# japanlaw — Japanese laws in Japanese and English

This is the Markdown twin of https://japanlaw.org/en. Every law, and how to address a provision: https://japanlaw.org/llms.txt. The same laws as MCP tools (no sign-in): https://japanlaw.org/mcp.

Japanese laws article by article, the Japanese beside an English translation — the Ministry of Justice's or ours, each marked — with every legal term explained.

- The collection: 140 laws, 19756 articles in their main texts, 185400 addressable provisions (articles, paragraphs and items), 251383 cross-references resolved to the provision they name.
- Only the Japanese as published by the government has legal effect. Every English rendering is a translation, marked as the Ministry of Justice's or as this site's machine translation.

## Pages

- [Laws](https://japanlaw.org/en/laws): Japanese law, every provision in force, in English beside the Japanese. By topic: work, visas, tax, pensions, business, consumers, family, housing and crime. As Markdown: https://japanlaw.org/md/en/laws
- [Glossary of defined terms](https://japanlaw.org/en/glossary): The terms each law defines for itself (定義語), law by law: the Japanese, its English, a plain explanation, and a link to the sentence that defines it.
- [Changes to Japanese law, by date](https://japanlaw.org/en/changes): When laws on this site change: changes to come and of the past year, by day, with the amending law and, where shown here, the wording before and after.
- [Sources](https://japanlaw.org/en/sources): Where every text here comes from: the Japanese from e-Gov, the government's law database, and the English from the Ministry of Justice or translated here.
- [About japanlaw](https://japanlaw.org/en/about): What japanlaw is: Japanese laws for readers who are not lawyers, the Japanese beside English, with where every text comes from and every legal term explained.
- [Connect an AI assistant to Japanese law](https://japanlaw.org/en/agents): Add japanlaw.org to Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, Harvey, Legora or your own agent: one MCP server, no sign-in, every article quoted with its source.
- [How people use japanlaw](https://japanlaw.org/en/use-cases): How lawyers and licensed advisers, HR teams, employees and international students use japanlaw: example questions, each answered with the article it rests on.
- [japanlaw for organisations](https://japanlaw.org/en/enterprise): For organisations: no rate limits, your own deployment, notice when the laws you follow change, and links to your systems and AI agents.
- [Terms of use](https://japanlaw.org/en/terms): The terms of use of japanlaw: a copy of Japanese laws for reading and reference — not an official source and not legal advice.
- [Privacy](https://japanlaw.org/en/privacy): What japanlaw records when you read a law: no accounts, request logs never used to identify you, and Google Analytics counting page views, never searches.
- [Japanese legal terms explained](https://japanlaw.org/en/concepts): Plain-English explanations of the words Japanese laws use — an Act (法律), coming into force (施行), the Cabinet (内閣) — each with its reading and sources.

## For programs

- [llms.txt](https://japanlaw.org/llms.txt): every law, the form of every address and URL, the API and the MCP tools — start here.
- [MCP server](https://japanlaw.org/mcp): Streamable HTTP, read-only, no sign-in; its server card is https://japanlaw.org/mcp/server-card.
- [OpenAPI 3.1](https://japanlaw.org/openapi.json): the JSON API under /api/.
- [Agent Skill](https://japanlaw.org/skills/japanese-law/SKILL.md): how to cite Japanese law and whose English to trust.
- [API catalog](https://japanlaw.org/.well-known/api-catalog): the above as an RFC 9727 linkset.
- Markdown: these pages answer `Accept: text/markdown` with their Markdown twin, which is also at the same path under /md — this page, the list of laws and each topic's page; every law, every provision and every page a law is read on, and the texts an amendment leaves (…/amendments/<revision>/text); the concepts index and each concept; the calendar of changes and each day's page. A law's About, amendments and full-text pages, the glossary and the other pages have none.
- [Sitemap](https://japanlaw.org/sitemap.xml)