Why this wedge exists
Japanese public-program data (subsidies, tax incentives, statutes, court decisions, regulatory enforcement) is overwhelmingly Japanese-only. JETRO publishes excellent narrative guides, but a foreign-invested entity that wants to wire Japanese eligibility checks into an LLM agent or DD pipeline still has to translate the source documents row by row. The English wedge solves that without involving an LLM in the translation loop: it surfaces the e-Gov 日本法令外国語訳 corpus (Japanese Ministry of Justice, CC-BY 4.0; target 700+ laws, body_en column shipped via migration 090, load incremental) plus the Ministry of Finance's bilateral tax-treaty matrix (am_tax_treaty, 33 of ~80 countries hand-curated) plus per-program foreign-capital eligibility flags, all keyed by the same primary-source URLs the Japanese surface uses.
Same operator constraints apply: ¥3/billable unit metered (税込 ¥3.30), no tier, no seat fees, no annual minimums, anonymous trial 3/day/IP, primary-source citations only, no aggregator. Solo + zero-touch ops means no sales calls, no DPA negotiation, no Slack Connect.
5 English-wedge MCP tools
| Tool | What it returns | Backed by |
|---|---|---|
search_laws_en | Keyword search over English-translated Japanese law articles. Returns EN excerpt + title + e-Gov source URL. | am_law_article.body_en (migration 090, e-Gov CC-BY 4.0; target 700+ laws, incremental load) |
get_law_article_en | Exact (law_id, article_no) lookup. Returns EN body or graceful JP fallback with warning. | am_law_article + am_law (canonical id resolver) |
get_tax_treaty | Bilateral DTA: WHT rates (dividend / interest / royalty / parent-sub), PE threshold, info-exchange status, MoAA arbitration flag. | am_tax_treaty (migration 091, MoF + NTA primary source; 33 of ~80 countries live) |
check_foreign_capital_eligibility | Per-program flag (eligible / eligible_with_caveat / excluded / silent / case_by_case). Most-restrictive across rule_types. | am_subsidy_rule.foreign_capital_eligibility (migration 092, heuristic + manual curation) |
find_fdi_friendly_subsidies | Programs filtered by industry JSIC + foreign_capital_eligibility != 'excluded'. Ranked eligible > eligible_with_caveat > case_by_case > silent. | am_entities + am_subsidy_rule + am_industry_jsic |
5 REST endpoints
Same five surfaces are mirrored at /v1/en/* for direct HTTP consumers. The MCP impl is the single source of truth — REST is a thin wrapper.
GET /v1/en/laws/search?q=corporate+tax&limit=10
GET /v1/en/laws/{law_id}/articles/{article_no}
GET /v1/en/tax_treaty/{country_a}?country_b=JPN
GET /v1/en/foreign_capital_eligibility?program_id=...&houjin_bangou=...
GET /v1/en/fdi_subsidies?industry_jsic=E&foreign_pct=100&limit=20
Pricing
¥3 per billable unit (税込 ¥3.30). Metered, no tier, no seat fee. Anonymous trial without signup: 3 requests per day per IP, JST 翌日 00:00 reset. Paid keys (¥3/billable unit) bypass the anonymous ceiling.
This is the same price as every other surface on jpcite. The US SaaS instinct to charge $0.10/req or ¥10/req for an English-language API is explicitly rejected — solo + zero-touch ops means no premium tier and no FX uplift.
Sample call (search_laws_en)
$ curl 'https://api.jpcite.com/v1/en/laws/search?q=withholding+tax&limit=3'
{
"query": "withholding tax",
"lang": "en",
"total": 3,
"results": [
{
"law_canonical_id": "law:income-tax-act",
"law_name_ja": "所得税法",
"article_number": "第212条",
"title": "Withholding Liability",
"body_en_excerpt": "A person who pays a non-resident or foreign corporation domestic-source income ...",
"body_en_source_url": "https://www.japaneselawtranslation.go.jp/...",
"body_en_license": "cc_by_4.0",
"lang": "en"
}
],
"_disclaimer": "The English text returned here is a courtesy translation ...",
"_billing_unit": 1,
"_next_calls": [...]
}
Sample call (get_tax_treaty)
$ curl 'https://api.jpcite.com/v1/en/tax_treaty/US?country_b=JPN'
{
"found": true,
"treaty": {
"country_a": "US",
"country_b": "JP",
"country_iso": "US",
"country_name_en": "United States",
"treaty_kind": "comprehensive",
"dta_in_force_date": "2004-03-30",
"withholding_tax_pct": {
"dividend_general": 10.0,
"dividend_parent_subsidiary": 5.0,
"interest": 10.0,
"royalty": 0.0
},
"info_exchange": "standard",
"moaa_arbitration": true,
"source_url": "https://www.mof.go.jp/tax_policy/summary/international/tax_convention/usa.htm",
"license": "gov_standard"
},
"_disclaimer": "本 response は am_tax_treaty (国税庁・財務省 一次資料 ...) ..."
}
Disclaimer (important)
This is not legal advice or tax advice. Every response carries a _disclaimer envelope declaring the surface 税理士法 §52 (tax advice fence) / 弁護士法 §72 (legal advice fence) / 行政書士法 §1 (FDI 申請 代理 fence) / 国際課税 / FDI 規制 fence. The output is information retrieval. Translation text is from the e-Gov 日本法令外国語訳 corpus under CC-BY 4.0; the Japanese-language original is the only legally authoritative version. For binding interpretation, consult a Japanese qualified attorney / 税理士 / 行政書士.