# japanlaw.org

Japanese statutes and the Ministry of Justice's English translations of them,
parsed into addressable provisions, with each cross-reference the text determines
resolved in both directions and every fact carrying the source it came from.
Not every reference resolves — see "The corpus" and "What this does not have".

> Only the Japanese as published by the government has legal effect, and the
> Japanese here is a copy of it: check the official original before relying on
> anything. Every English rendering is a translation, marked as the Ministry of
> Justice's (Japanese Law Translation Database System) or as machine (this site,
> labelled as machine translation), and neither is substituted for the other.
> Quote the marking along with the text.

## How to fetch anything

Every law and every provision has a Markdown twin at the same path under `/md`
(the Japanese always comes first in it; the language only sets the page links):

    https://japanlaw.org/en/labor-standards-act/art-36        the page
    https://japanlaw.org/md/en/labor-standards-act/art-36     the same thing, as Markdown
    https://japanlaw.org/md/ja/labor-standards-act/art-36     the same, linking to /ja pages
    https://japanlaw.org/md/en/labor-standards-act            the whole law

An address is built from the provision's own legal designation and never from
its position in the document, so it survives amendment: 第三十二条の三の二 is
inserted between 第三十二条の三 and 第三十二条の四 without renumbering either, and a
repealed article leaves 削除 standing where it was.

    art-36                      第三十六条
    art-32-3-2/par-2/item-3     第三十二条の三の二第二項第三号
    appdx-1/item-6              別表第一第六号
    suppl-3221-49/art-2         its 附則, article 2

The link that cannot rot uses e-Gov's own law ID instead of this site's slug,
and redirects to the readable URL:

    https://japanlaw.org/l/322AC0000000049/art-36

Search returns JSON:

    https://japanlaw.org/api/search?q=時間外労働
    https://japanlaw.org/api/search?q=overtime

## What a Markdown provision carries

Both languages paragraph by paragraph; the attribution of every English line;
the canonical and permanent URLs; the provisions this one cites that resolve,
with a note on each that does not; and the provisions that cite it — the direction no official source
publishes.

## The corpus

8 laws, 2248 articles, 19675 addressable provisions.
29586 references read out of the Japanese text, 20615 of them resolved to a
provision held here, 749 of those crossing from one law to another.
298 further laws are cited by name and are not held here yet.

### 会社法 — Companies Act
- 平成十七年法律第八十六号 · Act
- e-Gov law ID: 417AC0000000086
- 1078 articles in the main text; text in force since 2026-08-12
- English: 100% of paragraphs, each marked as the Ministry of Justice's or machine
- Read: https://japanlaw.org/en/companies-act
- Markdown: https://japanlaw.org/md/en/companies-act
- One article: https://japanlaw.org/md/en/companies-act/art-1

### 出入国管理及び難民認定法 — Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Act
- 昭和二十六年政令第三百十九号 · Act
- e-Gov law ID: 326CO0000000319
- 316 articles in the main text; text in force since 2026-06-14
- English: 100% of paragraphs, each marked as the Ministry of Justice's or machine
- Read: https://japanlaw.org/en/immigration-control-act
- Markdown: https://japanlaw.org/md/en/immigration-control-act
- One article: https://japanlaw.org/md/en/immigration-control-act/art-1

### 労働基準法 — Labor Standards Act
- 昭和二十二年法律第四十九号 · Act
- e-Gov law ID: 322AC0000000049
- 124 articles in the main text; text in force since 2026-07-17
- English: 100% of paragraphs, each marked as the Ministry of Justice's or machine
- Read: https://japanlaw.org/en/labor-standards-act
- Markdown: https://japanlaw.org/md/en/labor-standards-act
- One article: https://japanlaw.org/md/en/labor-standards-act/art-1

### 労働基準法施行規則 — Ordinance for Enforcement of the Labor Standards Act
- 昭和二十二年厚生省令第二十三号 · MinisterialOrdinance
- e-Gov law ID: 322M40000100023
- 110 articles in the main text; text in force since 2026-04-01
- English: 100% of paragraphs, each marked as the Ministry of Justice's or machine
- Read: https://japanlaw.org/en/labor-standards-act-enforcement-ordinance
- Markdown: https://japanlaw.org/md/en/labor-standards-act-enforcement-ordinance
- One article: https://japanlaw.org/md/en/labor-standards-act-enforcement-ordinance/art-1

### 労働契約法 — Labor Contracts Act
- 平成十九年法律第百二十八号 · Act
- e-Gov law ID: 419AC0000000128
- 21 articles in the main text; text in force since 2020-04-01
- English: 98% of paragraphs, each marked as the Ministry of Justice's or machine
- Read: https://japanlaw.org/en/labor-contracts-act
- Markdown: https://japanlaw.org/md/en/labor-contracts-act
- One article: https://japanlaw.org/md/en/labor-contracts-act/art-1

### 国税通則法 — Act on General Rules for National Taxes
- 昭和三十七年法律第六十六号 · Act
- e-Gov law ID: 337AC0000000066
- 194 articles in the main text; text in force since 2026-06-24
- English: 100% of paragraphs, each marked as the Ministry of Justice's or machine
- Read: https://japanlaw.org/en/national-tax-general-rules-act
- Markdown: https://japanlaw.org/md/en/national-tax-general-rules-act
- One article: https://japanlaw.org/md/en/national-tax-general-rules-act/art-1

### 所得税法 — Income Tax Act
- 昭和四十年法律第三十三号 · Act
- e-Gov law ID: 340AC0000000033
- 302 articles in the main text; text in force since 2026-08-12
- English: 99% of paragraphs, each marked as the Ministry of Justice's or machine
- Read: https://japanlaw.org/en/income-tax-act
- Markdown: https://japanlaw.org/md/en/income-tax-act
- One article: https://japanlaw.org/md/en/income-tax-act/art-1

### 日本国憲法 — The Constitution of Japan
- 昭和二十一年憲法 · Constitution
- e-Gov law ID: 321CONSTITUTION
- 103 articles in the main text; text in force since 1947-05-03
- English: 100% of paragraphs, each marked as the Ministry of Justice's or machine
- Read: https://japanlaw.org/en/constitution
- Markdown: https://japanlaw.org/md/en/constitution
- One article: https://japanlaw.org/md/en/constitution/art-1

## What this does not have

- The text in force, plus every text an amendment not yet in force will leave.
  Each of the latter is a version of its own at
  `/<lang>/<slug>/amendments/<yyyymmdd>_<amending law id>/text`, with that
  amendment's changes marked in place, and the changes alone are listed at
  `/<lang>/<slug>/amendments`. Texts from before the amendments this site holds
  are not fetched, and there is no `@date` URL form.
- The Ministry of Justice has translated only part of the corpus. The rest is
  machine translation made against the Ministry's glossary, marked on every
  paragraph.
- Where the Ministry's English renders wording that has since been amended, it
  is withheld entirely rather than shown beside Japanese it no longer matches.
- A citation the text does not determine — a law named without its number and
  outside this collection, a bare 第N条 inside an amending law's 附則 — is marked
  and left pointing nowhere rather than resolved to a plausible guess.
- Nothing here is legal advice, and no lawyer has reviewed the machine
  translations or this site's editorial glosses.

## Sources

- e-Gov 法令API v2 — the Japanese text and every enforced revision of it.
- 日本法令外国語訳データベースシステム (Japanese Law Translation, Ministry of Justice) —
  the Ministry of Justice's English. Not official texts, and so marked wherever
  they appear.