Data sources, attribution & licenses
jpcite ingests Japanese public-program data from 15 primary sources. This page discloses the source agency, record count, license terms, and the exact attribution string each source requires — so tax accountants (税理士), administrative scriveners (行政書士), labor & social security attorneys (社労士), SaaS developers, and downstream LLM agents can perform due diligence and design correct attribution for any further redistribution.
Counts in the table below are a snapshot as of 2026-04-26. Live counts continuously refresh; see the fact sheet for the latest values.
15 primary data sources
| Data source | Records | License | Required attribution |
|---|---|---|---|
| e-Gov laws (Digital Agency) | e-Gov law metadata and article references; coverage varies by record | CC BY 4.0 | "Legal text from the e-Gov laws data service (CC BY 4.0)". State any modifications. |
| NTA Qualified Invoice Issuer registry | 13,801 invoice_registrants (delta) | PDL v1.0 (Public Data License for government data) | "Republished from the National Tax Agency's Qualified Invoice Issuer public registry" + editorial note (fetch timestamp + whether records were edited). |
| Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) — subsidies, enforcement | part of 11,601 programs / 1,185 enforcements | Government Standard Terms of Use v2.0 | "Source: Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry" |
| Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF) — subsidies, adoption case studies | part of 11,601 programs / 2,286 case_studies | Government Standard Terms of Use v2.0 | "Source: Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries" |
| Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT) — enforcement | part of 1,185 enforcements | Government Standard Terms of Use v2.0 | "Source: Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism" |
| Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (MHLW) — pharmaceutical & medical enforcement | part of 1,185 enforcements | Government Standard Terms of Use v2.0 | "Source: Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare" |
| Ministry of the Environment — industrial-waste enforcement | part of 1,185 enforcements | Government Standard Terms of Use v2.0 | "Source: Ministry of the Environment" |
| 47 prefectural governments — subsidies, enforcement | part of programs / enforcements | Each prefecture's terms of use (most align with Government Standard Terms of Use v2.0) | Name each prefecture (e.g. "Source: Tokyo Metropolitan Government", "Source: Osaka Prefecture") |
| Japan Finance Corporation (JFC) — loan programs | 108 loan_programs | proprietary (publicly-disclosed information only) | "Source: Japan Finance Corporation" (with linked URL) |
| Japan Patent Office (JPO) and IP High Court — patent decisions | part of 2,065 court_decisions | Public judgments (public domain) | "Source: Japan Patent Office / IP High Court" |
| Public bids (NEXCO / JR / UR / others) | 362 bids | proprietary (publicly-disclosed information only) | "Source: each contracting agency" (NEXCO Central Japan / JR East / UR Urban Renaissance Agency, etc., named individually) |
| Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST) — adoption case studies | part of case_studies (~620 rows) | proprietary (limited use; no commercial redistribution) | "Source: Japan Science and Technology Agency". Downstream redistributors who consume JST data via this API must independently verify the JST terms of use. jpcite does not warrant commercial redistribution rights for JST records. |
| METI gBizINFO — corporate database | 79,876 corporate records / 861,137 company facts | CC BY 4.0 (gBizINFO terms of use) | "Source: METI gBizINFO (https://info.gbiz.go.jp/)" with disclosure of any modifications. See gBizINFO terms of use. |
| Public-interest foundations / industry associations — subsidies | part of programs | varies (per-source) | Name each entity (e.g. "Source: XX Foundation, public-interest incorporated foundation") |
| National Tax Agency notices (tax_rulesets) | 50 tax_rulesets | NTA notices (publicly disclosed; public domain) | "Source: National Tax Agency" + notice number |
Aggregator policy
jpcite does not use second-tier aggregator pages in source_url.
Citing aggregator pages can let stale amounts, expired programs, and inaccurate eligibility requirements flow straight into AI agent responses. From the user's perspective, the answer is wrong regardless of where the stale claim originated.
So jpcite enforces an aggregator ban on source_url through source checks before publication. source_url values are restricted to primary sources — ministries, prefectures, Japan Finance Corporation, NTA, e-Gov, etc. Over 99% of rows carry both source_url and fetched_at; the remaining ~12 rows belong to small municipalities that do not run a public CMS.
License legend
- CC BY 4.0 (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International) — redistribution, modification, and commercial use permitted with attribution. e-Gov laws are licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- PDL v1.0 (Public Data License v1.0 for Japanese government data) — downstream API redistribution permitted with attribution. The NTA Qualified Invoice Issuer registry is under PDL v1.0; on 2026-04-24 we directly verified the terms of use and confirmed downstream redistribution as a paid (¥3/billable unit) API is permitted.
- Government Standard Terms of Use v2.0 — the standard public-data terms used by Japanese ministries and local governments (the 2014 revision aligned with CC BY 4.0). Reproduction, public transmission, translation, transformation, adaptation, and commercial use are all permitted with attribution and disclosure of any modifications. See the official terms PDF.
- public domain — not subject to copyright (e.g. published court judgments, NTA notices); free to use with attribution.
- proprietary (publicly-disclosed information only) — the source agency retains copyright, but jpcite only ingests information already publicly published, with
source_urlattribution. For TOS-restricted sources such as JST, data delivered via the jpcite API is licensed for "limited use" only; commercial redistribution by API consumers is not permitted unless separately licensed. Contact [email protected] for redistribution review. - license unknown — domain extraction failed, or the URL did not match any classification rule (805 rows as of 2026-04-26). API responses surface this as
license: "unknown"; please contact [email protected] before any redistribution or commercial use of these records.
Machine-readable attribution
Most public rows in programs, case_studies, loan_programs, enforcement_cases, laws, etc. carry source_url (primary-source URL) and fetched_at (fetch timestamp). Both are returned by every API and MCP tool response. See the API reference and the MCP tools reference.
If you find a stale source URL, a broken link, or a discrepancy between the data and the primary source, please email [email protected]. We will re-check it against the primary source and update the data if needed.
Right to be forgotten
For removal requests against the Qualified Invoice Issuer registry data ("the registration was withdrawn but is still indexed", "I am a sole proprietor and revoked the public listing of my trade name", etc.), email [email protected] with the details needed to identify the record. We review requests and remove or hide records where appropriate. See the privacy policy (JP).
Contact
Questions about this page, requests to add a new data source, or license clarifications: [email protected] — goes directly to the operator.
Operated by Bookyou K.K. (Bookyou株式会社). Legal and invoice-registration details are available in the Japanese legal disclosure.
Related: About jpcite · Fact sheet · Quality disclosure · Japanese legal disclosure (特定商取引法) · Terms of service · Privacy policy (JP) · 日本語版