Investigative situations in Japan

There are huge cultural differences in circumstances of private investigation industry between Japan and Western countries.

Almost all the government registry records are not open to the public, except for real estate registry records and company registry records. And the Act on protection of personal information enacted in 2005 which had been pressured to install by EU countries is causing greater counter reactions to privacy matters than the act originally intended to regulate.

• Most people would not talk about personal matters for fear of violation of the personal information protection act.
• Most of the government controlling records, which are often open to the public in other countries are not publicly available but are strictly confidential.
• The Japanese government is quite poor at controlling foreign residents, which often causes a failure of foreign residents investigation.

For example, criminal records and litigation records are not available in Japan without braking a law. Bankruptcy records are the only public
records among credit reports.

We are struggling to establish pre-employment screening packages that are equal to other major countries but it’s not easy in Japan from the points of costs and amount of information.

Since there is no common ID number system available for private sectors in Japan, name and current address or name and D.O.B. plays an alternative role for common searchable ID number system in Japan. Therefore, above prerequisite information of the subject is critical to initiate individual investigation. Please consult us regarding what kind of prerequisite information is needed for the specific investigation.