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), the Ministry of Finance's bilateral tax-treaty data, and per-program foreign-capital eligibility flags, all keyed by the same primary-source URLs the Japanese surface uses.

Same operator constraints apply: per-result pricing — metered API-key checkout at ¥3/billable unit (tax incl. 税込 ¥3.30), metered API-key checkout, no tier SKUs, no seats, no 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.

English-wedge surface — live MCP tools

Two FDI MCP tools are live in the published registry today. They cover the 80-country FDI cohort (entry conditions, 経営・管理 visa, minimum capital, restricted sectors, DTA/BIT presence) with MoFA + JETRO primary-source URLs, and each has a live REST companion under /v1/foreign_fdi/v2/*.

English-first law / treaty / eligibility surface — on the roadmap

Dedicated English-first access to law search, English-translated articles, tax-treaty lookup, foreign-capital eligibility, and FDI-friendly subsidy ranking is on the roadmap. The tool and endpoint names below (MCP tools search_laws_en, get_law_article_en, get_tax_treaty, check_foreign_capital_eligibility, find_fdi_friendly_subsidies; mirrored at /v1/en/*) are planned and not yet in the published MCP registry or live REST surface. Until they land, the underlying datasets (e-Gov 英訳 law corpus, MoF / NTA tax-treaty data, per-program foreign-capital eligibility flags) are reachable today through the Japanese-language MCP tools and REST surface, and FDI cohort data is live via foreign_fdi_list_am / foreign_fdi_country_am above.

Planned /v1/en/* REST endpoints (roadmap)

The five English-first surfaces above are planned to be mirrored at /v1/en/* for direct HTTP consumers, with the MCP implementation as the single source of truth and REST as a thin wrapper. These routes are not yet live — the shapes below are the planned contract. For FDI cohort data that is live today, use GET /v1/foreign_fdi/v2/countries and GET /v1/foreign_fdi/v2/country/{country_iso}.

GET  /v1/en/laws/search?q=corporate+tax&limit=10           # roadmap
GET  /v1/en/laws/{law_id}/articles/{article_no}            # roadmap
GET  /v1/en/tax_treaty/{country_a}?country_b=JPN           # roadmap
GET  /v1/en/foreign_capital_eligibility?program_id=...&houjin_bangou=...  # roadmap
GET  /v1/en/fdi_subsidies?industry_jsic=E&foreign_pct=100&limit=20       # roadmap

Pricing

Per-result: metered API-key checkout at ¥3/billable unit (tax incl. 税込 ¥3.30), metered API-key checkout. No tier SKUs, no seats, no minimums. Anonymous trial without signup: 3 requests per day per IP, JST 翌日 00:00 reset. Paid keys bypass the anonymous ceiling.

This is the same per-result pricing 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.

Planned response shape — English law search (roadmap; search_laws_en / /v1/en/laws/search not yet live)

The call below shows the planned request and response contract for the roadmap English law-search surface; it is not yet a live endpoint.

$ curl 'https://api.jpcite.com/v1/en/laws/search?q=withholding+tax&limit=3'   # roadmap shape
{
  "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": [...]
}

Planned response shape — tax-treaty lookup (roadmap; get_tax_treaty / /v1/en/tax_treaty not yet live)

The call below shows the planned request and response contract for the roadmap tax-treaty surface; it is not yet a live endpoint.

$ curl 'https://api.jpcite.com/v1/en/tax_treaty/US?country_b=JPN'   # roadmap shape
{
  "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 は国税庁・財務省の一次資料に基づく retrieval です。..."
}

Disclaimer (important)

Documentation

• Full English wedge guide (docs/en/foreign_investor.md)
• Foreign-investor audience page (deeper FAQ + Foreign Exchange and Foreign Trade Act (外為法) prior-notification context)
• Full OpenAPI spec (English descriptions on every route)
• MCP server manifest