (印鑑証明書) certifying who holds it — a document type with no equivalent in most jurisdictions covered here.

Private companies: how many, and how many file

This is the central fact about Japanese company data, and it is routinely misunderstood in both directions — foreign teams either assume Japanese companies publish nothing, or read the statute and assume they all do.

The scale of the private population

The authoritative source is the National Tax Agency's Company Sample Survey (会社標本調査), running annually since 1951 and built from corporate tax returns. It gives the cleanest picture available of Japan's corporate population:

Which industries

The NTA survey breaks results down by sector, and the FY2023 figures show the largest increases in declared income came from machinery manufacturing (機械工業), followed by retail (小売業) and construction (建設業). Loss-making rates vary sharply by industry, with the restaurant, hotel, and hospitality category among the highest — the sector composition of Japanese corporate distress, in other words, resembles that of Australia, Greece, and New Zealand.

Because the survey is organised by capital class and industry, it is genuinely useful for benchmarking even though it publishes no company-level data: it lets you place a Japanese counterparty against its size and sector cohort using official figures, which is often the best available substitute when the company itself publishes nothing.

The publication rule nobody follows

What the law says

Under Article 440(1) of the Companies Act, a kabushiki kaisha (KK) — the joint-stock company, Japan's most common and most prestigious form — must publish its balance sheet without delay after the conclusion of the annual shareholders' meeting. This is the kessan kōkoku (決算公告) requirement, and it applies to every kabushiki kaisha regardless of size. Failure to comply, or publishing falsely, carries a fine of up to ¥1 million under Article 976(2) — imposed on directors and company auditors personally, not on the company. Note what the duty does and does not require:

• Ordinary KKs publish only a balance sheet. Full financial statements are approved internally and kept by the company, so there is no public profit-and-loss account for an ordinary unlisted KK. Large companies (大会社) — stated capital of ¥500 million or more, or liabilities of ¥20 billion or more — must publish both the balance sheet and the profit-and-loss statement.
• Listed companies are outside the regime. Companies filing Annual Securities Reports under securities law are exempt from the Companies Act publication duty, because they already disclose through EDINET.
• Gōdō kaisha and grandfathered yūgen kaisha have no publication obligation at all.
• Companies may designate an alternative publication method in their articles — a daily newspaper or their own website — instead of the Kanpō.
• Failure to comply can result in statutory orders and penalties.

What happens in practice

The obligation is real, it is old — and it has been measured. Tokyo Shoko Research surveyed actual publication in the Official Gazette for calendar 2022 and produced the figure that defines Japanese company data:

TSR's own explanation of the gap is direct: the penalty is almost never applied, compliance awareness is low, and the Gazette carries a publication cost. The choice of publication method compounds it — 83.9% of kabushiki kaisha designate the Official Gazette in their articles, 13.5% a daily newspaper, and only 2.5% electronic publication on their own website, which is the method that would cost essentially nothing.

The GK: a legal escape hatch, used deliberately

The gōdō kaisha (GK, 合同会社) was introduced in 2006 as Japan's equivalent of the LLC. Ownership and management are combined, as in a US LLC, and a member can be a corporation or an individual. Minimum capital is ¥1, the same as a KK.

The critical difference for this guide: a GK is not required to publish financial statements, is not required to hold an annual shareholders' meeting, and is not required to post a public notice. Its accounts are private. Grandfathered yūgen kaisha are likewise exempt.

It is worth noting that the cost objection to publication is largely solvable and still not taken up. A KK may publish the balance sheet alone by electronic notice on its own website at essentially zero cost, and doing so for kessan kōkoku only does not require a shareholders' resolution to amend the articles — though the URL must be registered, and a change of URL triggers a registration fee. That only 2.5% of companies use this method, while 83.9% designate the more expensive Official Gazette and then largely do not publish, tells you the constraint is attention and enforcement, not cost.

Other forms you will meet in the data

• Yūgen kaisha (有限会社) — the old limited company form, abolished for new incorporations in 2006 when the GK replaced it. Existing yūgen kaisha were grandfathered and continue to operate as "special limited companies" under transitional rules, so you will still encounter them. Their presence is a reliable signal that the entity was incorporated before 2006.
• Branch offices and representative offices — a branch has no independent corporate legal status and is treated as an extension of the foreign parent. Branch set-ups have been in decline as foreign investors increasingly choose the GK instead.
• Foreign companies (外国会社) — registered foreign entities, returned as a distinct kind by the NTA Corporate Number database.

The sectoral shape

Japan's corporate value concentrates in a small number of globally significant clusters, and the ownership structures behind them are covered below:

• Automotive — Toyota, Honda, and a deep tier-one and tier-two supplier base that reaches into thousands of private companies.
• Electronics, precision machinery, and semiconductors equipment — Sony, Hitachi, Keyence, Tokyo Electron.
• Sōgō shōsha (総合商社) — the general trading houses (Mitsubishi, Mitsui, Itochu, Sumitomo, Marubeni), a corporate form with no Western equivalent, holding diversified stakes across commodities, infrastructure, and consumer businesses worldwide.
• Banking and insurance — the three megabanks and the major insurers, both central to the cross-shareholding structure discussed below.
• Pharmaceuticals, chemicals, and industrial machinery, plus a large domestic services, retail, and construction economy dominated by private companies that publish nothing.

Public companies: how many, and what they disclose

The listed and securities-regulated population

Against roughly 2.9 million corporations, the securities-regulated population is tiny — and exceptionally well documented.

Sector composition on the exchange mirrors the economy described earlier: automotive and its supplier base, electronics and precision machinery, the sōgō shōsha trading houses, the megabanks and insurers, pharmaceuticals and chemicals, plus a large domestic retail and services contingent. The IFRS adopters skew heavily toward the largest, most internationally exposed groups — which is why 268 companies account for more than 45% of market value.

For the population it covers, Japan's disclosure infrastructure is world-class. EDINET — the Electronic Disclosure for Investors' NETwork — is operated by the Financial Services Agency under the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act, and is Japan's direct equivalent of the SEC's EDGAR.

• Who files: all listed companies and major fund-raising companies and investment funds are required to submit disclosure documents through the system.
• XBRL is mandatory. All filers must, in principle, submit the financial statements in their Annual Securities Reports (有価証券報告書, yūkashōken hōkokusho), Semiannual Reports, Quarterly Reports and Securities Registration Statements in XBRL — a requirement in force for fiscal years starting in or after April 2008.
• Free and public, with an official API operated by the FSA.
• Coverage: roughly 11,000 listed and unlisted companies, with approximately ten years of filing history maintained.
• Document range: annual and quarterly reports, large-shareholding disclosures under the 5% rule (大量保有報告書), change reports, treasury-share repurchase reports, and more than thirty other filing types.

Four accounting frameworks: Japan's comparability problem

Japan is the only major economy in this series where a listed company can choose between four different accounting frameworks for its consolidated financial statements. Standards are developed by the Accounting Standards Board of Japan (ASBJ) under the Financial Accounting Standards Foundation, and designated by the Financial Services Agency.

IFRS adoption has grown steadily from a standing start — from a couple of companies in 2010 to well over 250, and by July 2023 more than 268 companies representing over 45% of Tokyo Stock Exchange market capitalisation had adopted or announced plans to adopt it. The number of companies eligible to apply IFRS was expanded from 621 to 4,061, covering virtually all listed companies. Even so, by count rather than value, Japanese GAAP remains overwhelmingly dominant.

Distributions

Japanese company law limits dividends and other distributions to a statutory distributable amount calculated from surplus, rather than applying a solvency test as Australia and New Zealand do. A company must also appropriate a portion of distributions to its legal reserve until that reserve reaches a set proportion of stated capital — the same creditor-protection logic seen in Portugal and Greece. As elsewhere in Japan, the practical difficulty is that the figures needed to assess distributable capacity are exactly the ones an unlisted company does not publish.

Audit

Statutory audit in Japan is size-gated and the threshold is high. A company is a "large company" (大会社) — and must engage an independent accounting auditor (会計監査人, kaikei kansanin) and undergo a statutory audit — if it has:

• Stated capital of ¥500 million or more, or
• Total liabilities of ¥20 billion or more.

Audit reports must be presented at the annual shareholders' meeting, and the auditor's appointment requires shareholder approval. Below those thresholds, no statutory audit is required — which, combined with the ¥1 minimum capital and the weak publication practice, means the ordinary Japanese private company is unaudited and unpublished.

Two further points matter for anyone reading Japanese accounts:

• Statutory financial reports (決算書, kessansho) are filed with the tax authorities as attachments to the corporate tax return, including detailed schedules of fixed assets, depreciation, reserves, and intercompany transactions. As in Hong Kong, the most complete financial picture of a Japanese private company sits with the tax authority and is confidential.
• Record retention runs to a minimum of seven years for tax purposes and ten years for certain documents under the Companies Act, so the underlying records exist even where nothing was published.

The credit bureaus: Japan's real private-company data layer

Because the official record is thin, Japan developed something no Western market has in the same form. Two commercial credit bureaus — Teikoku Databank (TDB) and Tokyo Shoko Research (TSR) — dominate the private-company data market, and they have no real Western equivalent in terms of depth and longevity. They operate large field-research organisations that gather company information directly, and their reports are the standard reference for Japanese trade credit.

Two practical notes. Both produce reports in Japanese by default, with English translations available through international service divisions at additional cost and turnaround. And their data is researched and inferred rather than filed — it is a substitute for a public register, not an extract from one, so it should be treated with the provenance care any non-filed financial data deserves.

Ownership: keiretsu, cross-shareholdings, and the unwinding

Every jurisdiction in this series has a signature ownership structure — Sweden's spheres, Denmark's and Austria's foundations, Finland's Solidium. Japan's is the keiretsu and its financial expression, the cross-shareholding (政策保有株式, "strategic shareholding"): companies holding equity stakes in their business partners, suppliers, customers, and banks to cement long-term relationships rather than for investment return.

For ownership analysis this produces a distinctive pattern. A Japanese company's share register may be substantially occupied by commercial counterparties and lenders rather than financial investors, the stakes are held for strategic rather than economic reasons, and the resulting web of mutual holdings historically insulated management from shareholder pressure.

The unwinding is the live story

What makes this current rather than historical is that it is being dismantled, under sustained regulatory pressure:

• The Financial Services Agency and the Tokyo Stock Exchange have been increasingly critical of strategic shareholdings, driving updates to the Corporate Governance Code.
• Cross-shareholding unwinding accelerated sharply in fiscal 2023, rising 86% on the prior year to a record high since disclosures began in 2019, with several of Japan's largest companies among the notable sellers.
• The FSA called on non-life insurers to accelerate their sell-down, and the three largest insurance companies committed to disposing of their cross-shareholdings entirely.
• From fiscal years ending on or after 31 March 2025, annual securities reports must in principle disclose "material agreements", extending transparency over group governance arrangements.

The Tokyo Stock Exchange restructure and the disclosure push

The TSE reorganised in 2022 into three segments — Prime, Standard, and Growth — replacing the previous structure and marking a shift from a principles-based to a rules-based approach with more stringent requirements on financial reporting, disclosure, shareholder rights, and board composition. Prime carries the most intensive inclusion criteria.

The reform has teeth, and the effects are visible in the data:

• 94 de-listings from the TSE in 2024 — the highest since 2013, and the first ever decrease in the total number of listed companies.
• The TSE's "price-to-book below 1" campaign asks companies to analyse, plan, disclose, and execute on capital efficiency. By the end of May 2024, 72% of Prime market companies and 30% of Standard market companies had disclosed cost-of-capital and share-price actions or said such disclosure was under consideration — up from 49% and 19% respectively at the end of December 2023.
• From October 2023, Prime-listed companies face targets to appoint at least one female officer by 2025 and reach at least 30% female officers by 2030.

Sustainability: the SSBJ standards

In March 2025 the Sustainability Standards Board of Japan (SSBJ), an internal body of the Financial Accounting Standards Foundation, issued Japan's first sustainability disclosure standards, functionally aligned with the ISSB. As in Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong, and New Zealand, this is a growing structured disclosure layer alongside the financial statements — and, consistent with everything else in this guide, it applies to the listed and securities-regulated population rather than to Japanese companies generally.

Insolvency: two court routes and a brand-new third option

Japan's corporate distress framework rests on two in-court procedures, and has just gained a formal out-of-court one.

• Civil Rehabilitation (民事再生) — the debtor-in-possession rehabilitation procedure, broadly available and the more commonly used route.
• Corporate Reorganization (会社更生) — a more structured, trustee-led procedure oriented to large stock companies.
• Special liquidation — a court-supervised orderly wind-down under the Companies Act, available only to companies already in voluntary dissolution and appropriate where there is no going-concern value.
• The Early Business Recovery Act (Act No. 67 of 2025) — enacted by the Japanese parliament in June 2025 and coming into force by the end of 2026, establishing a formal pre-insolvency workout framework that avoids the cost and reputational damage of a court filing. If out-of-court consensus fails, the debtor can still transition to civil rehabilitation or corporate reorganization.

The context for the reform is a genuine deterioration. Japanese bankruptcies surpassed 10,000 in 2024 for the first time in eleven years — the highest figure since 2013, when 10,855 firms failed — driven by rising raw-material and labour costs, yen depreciation, and inflation. Through November 2024 the running total had already reached 9,164, with 841 failures in that month alone.

Four pitfalls in Japanese financial data workflows

Pitfall 1: Reading the Companies Act and assuming disclosure

Nearly every KK is legally required to publish a balance sheet annually. Very many do not, and enforcement is minimal. The statute tells you what should happen, not what you will find.

Pitfall 2: Not checking the entity type first

A gōdō kaisha has no publication obligation whatsoever, and the form is chosen deliberately for that reason by foreign investors and sponsors. The NTA API returns entity kind free in one call — check it before searching for documents that were never required.

Pitfall 3: Confusing the two numbers

The 13-digit Corporate Number from the NTA and the 12-digit commercial registration number used in Touki are different identifiers for different systems. Use the Corporate Number for integration and the registration number for certified extracts.

Pitfall 4: Underestimating the language barrier

The Ministry of Justice registry has no English interface, EDINET is predominantly Japanese, and company names are registered in Japanese script. Matching Japanese entities against Latin-script records is an engineering problem, not a formatting one, and even bureau reports default to Japanese.

How Japan compares

Japan occupies a position no other jurisdiction here does. It is not like the United States or Hong Kong, where the law simply does not require private disclosure. It is not like Denmark, where the law requires it and companies comply. Japan requires it and companies largely do not — which means the honest answer to "are Japanese private company financials public?" is "legally yes, practically often no," and that is a materially different planning assumption from either alternative.

MonetaiQ vs the Japanese registries: what each is for

Japan splits more cleanly than most jurisdictions between what the official systems do well and where a commercial layer earns its place.

Frequently asked questions

Are Japanese company financial statements public?

Legally yes for joint-stock companies, practically almost never. Under Article 440(1) of the Companies Act a kabushiki kaisha must publish its balance sheet after the annual shareholders' meeting, but Tokyo Shoko Research measured the actual publication rate at just 1.8% for 2022 — 40,214 companies publishing out of an estimated 2,179,325 required to. The penalty of up to ¥1 million under Article 976(2) is almost never applied. Gōdō kaisha are not required to publish at all. Listed and major fund-raising companies, by contrast, file full audited financials on EDINET in XBRL, free and with an API.

What percentage of Japanese companies actually publish their financial statements?

About 1.8%. Tokyo Shoko Research surveyed Official Gazette publication for calendar 2022 and found only 40,214 kabushiki kaisha publishing, against an estimated 2,179,325 required to do so via the Gazette, out of roughly 2,595,362 kabushiki kaisha in Japan. TSR attributes the gap to the penalty almost never being applied, low compliance awareness, and Gazette publication costs. Listed companies are excluded from the figure because they are exempt from the duty and disclose through EDINET instead.

How many companies are there in Japan?

The National Tax Agency's Company Sample Survey recorded 2,914,253 corporations for FY2022, of which kabushiki kaisha make up 89.9%. A related figure puts standalone kabushiki kaisha at 2,595,362. Total corporate operating revenue was 1,760 trillion yen in FY2023, up 2.2% and rising for a third consecutive year. Separately, the National Tax Agency's Corporate Number database covers roughly 5.77 million registered entities, a broader population that includes non-company legal entities.

What share of Japanese companies are loss-making?

61.0% — 1,803,203 corporations were loss-making in FY2023 according to the National Tax Agency, a share that has risen for four consecutive years. This partly reflects tax-driven structuring among very small companies rather than distress, but it means the Japanese corporate population is majority loss-making by count, so any model assuming profitability is the norm will misread the base rate.

How many Japanese companies file public financial statements?

Two populations. Around 40,214 kabushiki kaisha published a balance sheet in the Official Gazette in 2022 — a 1.8% compliance rate against an estimated 2,179,325 required to. Separately, roughly 11,000 listed and major fund-raising companies and funds file full audited financials on EDINET in XBRL. Against about 2.9 million corporations, the EDINET population is under 0.4% of the total.

What is kessan kokoku?

The annual public notice of financial results (決算公告) required of joint-stock companies under the Japanese Companies Act. An unlisted kabushiki kaisha publishes only a balance sheet, or a consolidated balance sheet — full financial statements are approved internally and kept by the company, so there is no public profit-and-loss account for an ordinary unlisted KK. Publication is in the Kanpō, the Official Gazette, unless the articles designate a newspaper or the company's own website instead.

What is the difference between a KK and a GK for financial disclosure?

A kabushiki kaisha must publish its balance sheet annually and hold an annual shareholders' meeting. A gōdō kaisha, Japan's LLC equivalent introduced in 2006, is not required to publish financial statements, hold an annual shareholders' meeting, or post a public notice — its accounts are private. Both have a ¥1 minimum capital. Foreign investors and private equity structures increasingly choose the GK precisely for the reduced disclosure, so entity type is itself a disclosure signal worth checking first.

Where do I find a Japanese company's financial statements?

For listed and major fund-raising companies, on EDINET at disclosure.edinet-fsa.go.jp — free, in XBRL, with about ten years of history and an official FSA API. For private companies, check the Official Gazette for a published balance sheet, but expect frequently to find nothing. The complete accounts of a private Japanese company are filed with the tax authorities as attachments to the corporate tax return and are confidential.

What is a Japanese Corporate Number?

A 13-digit identifier (法人番号, hōjin bangō) assigned at registration to every legal entity in Japan and consistent across National Tax Agency, tax, and registry databases. It is searchable free at houjin-bangou.nta.go.jp with a partial English interface and a free public API returning XML or JSON, covering roughly 5.77 million active corporations. It is distinct from the 12-digit commercial registration number used in the Ministry of Justice Touki system for certified extracts.

Does Japan have a company data API?

Yes, two good ones. The National Tax Agency provides a free public API for the Corporate Number database in XML or JSON, and the Financial Services Agency operates an official API for EDINET filings. That puts Japan ahead of Hong Kong, Australia, and Canada on programmatic access. The Ministry of Justice Touki registry, by contrast, is a paid per-document system with no English interface.

How much does a Japanese company registry extract cost?

Roughly ¥331 to ¥600 per certified extract from the Ministry of Justice Touki system, around USD 2.20 to 4.00. An account is required but no local ID, so foreign users can register, with payment by credit card, internet banking, or ATM. Downloads are instant online, or one to three business days at a counter. The National Tax Agency Corporate Number lookup and EDINET are free.

Which Japanese companies must be audited?

Companies meeting the "large company" definition: stated capital of ¥500 million or more, or total liabilities of ¥20 billion or more. Those companies must engage an independent accounting auditor and undergo a statutory audit, with the audit report presented at the annual shareholders' meeting and the auditor's appointment approved by shareholders. Below those thresholds no statutory audit is required, so the ordinary Japanese private company is both unaudited and unpublished.

What is EDINET?

The Electronic Disclosure for Investors' NETwork, Japan's electronic corporate disclosure system operated by the Financial Services Agency under the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act — the direct equivalent of the SEC's EDGAR. All listed and major fund-raising companies and investment funds must file through it. XBRL submission of financial statements has been mandatory for fiscal years starting in or after April 2008, covering roughly 11,000 companies with about ten years of history, free and with an official API.

Which accounting standards do Japanese companies use?

Japan is unusual in permitting four frameworks for consolidated financial statements: Japanese GAAP (the default), Designated IFRS (voluntary since March 2010, endorsed standard by standard by the FSA Commissioner), US GAAP (with FSA approval), and JMIS, Japan's Modified International Standards issued on 30 June 2015. By July 2023 more than 268 companies representing over 45% of Tokyo Stock Exchange market capitalisation had adopted or planned to adopt IFRS, but by company count Japanese GAAP remains overwhelmingly dominant.

Why does the accounting framework matter when comparing Japanese companies?

Because the frameworks give materially different numbers. The best-known difference is goodwill: Japanese GAAP requires amortisation and IFRS does not, so two otherwise identical acquisitive companies will report different operating profit purely because of the framework. The frameworks also differ on the scope of fair-value measurement and on recycling through other comprehensive income. Capture which framework a filing uses as a field and never compare across frameworks without adjustment.

How does insolvency work in Japan?

Through two in-court procedures and, from 2026, a formal out-of-court one. Civil Rehabilitation is the debtor-in-possession route and the more commonly used; Corporate Reorganization is a trustee-led procedure oriented to large stock companies; and special liquidation provides a court-supervised wind-down for companies already in voluntary dissolution. The Early Business Recovery Act, enacted in June 2025 and in force by the end of 2026, establishes a pre-insolvency workout framework that avoids a court filing, with the option to transition to civil rehabilitation or corporate reorganization if consensus fails.

How many Japanese companies went bankrupt in 2024?

Bankruptcies surpassed 10,000 for the first time in eleven years — the highest since 2013, when 10,855 firms failed — driven by rising raw-material and labour costs, yen depreciation, and inflation. Through November 2024 the running total was 9,164, with 841 failures in that month alone. Notably, the authoritative series is published by Tokyo Shoko Research, a private credit bureau, rather than by a government statistical agency.

What are cross-shareholdings in Japan?

Equity stakes held between companies and their business partners, suppliers, customers, and banks to cement long-term relationships rather than for investment return — the financial expression of the keiretsu system. They historically insulated management from shareholder pressure. They are now being unwound under pressure from the FSA and Tokyo Stock Exchange: disposals rose 86% in fiscal 2023 to a record high since disclosures began in 2019, and the three largest insurers have committed to selling theirs entirely.

What changed with the Tokyo Stock Exchange restructure?

The TSE reorganised in 2022 into three segments — Prime, Standard, and Growth — shifting from a principles-based to a rules-based approach with more stringent requirements on financial reporting, disclosure, shareholder rights, and board composition. The effects are visible: 94 de-listings in 2024, the highest since 2013 and the first ever decrease in the total number of listed companies. Under the price-to-book campaign, 72% of Prime and 30% of Standard companies had disclosed capital-efficiency actions by the end of May 2024.

Does Japan require sustainability reporting?

For the listed and securities-regulated population. In March 2025 the Sustainability Standards Board of Japan, an internal body of the Financial Accounting Standards Foundation, issued Japan's first sustainability disclosure standards, functionally aligned with the ISSB. Separately, from fiscal years ending on or after 31 March 2025, annual securities reports must in principle disclose material agreements, extending transparency over group governance arrangements.

What is a yugen kaisha?

The old Japanese limited company form, abolished for new incorporations in 2006 when the godo kaisha replaced it. Existing yugen kaisha were grandfathered and continue to operate as special limited companies under transitional rules, so you will still meet them in Japanese company data. Their presence is a reliable signal that the entity was incorporated before 2006.

What are Teikoku Databank and Tokyo Shoko Research?

Japan's two dominant commercial credit bureaus, which fill the gap left by the thin official record for private companies. They have no real Western equivalent in depth and longevity, operating large field-research organisations that gather company information directly, and their reports are the standard reference for Japanese trade credit. Both produce reports in Japanese by default with English translations available at additional cost. Their data is researched and inferred rather than filed, so it warrants the provenance care any non-filed financial data deserves.

Why is Japan difficult for foreign company data buyers?

Four reasons compound. The private-company publication rule is widely unobserved, so the official record is sparse. The gōdō kaisha form is exempt from publication entirely and is increasingly chosen for that reason. Company data is split across two systems with two different identifiers. And the language barrier is the highest of any major market in this series — the Ministry of Justice registry has no English interface, EDINET is predominantly Japanese, names are in Japanese script, and even bureau reports default to Japanese.