If you are about to wire money to a company in Japan and something feels slightly off, stop and read this first. The checks below take about twenty minutes and catch the overwhelming majority of fraud.
This guide exists because the question gets asked constantly and answered badly. On public forums, buyers post a Japanese company name and ask strangers whether it is real. One such thread has been read over 36,000 times. People are making five-figure decisions on the strength of replies from anonymous accounts.
The losses are not hypothetical. Publicly documented cases include buyers out $69,500 on two trucks, $33,000 on three cars, $25,500, $20,700, and €4,200. In several, the buyer received shipping documents that the shipping line later confirmed were forged. In one, two buyers compared notes and discovered they had been sent the same bill of lading with different names on it.
Three things work against you.
The official record is not built for you. Japan does maintain a national registry of companies, and every registered company has a unique corporate number. The problem is practical: the registry is keyed on that number, and if you only have a company name in English or romanized letters, searching often returns nothing at all. Buyers routinely report searching a name they were given and getting no result, then having no idea whether that means the company is fake or simply that they typed it in a form the system does not recognise.
Japanese company names fragment across three writing systems. The same company may appear in kanji, in katakana, and in romanized letters, and its English trade name may differ from all of them. A search that fails in one form succeeds in another.
Registered does not mean trustworthy. A company can be perfectly legally registered and still be a shell with no operations. Registration is a floor, not a verdict.
Work through these in order. Any single red flag is worth pausing over. Two or more and you should not send money.
Ask the company directly for its corporate number. A legitimate business will provide it without friction; it is public information printed on invoices and official documents.
It must be exactly 13 digits. This is the single fastest fraud filter available to you, and it works because most people do not know it.
One documented case: a buyer asked for the corporate number, received a 12-digit number, and asked why it was short. The seller replied that his company was new and "all corporate numbers are like that now." That is not true. The format has not changed. The buyer had just caught a forgery with one question.
Also be aware that a large share of companies were assigned their number on the same day in October 2015, when the system launched. So an "assignment date" tells you nothing about company age. Anyone presenting that date as a founding date is either confused or hoping you are.
Put the registered address into a mapping service and look at the street view.
You are checking for a plausible business location. Forum investigators have caught companies whose registered address turned out to be an old residential apartment, and others where the location was an empty lot. For a manufacturer, you should be able to see something that looks like a factory, workshop, or office.
Then search the address on its own. If the same address is shared by many unrelated companies, or if it belongs to a well-known business that is not the one you are dealing with, that address has been borrowed.
This one catches sophisticated fakes.
Search the company's name in Japanese, not English. A real Japanese company that has operated for years leaves traces: a Japanese website, industry directory entries, recruitment listings, local news, supplier mentions, trade association memberships.
A company with a polished English site and essentially no Japanese-language presence at all is a serious warning sign. Real Japanese businesses serve Japanese customers and leave Japanese-language evidence of it.
This is the most important section on this page.
Bank transfer only, and nothing else, is the single strongest predictor of fraud. Bank transfers cannot be reversed or disputed. That is precisely why fraudsters insist on them. In documented cases, buyers who tried to recall a transfer found that the recipient simply refused to sign the recall, and the money was gone.
Additional payment red flags:
Verify shipping documents independently. If you receive a bill of lading, contact the shipping line directly, using contact details you found yourself, and confirm the document is genuine. Forged bills of lading appear repeatedly in documented fraud, and the check takes one email.
If the order is large enough that losing the money would hurt, the most reliable check is still someone physically visiting. That can be a local agent, an inspection service, or a contact who lives in Japan. Experienced buyers consider this basic diligence, not paranoia.
| Signal | Risk | |---|---| | Corporate number is not 13 digits | Critical. Likely forged | | Bank transfer only, no alternative | Critical. Irreversible by design | | Bank details changed mid-deal | Critical. Treat as fraud until disproven | | No Japanese-language web presence | High | | Registered address is residential, empty, or shared | High | | Free webmail instead of a company domain | High | | Refuses to provide a corporate number | High | | Domain much newer than claimed company history | Medium | | Only a mobile or internet phone number | Medium | | Pressure to decide quickly | Medium |
Verification confirms a company exists and is who it claims to be. It does not tell you whether they can make your part to tolerance, whether they will hit your lead time, or whether they will answer your email at all. Those are separate questions, and for Japanese suppliers the last one is a genuine and well-documented problem.
We built the tool we wished existed while researching this.
[Search any Japanese company →](/verify/)
Type a company name in English, romanized, or Japanese, including approximate spellings, and we will find it across every registered company in Japan and show you what we can confirm: registered identity, active status, entity type, location, and any public credentials on record. Free, no account.
It exists because the official record fails the exact person who needs it most: someone outside Japan, holding only a name in English, trying to find out whether the company asking for their money is real.
How many digits is a Japanese corporate number? Exactly 13. Any other length means the number is wrong or fabricated. This is one of the fastest checks available to you.
Can I look up a Japanese company for free? Yes. Public records exist and are free to consult. The practical difficulty is that they are designed around Japanese-language input and the corporate number, which is exactly the information an overseas buyer usually lacks. Our [verification search](/verify/) is built to work from the information you actually have.
Does being registered mean a company is trustworthy? No. Registration confirms legal existence, not operations, solvency, or honesty. Treat it as the first check, not the last.
What is the biggest single warning sign? Insisting on bank transfer with no alternative, combined with any pressure to pay quickly. Transfers cannot be reversed, which is why fraudsters require them.
Is it safe to buy from Japanese suppliers at all? Overwhelmingly, yes. Japan has a deep base of excellent manufacturers, and most transactions are unremarkable. Fraud clusters in specific channels, particularly used vehicle exports sold to overseas buyers who cannot inspect in person. Doing the checks above puts you ahead of the people who get caught.
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Sources: publicly documented buyer accounts on international business forums, and an official warning issued by an embassy in Tokyo regarding vehicle export fraud. Individual company details are not reproduced here.
Use the company verification tool to check any Japanese company by name.