Registry status and invoice registration, from the National Tax Agency's own data
Enter a 13-digit Corporate Number (法人番号) or a Japanese trade name
to see whether the company's registry record has been closed — dissolved, merged away, liquidated,
or deemed dissolved — and whether its qualified invoice registration is still valid.
The 13 digits after the T on a Japanese invoice are the Corporate Number.
Name search matches the first characters of the registered trade name across
5,042,739 existing companies. No sign-up, no charge.
What this does and does not tell you
It tells you the current state of the register. Dissolution, completed liquidation,
merger, and deemed dissolution (dissolved by the registrar after 12 years without filings),
plus whether the company is registered as a qualified invoice issuer, and whether that
registration was cancelled or has expired.
It does not tell you whether the company can pay. Founding year, headcount, revenue and
social-insurance enrolment are not available as bulk open data for all Japanese companies.
This is not a credit check.
Insolvency appears only after the fact. Bankruptcy filings are published in the
Official Gazette, which forbids automated collection. A failure shows up here once liquidation
closes the registry record.
No invoice registration is not a red flag. Tax-exempt businesses normally do not register.
What is in the data
Data
Records
Source
Companies (all)
5,816,535
National Tax Agency, Corporate Number Publication Site
National Tax Agency, Qualified Invoice Issuer Publication Site
Sole proprietors registered for the invoice system are not included: the
publication site's terms restrict bulk use of individuals' entries, so we do not collect them.
Questions
Where do I find a company's Corporate Number?
The 13 digits after the letter T on a Japanese qualified invoice are the Corporate Number. It also appears on the certificate of registered matters (登記事項証明書) and in the National Tax Agency's public register. You can paste the number with the T prefix here — it is stripped automatically.
What does "deemed dissolution" mean?
If a Japanese joint-stock company files no registration for 12 years, the Legal Affairs Bureau publishes a notice and the registrar dissolves it on its own authority. Most such companies are genuinely dormant, but some are still trading and simply neglected to register a change of director. Treat it as a reason to ask, not as proof the company is gone. 209,995 companies are in this state nationwide.
Does this tell me whether the company is creditworthy?
No. Founding year, headcount, revenue, profit and social-insurance enrolment are not published as bulk open data for all Japanese companies, so no tool built on public data can score them. This page is not a credit check. It reports two facts: whether the registry record is closed, and whether the invoice registration is live.
Will it show me that a company has gone bankrupt?
Not at the time it happens. The commencement of bankruptcy proceedings is published only in the Official Gazette (官報), which forbids automated collection. A failed company appears here only once liquidation is complete and the registry record is closed — after the fact.
The invoice number is printed on my supplier's invoice but shows as expired.
Registrations can be revoked or lapse, so a printed number is not proof it is valid today. An expiry date in the future means invoices issued on or after that date are no longer qualified invoices. Ask a Japanese tax accountant about the input tax credit consequences.
How current is the data?
The Corporate Number register and the qualified invoice issuer register are both ingested in full, monthly, from the National Tax Agency. Very recent registrations and changes may not be reflected yet. The official registers prevail.
If the company is listed
For listed companies there is much more: pay, capital allocation, shareholder
returns, and going-concern warnings, all from annual securities reports.
See the company index or
the rankings. Terms are explained in the
glossary.
Source: full datasets from the National Tax Agency's Corporate Number Publication
Site and Qualified Invoice Issuer Publication Site, processed by Corpus under the Japanese
Government Public Data License (v1.0). The official sites prevail; Corpus makes no warranty as
to accuracy. Updated monthly. Japanese edition: 取引先の実在チェック.