Japan's property register: a publicity system with two filing deadlines attached to it

What the register is, in the words the Act uses

The Japanese property register is called the tokibo (登記簿) — literally the registration book. The document you can order out of it, the one that arrives stamped and dated, is the toki jiko shomeisho (登記事項証明書), the certificate of registered matters — literally, of the matters that have been entered. The Act does not call it a deed, and it is worth reading what the Act says the whole system is for before deciding what the document settles.

The operative word is 公示 — publication, making public. The system exists so that facts about land and buildings are on the record where anyone can look at them, and the Act frames the protection of rights and the safety of transactions as things that follow from that publication rather than as something the register itself confers.

The provision that gives registration its legal bite is not in this Act at all. It is in the Civil Code.

What registration buys, in the words of Art.177, is the ability to assert your acquisition against a third party. That is a narrower thing than proof of ownership, and the difference matters in the direction you would expect: an unregistered buyer has a problem with third parties, and a registered entry is the answer to that problem rather than an answer to every question about who owns what.

One more provision belongs here, because it decides contests between two registered rights over the same property. Art.4(1) reads 同一の不動産について登記した権利の順位は、法令に別段の定めがある場合を除き、登記の前後による — priority goes by the order of registration, unless a law says otherwise. That is why the date and receipt number printed beside each entry are not decoration.

One record per plot or building, in three parts

Art.2(v) defines the toki kiroku (登記記録), the registration record, as an electromagnetic record made 一筆の土地又は一個の建物ごとに — one for each parcel of land, one for each building. A house on its own plot therefore has two records, not one. The building's description part does name the land it stands on — Art.44(1)(i) makes the lot number of that land a registered matter — but the rights over that land are recorded against the land's own record, so a certificate for the building alone does not show them. The exception is a unit in a block of flats registered with a shikichiken (敷地権), a site right: Art.73(1) gives an ownership registration on such a unit effect as a registration made on the site right as well — subject to the four exceptions listed in the same paragraph.

Each record has a hyodaibu (表題部), the description part, defined in Art.2(vii) as the part where the physical registration goes: where the thing is, its lot or house number, its category of use, its area, its structure. After that comes the kenribu (権利部), the rights part, and the ordinance cuts that in two.

Art.197(1) of the ordinance requires the registrar to note in the certification where a record has no 甲区 or 乙区 at all, so an empty rights part is stated rather than merely absent. Art.197(5) requires cancelled matters, where they are shown, to be printed 下に線を付して — with a line under them. The history stays legible on the page rather than disappearing.

Anyone may order a copy, and there are six kinds of it

Art.119(1) opens with two characters that decide who may ask.

何人も — any person. There is no requirement in the paragraph to own the property, to be a party to anything, to hold a licence, to live in Japan, or to give a reason. A person in another country can order the certificate for a property they are thinking about, and so can the person on the other side of the negotiation. Art.119(5) adds that the request may be made to a registry office 請求に係る不動産の所在地を管轄する登記所以外の登記所の登記官に対しても — to an office other than the one with jurisdiction over the property — so the counter you walk up to need not be the one for the district the property sits in.

Art.194 gives three ways of asking: handing a written request in at a registry office, entering the request into an input device the registrar manages, and sending the request information through an electronic data processing system. Art.193(1)(iv) requires the request to say which kind of certificate is wanted, and Art.196(1) lists what the kinds are.

The fees are fixed by a separate cabinet order rather than by the Act, and they differ by how the request is made rather than by who is asking.

Art.3(7) adds the cost of the postal service on top where registered post or an equivalent is asked for. Every figure above is printed in Art.2 or Art.3 of the Order on Registration Fees; we have added nothing to them and converted nothing.

The papers behind an entry are on a different rule

The register is open. The file of documents that produced each entry — the contracts, the evidence of the cause of registration — is not open on the same terms, and the drafting makes the contrast deliberate. Art.121(3) uses the same opening words and then adds a condition.

正当な理由 — a legitimate reason — and the inspection is confined to その正当な理由があると認められる部分, the part for which the reason is accepted. Art.193(2)(iv) of the ordinance requires the request to state both the part wanted and the reason, and Art.193(3) requires a document evidencing the reason to be presented, with the registrar entitled to ask for it or a copy to be handed over. Art.121(4) is a separate and easier route for a person who was themselves an applicant in the case, reaching the papers of their own registration.

So the shape is: what the register says is public to anyone without explanation, and what was put in front of the registrar to make it say that is not. The maps and survey drawings sit on the open side — Art.120 and Art.121(1) both begin 何人も for those.

One narrowing runs the other way. Art.119(6) allows a natural person to apply for something other than their address to be entered on these documents where disclosure of the address would risk 人の生命若しくは身体に危害を及ぼすおそれ — danger to a person's life or body — or an equivalent harm to mind or body in cases the ordinance sets. It is an application by the person affected, not a default.

There is no paper deed — there is a code, and it is issued once

The thing a buyer receives at the end of a Japanese purchase is defined in Art.2(xiv), and the definition is worth reading before you decide where to keep it.

A 符号その他の情報 — a code or other information. The toki shikibetsu joho (登記識別情報) is not a document of title and does not prove ownership; it is the credential by which the registrar checks, next time, that the registered person is the one applying. Art.21 requires the registrar to notify it to the applicant on completion where that applicant becomes the registered person. Its proviso lifts that duty where the applicant stated in advance that they did not want to be told it, その他の法務省令で定める場合 — and in the other cases the ministerial ordinance prescribes, which we have not gone through.

Art.22 then requires it to be supplied when the registered person disposes of the property, with an escape clause built into the same sentence.

The hinge is the phrase その他の. Read in this sentence, it places the case named before it inside the wider class named after it — we are describing this provision, not stating a general rule of Japanese drafting. So the Act names one instance of a justifiable reason expressly, which is the case where the credential was never notified in the first place, under the proviso to Art.21. Beyond that named instance the Act leaves 正当な理由 undefined, and we are not suggesting that any particular situation meets it. What the Act does set out, in Art.23, is what happens once the registrar accepts that the credential is not coming. The default is that the registrar writes to the disposing party and holds the application until that party confirms it. Art.23(2) adds a second notice, sent to the disposing party's previous registered address, but it is narrower than the first: it applies where the application が所有権に関するものである場合 — where the application concerns ownership — and where a change of address has been registered for that party, and it is subject to 法務省令で定める場合を除き, the exceptions the ministerial ordinance sets. Art.22 reaches dispositions of other rights too, and the second notice does not follow them.

Art.23(4) then disapplies the waiting entirely in two cases:

• ■Art.23(4)(i) — verification by a professional agent. Where the application was made by 登記の申請の代理を業とすることができる代理人 — an agent entitled to make registration applications as a business — who supplies the registrar with the information needed to verify that the applicant is the disposing party, and the registrar その内容を相当と認める.
• ■Art.23(4)(ii) — certification by a notary. Where a 公証人 has certified the application information, or the document evidencing an agent's authority, to the same effect, and again the registrar finds the content adequate.

Both routes are drafted so that the registrar retains the judgement — the statute says the registrar must find the content adequate, not that supplying it settles the matter. Art.3(xii) of the cabinet order separately requires the application to state the reason the credential cannot be provided.

The buyer proves an address, and the seal falls on the seller

What has to accompany an application to transfer ownership is set out in item 30 of the Appended Table to the cabinet order. It runs to three limbs, and the third is the one that matters to somebody who has never had a Japanese residence record.

The main clause asks for the address of the person becoming the registered owner to be evidenced by information 市町村長、登記官その他の公務員が職務上作成した — made by a mayor, a registrar or another public official in the course of duty. The Japanese document answering that description is the juminhyo (住民票), the residence record: Art.5 of the Basic Resident Registers Act requires each municipality to keep the register, Art.7(vii) makes 住所 one of the matters entered on a 住民票, and Art.12(1) lets the person recorded request a copy from that municipality. The bracket in the cabinet order is the part written for everybody else: 公務員が職務上作成した情報がない場合にあっては、これに代わるべき情報 — where there is no such information, information that should take its place.

The order does not name what that substitute is, and neither does the Act. What we can say from the text is narrower and more useful than a list would be: the requirement is drafted on the understanding that an applicant may have no Japanese public document at all, and the alternative is left to be judged rather than enumerated. Which instrument satisfies it in a given case is a matter for the registrar and for the professional preparing the application, and this page does not answer it.

Who needs a seal certificate is not decided by who is paying

Art.16(1) of the cabinet order requires a written application to carry 記名押印 — the name entered on it and a seal affixed, which is not the same thing as a signature — and Art.16(2) requires a inkan shomeisho (印鑑証明書) — a certificate of the registered seal — to be attached. Both requirements carry the words 法務省令で定める場合を除き, except in cases the ministerial ordinance provides, and the ordinance provides quite a few. Following the cross-references through produces a split that is easy to miss.

Art.47(iii)(ホ) of the ordinance identifies a category of applicant: 法第二十一条本文の規定により登記識別情報の通知を受けることとなる申請人 — the applicant who is going to be notified of the credential under Art.21. In a purchase, that is the buyer. And Art.48(1)(iv) then says the seal certificate is not required where 申請人が前条第三号ホに掲げる者に該当する場合, with one carve-out for consolidations of parcels or buildings. Art.49(2)(iv) carries the same relief across to the document evidencing an agent's authority.

The practical shape of that is: within these provisions, the seal-and-certificate apparatus is aimed at the party giving something up, and the party acquiring is treated more lightly. A buyer who has no registered seal is not, on the face of Art.48(1)(iv), being asked for a seal certificate.

There is a further limitation in the definition itself, and it matters to an owner who has left Japan. Art.16(2) defines the certificate it is asking for as one 住所地の市町村長…又は登記官が作成するものに限る — limited to one made by the mayor of the municipality where the person has their address, or by a registrar. A person whose address is outside Japan has no such municipality, so the first of those two branches is closed to them. Whether the second branch reaches an individual living abroad is not answered by any provision we read, and we are not answering it here. What we can point at is the provision that dispenses with the certificate altogether: Art.48(1)(ii), where a notary or an equivalent person has certified the sealed application.

The signature route runs through certification instead. Art.47(ii) and Art.49(1)(i) both accept a signed document that has been certified by 公証人又はこれに準ずる者 — a notary or a person equivalent to one. Who counts as equivalent is not enumerated in the Act, the order or the ordinance as we read them, and we have not filled that gap in; it is on the list of what we could not confirm.

An owner with no Japanese address now has a contact entry

Art.73-2 adds two matters to what gets registered against ownership, over and above the general list in Art.59. The second is addressed to owners who live outside Japan.

Where the registered owner has no address in Japan, the name and address of a person acting as their contact point in Japan becomes a registered matter — something that goes on the public record alongside the ownership itself. Art.156-5 of the ordinance fills in the particulars. Item (i) requires the contact person's name, and their Japanese address or the location and name of their Japanese office, with the person expressly limited to 一人に限る, one only, plus that person's corporate number where the contact is a company that holds one.

Item (ii) is one clause long, and it is the interesting half.

Where there is no contact person, that fact is what gets recorded. The ordinance provides for the absence to be registered rather than treating the absence as a reason to refuse the registration.

On the application side, Art.3(xi)(ト)(2) of the cabinet order makes these particulars part of the 申請情報 for a registration of the preservation or transfer of ownership — so the question is put at the point of buying, not later. The supplementary provisions apply Art.73-2 to ownership registrations applied for on or after the commencement day, and separately allow the registrar to add the corporate identifying particulars 職権で — ex officio, without an application — for companies already on the register. No equivalent ex officio provision is given there for the contact entry.

Two filing deadlines, both reaching backwards

Art.177 of the Civil Code gives a registered owner something worth having. That is a reason to register; it is not an obligation. Two provisions of the Registration Act do impose an obligation, with a monetary penalty behind it, and both were drafted to catch situations that already existed on the day they started.

Three years after inheriting

The clock runs from the day the person both knew the succession had opened and knew they had acquired the ownership — two pieces of knowledge, not one date on a death certificate. Art.76-2(2) starts a fresh three years from a later division of the estate that carries somebody above their statutory share. Art.164(1) sets the consequence of failing without justification at 十万円以下の過料, a non-criminal fine of up to ¥100,000.

Art.76-3 offers a lighter step where the transfer cannot be completed in time: a statement to the registrar that the succession has opened and that the person making it is an heir. Art.76-3(2) treats a statement made within the period as performance of the duty. It is a way of stopping the clock rather than a way of becoming the owner on the register, and Art.76-3(4) restarts a three-year period from any later division of the estate.

The transitional rule applies Art.76-2 to successions that opened before commencement as well, reading the trigger date as the later of the day the person knew and the commencement day. Our inheritance guide covers what is taxed and when; the registration duty is a separate obligation on a separate clock.

Two years after changing your name or address

This is the newer of the two, and the one that can be triggered by something that does not look like a Japanese legal event at all: moving house in another country.

Two years from the change. Art.164(2) sets the penalty at 五万円以下の過料, up to ¥50,000, again for failing 正当な理由がないのに — without justification. Art.64(1) makes this one of the registrations a registered person may apply for alone, without the counterparty a transfer needs.

The transitional provision is the part that turns this from a forward-looking rule into a present one. It applies Art.76-5 to changes of name or address that happened before commencement as well, reading the trigger date あった日 as あった日又は第三号施行日のいずれか遅い日 — the later of the day the change happened and the commencement day. An owner who moved in 2019 is therefore inside the duty, with the two years running from the commencement day rather than from 2019.

There is a second reason to keep the registered address current, and it bites at the moment of sale rather than at the end of a deadline. Art.25(vii) requires the registrar to reject an application where the name or address given for the disposing party が登記記録と合致しないとき — does not match the register — subject to correction within a period the registrar sets.

Art.76-6 lets the registrar make the change 職権で — ex officio, without an application — in cases the ordinance sets. It ends with a proviso.

For an individual, the registrar's ex officio route is available only where that individual has asked for it — and the asking has a procedure of its own, which is the next section.

A certificate that lists everything a person owns

Art.119-2, which we measured as taking effect on 2 February 2026, creates a document that works from the person rather than from the property.

The shoyu fudosan kiroku shomeisho (所有不動産記録証明書) certifies the properties on which the requester is recorded as the registered owner. Every other certificate in this Act starts by naming a parcel or a building; this one starts by naming a person. The bracket （記録がないときは、その旨） provides for a certificate stating that there is nothing — a negative answer is also a certifiable result.

Art.119-2(2) extends the request to 相続人その他の一般承継人 in respect of the person they succeed. That reaches the position of an heir who does not know what the deceased owned, and who is under the three-year duty in Art.76-2 to register the transfer of it. Art.119-2(3) provides for the request to be made to a registry office the Minister of Justice designates, rather than to whichever office has jurisdiction over each property.

The fee is the highest of any document on this page: ¥1,600 by ordinary request under Art.2(3) of the fee order, or ¥1,470 collected at an office and ¥1,500 despatched where the request goes through the electronic system under Art.3(2).

The opt-in that lets the registrar do it for you

Art.158-38 of the ordinance requires the Minister of Justice to keep a kensakuyo joho kanri fairu (検索用情報管理ファイル) — a search information management file — recording, for individual registered owners, the name, the reading of the name, the address, the date of birth and an e-mail address. For a person without Japanese nationality the reading is recorded as 氏名の表音をローマ字で表示したもの, the sound of the name in roman letters. Art.158-38(3) makes the retention period 永久, permanent.

This file is what makes an ex officio address update possible, and Art.76-6 requires an individual to have asked. Art.158-39 covers the statement made at the same time as a registration application. Art.158-40 covers the standalone one — made later, on its own, by somebody who is already on the register.

Art.158-40 sets out how the standalone statement is made: to the registrar for the district where one of the properties sits, through the electronic system or on paper, one set per registered owner, with information evidencing the particulars. Art.158-40(8) carries the same drafting we saw in the address-proof provision — information made by a public official in the course of duty, and 公務員が職務上作成した情報がない場合にあっては、これに代わるべき情報 where there is none.

Questions worth putting to a judicial scrivener

A shiho shoshi (司法書士) is the professional whose statutory business is registration. Art.3(1) of the Judicial Scrivener Act defines that business as representation in registration procedures, preparation of the documents that go to a Legal Affairs Bureau, and 前各号の事務について相談に応ずること — responding to consultations on those matters. Art.73(1) closes all of it to anybody who is not one, and unlike the equivalent provisions for administrative scriveners and attorneys, it is not conditioned on being paid. That is the reason this page describes statutes and stops there.

These are questions we would want answered before a completion. We are not suggesting what the answers should be. None of them is a question this page can answer, because each one turns on facts about a particular property and a particular person.

• ■What does an entry on the register establish, and what does it not establish, if it later turns out that the person who sold was not entitled to?
• ■Which document will be used to evidence my address, given that I have no Japanese residence record — and has this bureau accepted that form of document before?
• ■Who, in my country, counts as a person equivalent to a notary for the certification the ordinance refers to?
• ■Will I be asked for a registered seal, or will a signature and a certification do — and does that answer differ for the application itself and for the power of attorney?
• ■I have no address in Japan. Who goes on the register as my domestic contact, what does that person become responsible for, and what is recorded if there is no such person?
• ■My registered address is out of date. Does the two-year duty already apply to me, when did it start running, and does it need to be fixed before a sale can be lodged?
• ■Should I make the search-information statement so that the registrar can update my address without an application, and can I make it from abroad?
• ■If the credential from my purchase cannot be found, which of the routes will you use, and what does that add to the timetable and the cost?
• ■What is your fee, what is the registration and licence tax on top of it, and which of the two is the larger?

The last question has a calculator attached to it. The registration and licence tax is fixed by statute rather than negotiated; our purchase cost calculator works it out from the assessed value, alongside the acquisition tax and the stamp duty.

What we could not confirm

Everything above is drawn from statutory text we retrieved ourselves on 21 August 2026. These are the questions we opened and did not close, listed so that nothing here reads as more settled than it is.

• ■What the register establishes as against a person who relied on it. We read Art.1 of the Act and Art.177 of the Civil Code and counted the words in the Act's text. We did not read the case law, and the effect of a registration in a dispute is not a question this page answers.
• ■Who is a person equivalent to a notary. Art.47(ii), Art.48(1)(ii) and Art.49(1)(i) of the ordinance all say 公証人又はこれに準ずる者. We found no provision in the Act, the cabinet order or the ordinance enumerating who that includes, and we have not gone outside them.
• ■What documents satisfy the substitute clause. Item 30 of the Appended Table contemplates これに代わるべき情報 where there is no document made by a Japanese public official. Neither the order nor the ordinance names the substitute, and we have not supplied a name for it.
• ■What a domestic contact person is answerable for. Art.73-2(1)(ii) and Art.156-5 make the contact a registered matter and set out the particulars. We did not find a provision in what we read stating what duties, if any, attach to being named, and we have not inferred any.
• ■What amounts to justification for missing a deadline. Art.164 excuses a failure 正当な理由がないのに — the fine bites only where there is no justification. Neither paragraph defines the term, and we have not tried to.
• ■The procedure by which a fine is actually imposed. Art.164 states the maximum amounts. How and when a 過料 comes to be imposed is governed by provisions we have not read, and we make no statement about how the power is exercised in practice.
• ■Boundaries and area disputes. The description part carries a registered area, and the Act has a whole chapter on boundary determination that we have not worked through. Nothing here should be read as saying what the registered figures settle.
• ■Anything about a specific case. What a registrar will accept turns on facts and on provisions we have not read in full. Art.73(1) of the Judicial Scrivener Act reserves consultation on registration matters, so this page describes the statutes and does not apply them to anyone.

Sources

Every statutory text below was read on 21 August 2026 through the e-Gov law search service maintained by Japan's Digital Agency, at the version in force on that date, except where a different asof date is stated because the point being made is a change between two versions. Where a date or a count is our own measurement rather than something printed in a source, we say so both here and in the body.