What the register makes public

In short

• From 5 October 2026 an application to register title also asks for nationality, and the rule applies to Japanese and foreign owners alike.

• Nationality goes into a search index kept by the Ministry of Justice, not into the register, so it is not on the certificate anyone can order.

• The same amendment deleted the words limiting that filing to owners who live in Japan, which brings overseas owners inside it.

• What does become public is narrower and less discussed: the romanised spelling of a non-Japanese owner's name, and the name and address of the contact person in Japan.

• Companies are outside the index entirely, and their identifying number is a public entry on the title instead.

• None of this is in force yet, and today the register asks for none of it.

The coverage of this change has settled on one sentence: Japan will start recording the nationality of foreign property owners. Two of the three things in that sentence are wrong.

It is not only foreign owners, and it is not the register.

What is actually being collected

The Real Property Registration Regulations, as amended with effect from 5 October 2026, list six items an applicant supplies about the person becoming the registered owner. They are the name, a phonetic reading of it, the address, the date of birth, an email address and nationality. The regulation calls the whole set search information. If you buy after that date, these are the six things you hand over.

The word used for the last item is not simply nationality. It covers a country of nationality or a region defined in the immigration statute, which is drafting done to accommodate people from places not recognised as states.

The heading of that part of the regulations names what receives it. A search information management file, kept by the Minister of Justice, is compiled electronically for each registered owner. The retention period is stated in one word.

Permanent.

Two limits sit in the opening line, and both are worth reading closely. It applies to natural persons, which puts companies outside it. It draws no line by nationality, so a Japanese owner enters "Japan" in the same box a French owner enters "France". The drafters did distinguish by nationality elsewhere in the same list, asking a romanised reading of the name only from owners who are not Japanese nationals. The absence of that distinction here is a choice, not an oversight.

Three of the six entries need supporting evidence, nationality among them, unless the application already lets the registrar confirm the point. What that evidence must be is not specified anywhere we could find. An electronic certificate can stand in for two of the other entries, and is expressly not accepted for this one. So you should expect to be asked for a document, without yet being able to learn which.

Why it is not on the certificate

A certificate of registered matters, which anyone can order for any property without giving a reason, certifies what is recorded in the register. That is the statutory description of the document, and it is the boundary that matters here.

Nationality is not recorded in the register. Every mention of it in the amended regulations sits inside the part governing the search information file. No provision moves it across into the register itself. On the structure of the rules, it therefore cannot reach the certificate you or anyone else can order.

State that as what the rules provide rather than as a promise.

The ministry has published no statement that the search information is confidential, and its public page on the subject has not yet been updated for this amendment at all. We also could not find the rules governing who may see the file: whether an owner can inspect their own entry, and on what terms anyone else could, are questions we could not answer from the sources. So the accurate sentence is that nationality does not appear on the certificate of registered matters, and the accurate sentence is not that nobody will ever see it.

The line that was quietly deleted

The version of the regulation in force today opens the same filing with a condition: it applies where the person becoming the registered owner has an address in Japan. In the version that takes effect on 5 October, that condition is gone. The parallel provision letting an existing owner make the filing on their own carries the same deletion.

We checked this by pulling both versions from the government's legislation service and comparing them line by line. The phrase "has an address in Japan" appears four times in the current text and twice in the amended one. The two that disappear are exactly these.

If you live abroad and buy after that date, you are inside this filing. At the point of application the regulation says the applicant makes it, in the wording used for a duty rather than an option; an existing owner filing separately later is given a choice.

Almost none of the commentary on this amendment mentions the deletion, which is the part that changes who it reaches.

What the register does publish about you

Two things about a foreign owner do go onto the record itself, and neither has attracted much attention.

The first is the spelling of your name in Roman letters. A separate provision has the applicant ask for it to be recorded in the register, and its wording is directed at owners who do not hold Japanese nationality. Unlike nationality, this one is a registered entry. A registrar can also record it without being asked, so it is not something you opt into.

The second is your contact in Japan. An owner without a Japanese address has to register someone here to be contacted, and the statute lists that person's name and address among the matters registered for the ownership. Anyone who orders the certificate sees both. That is a decision you make on someone else's behalf.

That second one deserves a moment before you nominate a friend. The address that becomes public is theirs, not yours.

Companies sit outside all of this. The search information file covers natural persons only, and what a corporate owner puts on the title instead is its corporate identification number, which is a public entry rather than an indexed one.

Your nationality goes into an index.

Your contact's address goes into the register.

Questions buyers ask

Does this apply to me if I am Japanese? Yes. The provision covers natural persons and makes no distinction by nationality, so a Japanese owner supplies "Japan". The romanised name entry is the one that is genuinely nationality-specific, and it runs the other way, applying to owners who are not Japanese nationals.

Is my nationality public? It does not appear on the certificate of registered matters, because that certificate covers what is in the register and nationality is held in a separate index. Whether anyone can obtain it from that index by another route is not something we could establish from the published rules.

Do I have to do anything now? No. The amendment takes effect on 5 October 2026 and the current regulation does not ask for nationality at all. A purchase completing before then is registered under the current wording.

What if I already own property in Japan? There is a separate provision for existing owners to make the filing themselves, and it is worded as something they may do rather than must. A registrar may also record nationality once it has been confirmed.

Can I avoid naming a contact person in Japan? Not if you have no address here; the contact is one of the matters the statute lists for registration. Choose someone who understands that their address becomes publicly obtainable, and get their agreement before the application.

None of this is in force today, and none of it changes whether you can buy. It changes what a stranger with 600 yen and a property address can read about you afterwards, which is worth knowing before you choose the contact person rather than after. The homes currently for sale are on moogo's listings.

Written against published law and official sources as of 23 August 2026; rules change. 081株式会社 is a licensed real estate broker, not a tax or legal practice. This is general information, not advice on your situation, and case-specific decisions rest with the competent authority and your own professional.