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e-Gov Japan Laws Scraper — Japanese Law Database & Statute API

Scrape the complete catalog of Japanese statutes and legislation from the e-Gov Law Search API. This Japan legal database scraper returns law titles, numbers, categories, repeal status, and amendment history for 9,000+ statutes — plus full law body text and structured article data in fulltext mode. A drop-in alternative to building your own e-Gov Law Search API client for Japanese law lookup.

e-Gov Japan Laws Scraper Features

• Extracts metadata for all 9,000+ statutes in the Japanese government's official law database
• Filters by law type: Constitution, Act, Cabinet Order, Ministerial Ordinance, or Rule
• Filters by repeal status — active laws only, repealed, suspended, or all
• Fetches a specific statute by its e-Gov law ID (e.g., 321CONSTITUTION)
• Returns full law body text with article structure in fulltext mode — each article as a formatted string
• Pure API scraping against a public government endpoint — no proxies, no browser, no captchas
• Handles offset pagination automatically across the full 9,000+ record catalog

What Can You Do With This Japanese Law & Legislation Data?

• Legal researchers — Build a searchable corpus of Japanese legislation for comparative law analysis or citation indexing
• Compliance teams — Track amendment history and enforcement dates for statutes relevant to your business
• LegalTech developers — Populate a document database with structured law text for RAG pipelines or legal AI applications
• Academics — Analyze the distribution of law types, category breakdowns, or promulgation timelines across eras
• Translators and law firms — Identify recently amended statutes or pull full article text for targeted review

How e-Gov Japan Laws Scraper Works

1. Configure your scrape: pick a mode (catalog or fulltext), apply optional filters, and set a record limit
2. The scraper pages through the e-Gov catalog API at laws.e-gov.go.jp/api/2/laws, fetching 100 records per request with a 300ms courtesy delay between calls
3. In catalog mode, each record is extracted from the response and saved directly — no additional requests
4. In fulltext mode, the scraper makes a second call to /api/2/law_data/{law_id} for each statute and parses the LawXML tree to extract plain text and article-level structure

Input

{
"mode":"catalog",
"lawType":"Act",
"repealStatus":"None",
"maxItems":100
}

Additional input examples:

{"lawId":"321CONSTITUTION","mode":"fulltext"}

{"mode":"catalog","repealStatus":"None","maxItems":0}

e-Gov Japan Laws Scraper Output Fields

Catalog Mode

Returns law metadata for each statute. Fast — one API request per 100 records.

{
"law_id":"321CONSTITUTION",
"law_revision_id":"321CONSTITUTION_19470503_000000000000000",
"law_type":"Constitution",
"law_num":"昭和二十一年憲法",
"law_num_era":"Showa",
"law_num_year":21,
"law_num_num":"",
"law_title":"日本国憲法",
"law_title_kana":"にほんこくけんぽう",
"abbrev":"",
"category":"憲法",
"promulgation_date":"1946-11-03",
"amendment_promulgate_date":"",
"amendment_enforcement_date":"",
"amendment_law_id":"",
"amendment_law_title":"",
"repeal_status":"None",
"repeal_date":"",
"current_revision_status":"CurrentEnforced",
"remain_in_force":false,
"updated":"2022-04-01T00:00:00",
"law_body_text":"",
"article_count":0,
"articles":[],
"source_url":"https://laws.e-gov.go.jp/ja/laws/view/321CONSTITUTION"
}

Fulltext Mode

Returns all catalog fields plus three additional fields populated from the law body.

{
"law_id":"321CONSTITUTION",
"law_title":"日本国憲法",
"law_body_text":"日本国憲法第一章　天皇第一条　天皇は、日本国の象徴であり...",
"article_count":103,
"articles":[
"第一条 | | 天皇は、日本国の象徴であり日本国民統合の象徴であつて...",
"第二条 | | 皇位は、世襲のものであつて..."
]
}

🔍 FAQ

How do I scrape Japanese law data from e-Gov?

e-Gov Japan Laws Scraper hits the official government REST API at laws.e-gov.go.jp/api/2/laws. No authentication required — it's a public endpoint maintained by Japan's Digital Agency.

How much does e-Gov Japan Laws Scraper cost to run?

e-Gov Japan Laws Scraper runs on pay-per-event pricing. The catalog for all 9,000+ laws costs roughly $9 in records plus a $0.10 start fee. Fulltext mode is more expensive — each law requires a second API call, so budget accordingly for large fulltext runs.

Does e-Gov Japan Laws Scraper need proxies?

No proxies needed. The e-Gov API is a public government endpoint with no IP blocking or geographic restrictions. The scraper runs without any proxy configuration.

Can I get full law text, not just metadata?

Yes. Set mode to fulltext. The scraper fetches the full LawXML for each statute and returns the complete text as a plain string plus a structured array of articles. Expect the run to take longer — one extra API call per statute.

Can I filter to only active (non-repealed) laws?

Set repealStatus to None. That filters the catalog to statutes with no repeal event, which is most of the 9,000+ records. You can combine it with lawType to narrow further — for example, active Acts only.

Is there a Japanese law database or e-Gov Law Search API I can pull into my own app?

Yes — that is what this scraper is for. It wraps the official e-Gov Law Search API v2 and returns clean, structured JSON for every Japanese statute, so you can load a full Japan legal database into your own application, search index, or RAG pipeline without writing your own API client.

Need More Features?

Need custom fields, additional filtering, or a different target endpoint? File an issue or get in touch.

Why Use e-Gov Japan Laws Scraper?

• Complete coverage — All 9,000+ statutes in the official Japanese government database, including the full amendment and repeal history for each
• Two output modes — Catalog mode is fast and cheap for metadata; fulltext mode delivers article-level structure for document-intensive workflows, so you pay only for what you actually need
• No setup required — Public government API, no proxies, no auth, no captchas. Configure your filters and run.