Terms of use

japanlaw.org (“this site”) republishes Japanese statutes and their English translations for convenience of search and reference. It is not a government service, it is not affiliated with or endorsed by any government body, and it is not an official source.

The Japanese text is retrieved from e-Gov 法令検索, the government’s own legal database. The English credited to the Ministry of Justice comes from the Japanese Law Translation Database System. Neither was written here.

The only text with legal effect is the Japanese as published by the government. What is on this site is a copy, produced by retrieving, parsing and rendering that text, and any of those steps can introduce error. It does not replace the original.

Every English rendering is a translation for reference — the Ministry of Justice’s included. The Ministry states plainly that its translations have no legal effect and that only the original Japanese is authoritative. This site’s machine translations are a further step removed again, and say so on the paragraph itself.

Before making any decision, filing anything, entering into anything, or relying on a provision in a dispute, check the official original.

Everything here is for information only and is not legal advice. Reading or using this site creates no lawyer–client relationship and no other professional relationship of any kind.

For a question about your own circumstances, consult a qualified professional.

This site is provided as is. No warranty is given, express or implied, as to the accuracy, completeness, currency or fitness for any purpose of anything on it.

The collection covers a small fraction of Japanese law — 8 laws at the time of writing. An amendment may not yet be reflected; an amendment not yet in force may not be shown; a cross-reference may fail to resolve; a translation may be wrong. This site tries to state its known limits on the pages where they matter, but that account is not guaranteed to be exhaustive.

The site, its contents and its availability may change or be withdrawn at any time without notice.

To the fullest extent permitted by law, the operator of this site is not liable for any loss or damage arising from use of, or inability to use, this site. That includes direct, indirect, incidental, special and consequential loss, lost profits or opportunity, and any loss arising from a decision taken in reliance on information found here.

This site is a convenience for finding and reading public law. It is nothing more than that.

The text of Japanese statutes is not itself subject to copyright, under Article 13 of the Copyright Act of Japan. The Ministry of Justice sets its own conditions for reuse of its English translations; follow those.

What is original to this site — the structuring, the resolved cross-references, the term explanations, the machine translations and the software — may be quoted and linked freely with attribution. Get in touch before redistributing it at scale.

Automated retrieval is welcome at a reasonable rate. How to do it is set out on the agents page.

Do not present anything from this site as official government information, strip the attribution from it, pass a machine translation off as the Ministry of Justice's, or interfere with the operation of the site.

How data is handled is set out in the privacy policy.

These terms may be revised. Continuing to use the site after a revision means accepting the revised terms. The date at the top of this page says when they last changed.

These terms and any dispute arising from them are governed by the law of Japan. Nothing here limits a right that consumer protection law grants you and does not allow to be waived.