What our Japan company report includes
Our Japan reports are researched directly from sources including Legal Affairs Bureau (法務局) commercial registry filings, National Tax Agency Corporate Number records, court judgement records and on-the-ground enquiry with established Japanese credit and trade sources; fees may apply for certain records. Coverage of any individual source depends on what the subject company has filed and what is publicly accessible at the time of the search. We translate and present everything in clear English.
Identity & registration
- ✓ Corporate Number (法人番号, 13-digit)
- ✓ Registered Japanese name and English trading name
- ✓ Legal form (KK, GK, LLP) and date of incorporation
- ✓ Head office and branch addresses
- ✓ Operating status and registration history
People & ownership
- ✓ Representative director (代表取締役)
- ✓ Board of directors and statutory auditors
- ✓ Shareholders and registered capital
- ✓ Parent and group structure (keiretsu links)
- ✓ Listed status (TSE Prime / Standard / Growth)
Financial & trading
- ✓ Turnover, profitability and balance sheet
- ✓ Banking relationships and references where available (case-specific)
- ✓ Number of employees and operating premises
- ✓ Risk indicator and calculated credit limit
Risk & public records
- ✓ Court judgements and civil enforcement records
- ✓ Bankruptcy and civil rehabilitation filings
- ✓ Tax delinquency and administrative penalties (case-specific)
- ✓ Trade payment behaviour (where available)
Note on Japanese data: non-listed Japanese companies are not required to publish full financial statements, and many SMEs do not. Where formal filings are limited, our agents research the available commercial sources to establish trading status, and can ask the company directly for supplementary information, which it may or may not choose to provide.
Why verify a Japanese company?
Japan is widely regarded as a low-fraud trading environment, and for the most part that reputation is deserved. Corporate failure rates are modest, regulation is consistent, and there is a strong cultural reluctance to walk away from obligations. None of that, however, eliminates the need to verify a counterparty: it simply changes what verification is for. With Japanese companies, due diligence is less about catching fraud and more about reading the structure and standing of a business that has very limited public disclosure.
The first issue is opacity. A Japanese kabushiki kaisha (KK) is not required to publish accounts unless it is publicly listed or above specific size thresholds. The vast majority of SMEs file nothing financial in the public record. What is registered (name, address, directors, capital) is reliable, but it tells you nothing about whether the company is profitable, growing, or quietly failing. A fresh investigation can help fill that gap: our agents research the available sources and can ask the company directly for supplementary information, which may include bank or trade references the company may consent to provide or may decline.
The second issue is group structure. Japanese commerce is unusually dense with cross-holdings, holding-company arrangements and long-standing keiretsu relationships. The entity on the contract is often not the entity that owns the brand or controls the manufacturing, and the financial covenant you think you have may sit one or two levels up the group. Our reports can map the parent, related entities and listed-company connections so the actual covenant strength is visible.
The third issue is the changing risk landscape itself. Japan's demographic profile, succession problems in family-owned SMEs, and the steady decline of long-term employment in the trading sector have all made small-company failure rates less predictable than in the past. For any meaningful exposure such as distribution agreements, long-tenor supply contracts, prepayments and equity transactions, a fresh investigated report remains the standard tool used by Japanese banks and trading houses themselves.