Japan Stock Company Establishment Registration Application (No Board of Directors, Incorporation by Promoters)

This file is the source-review record for this document version, per the manual-source-review-v1 practice.

Current claim

• status: draft
• verification.method: manual-source-review-v1
• verification.lastVerifiedAt: 2026-07-09
• maturity.level: structural-reference

Why this candidate, this cycle

This is the recurring "GovSchema Standard Research" cycle (GOV-2019). Two prior cycles had already screened and flagged this exact candidate rather than pursuing it:

• GOV-2005 (opening Japan, Visa vertical): "Business Formation (company registration). moj.go.jp and its Legal Affairs Bureau subdomain houmukyoku.moj.go.jp return HTTP 403 to a plain fetch but HTTP 200 to a request carrying an ordinary desktop-browser User-Agent... A genuinely strong candidate, flagged for a future cycle, not chosen this cycle."
• GOV-2012 (Japan's National ID vertical): re-confirmed the same candidate still open and still live, again not pursued in favor of the National ID form.

This cycle executed directly on that already-screened candidate rather than re-screening Japan's remaining gaps from scratch, per this recurring issue's established pattern once a specific candidate has already been identified across two prior cycles.

Sources examined

• Document (id, version): jp/houmukyoku/stock-company-establishment-registration-application / 1.0.0
• Spec version: GovSchema 0.3.0
• Authority: Legal Affairs Bureau (法務局), Ministry of Justice (houmukyoku.moj.go.jp).
• The task brief's own flagged source (fetched live, HTTP 200, 608301 bytes — matching the byte count both prior cycles recorded when they first found it): https://houmukyoku.moj.go.jp/homu/content/001331002.pdf — turned out on inspection to be the Legal Affairs Bureau's own filled-in worked example ("記載例") of one specific procedural variant, titled on its own first line "（取締役会を設置しない株式会社の発起設立）" ("Stock company with no board of directors, incorporation by promoters"), 17 pages, using the placeholder company name "○○商事株式会社" throughout — not a blank fillable form.
• The genuinely blank counterpart template, traced from the worked example's own index page (fetched live, HTTP 200): https://houmukyoku.moj.go.jp/homu/COMMERCE_11-1.html ("商業・法人登記の 申請書様式" — "Commercial/corporate registration application forms"), section "１　設立" ("1. Incorporation"), row "1-3": "株式会社設立登記申請書（取締役会を設置しない会社の発起設立）" — linking to 申請書様式 ("application form template"), the true blank form this document is modelled from: https://houmukyoku.moj.go.jp/homu/content/001249317.pdf (fetched live, HTTP 200, 574954 bytes, 18 pages — a Word edition, 001249253.docx/001249317.pdf, is linked alongside it and was not separately opened).
• Retrieved / reviewed: 2026-07-09.
• Reviewer: GovSchema Engineering (Standards Engineer — initial authoring source review).

Confirming the index page lists four distinct variants, and this is the correct one

The same index-page section ("１　設立") lists four separate rows, each with its own worked-example + blank-template pair:

| Row | Variant | Worked example | Blank template | |---|---|---|---| | 1-1 | Board of directors installed, incorporation by promoters (発起設立) | 001331097.pdf | 001249314.pdf | | 1-2 | Board of directors installed, public subscription (募集設立) | 001252642.pdf | 001249316.pdf | | 1-3 | No board of directors, incorporation by promoters (発起設立) | 001331002.pdf (the task brief's flagged source) | 001249317.pdf (this document's source) | | 1-4 | No board of directors, public subscription (募集設立) | 001331010.pdf | 001249318.pdf |

This confirms the task-brief-flagged PDF and this document's cited blank template are companion publications of the identical procedural variant (row 1-3), not different forms — the worked example is simply the "illustrated, pre-filled" edition of the same template. The other three variants (1-1, 1-2, 1-4) are distinct published templates, each its own candidate for a future companion-schedule cycle (see "What is NOT modelled" below).

Bot-mitigation note

Confirms the finding both prior cycles (GOV-2005, GOV-2012) already recorded: houmukyoku.moj.go.jp returns HTTP 403 to a plain default-curl request but HTTP 200 to a request carrying an ordinary desktop-browser User-Agent string (Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/124.0 Safari/537.36) — narrow bot mitigation keyed on the default-curl signature, not an IP-level block. Both PDFs cited above, and the guidance index HTML page, were fetched successfully with that browser User-Agent on the first attempt. node tools/verify-sources.mjs registry/jp/houmukyoku/stock-company-establishment-registration-application/1.0.0 reports "1 directory, 6 URLs checked, 0 warning(s), 0 allowlisted, all clear" — confirmed directly, immediately before opening this PR.

Extraction method

Both PDFs have zero AcroForm/Widget annotations on every page (confirmed via pdfjs-dist's getAnnotations() — widgets: 0 on all 17/18 pages of the worked example and blank template respectively) but a full, genuine Japanese text layer, extracted with pdfjs-dist (pinned 3.11.174, installed into a throwaway /tmp scratch directory, not added to this repo's tracked package.json) via getTextContent(). Because the source PDFs lay out each page in a mix of single-column prose and label/value pairs at different x/y positions (labels and instructional side-notes interleaved with the form's own content), each text item's transform[4]/transform[5] (x/y position) was used to sort items by descending y (row, top to bottom) then ascending x (column, left to right) before concatenation, reproducing genuine visual reading order — the same technique GOV-2005 used for the Certificate of Eligibility's purpose-of-entry grid.

The critical extraction finding, driving several of this document's field/scope decisions: the two PDFs were extracted and diffed line-by-line. The blank template's own header block (フリガナ／商号／本店／登記の事由 date) is genuinely blank in 001249317.pdf (no placeholder text after the label), but its 登記すべき事項 ("matters to be registered") body — 「商号」から 「登記記録に関する事項」まで — retains the identical ○○商事株式会社 placeholder content seen in the worked example, verbatim, including the same share counts (800/200), capital amount (¥10,000,000), and officer names. This is not a bug in either PDF; it reflects a real feature of the underlying process: 登記すべき事項 is not written directly into boxes on this printed page at all. It is a passage the applicant drafts separately and submits either as an attached printout, on a CD-R, or via the Legal Affairs Bureau's own online registration/deposit filing system — confirmed from the Bureau's own linked guidance pages on the same index page: https://www.moj.go.jp/MINJI/minji06_00051.html ("登記・供託オンライン 申請システムによる登記すべき事項の提出について" — "Submitting matters to be registered via the Registration and Deposit Online Application System") and https://www.moj.go.jp/MINJI/MINJI50/minji50.html ("登記すべき事項を記録し た電磁的記録媒体（ＣＤ－Ｒ等）の提出について" — "Submitting an electromagnetic recording medium (CD-R, etc.) recording the matters to be registered"). What both PDFs print under 登記すべき事項 is therefore the Bureau's own worked example of the required content and format of that separately-submitted passage, not a set of literal boxes to write into on this page — this document's fields[] nonetheless model every distinct data point that passage requires, since an agent assembling a real submission needs each one regardless of which channel (attached printout, CD-R, or online system) ultimately carries it.

What the application maps to

• フリガナ / 商号 / 本店 / 登記の事由 (the blank template's own genuinely blank header fields) → companyNameFurigana, companyName, headOfficeAddress, incorporationProcedureCompletionDate. companyName/headOfficeAddress are reused (not modelled twice) for their restatement in the 登記すべき事項 passage and again in the signature/ filing block — all three occurrences of each value are cited in the relevant field's sourceRef.
• 「公告をする方法」 (method of public notice) → methodOfPublicNotice, modelled as free text, not an enum. Company law (会社法第939条) recognizes several statutory methods (Official Gazette, a daily newspaper, or electronic public notice), but neither source document examined this cycle itself enumerates those other methods — both show only "官報に掲載してする" ("by publication in the Official Gazette"), the default when a company's articles do not specify otherwise. Modelling a 3-value enum from outside knowledge of the Companies Act, rather than from what these two source documents themselves print, would risk exactly the kind of unsourced enum-value fabrication this registry's verify-sources.mjs and review-gate process exist to catch — so this is disclosed here as a deliberate, conservative scope decision instead.
• 「目的」 (business purposes) → businessPurposes, one free-text field per this registry's established GSP-0009 treatment of a source's own numbered/repeating list (no native array type in GovSchema v0.3).
• 「発行可能株式総数」/「発行済株式の総数並びに種類及び数」 → totalAuthorizedShares / totalIssuedShares. The issued-shares heading itself also asks for share "type(s)" when more than one class is issued; both source documents populate only a single running total, consistent with a single class of ordinary shares (普通株式) — the common case for a small closely-held incorporation. A multi-class share breakdown is disclosed as out of scope below.
• 「資本金の額」 → capitalAmount. No statutory minimum capital applies in Japan since the 2006 Companies Act reform, so validation.minimum is set to 1 (a positive amount) rather than any specific floor.
• 「株式の譲渡制限に関する規定」 → hasShareTransferRestriction (boolean) + shareTransferRestrictionClause (requiredWhen hasShareTransferRestriction is true). Both source documents show the identical standard clause requiring the company's approval to acquire shares by transfer — modelled as a boolean gate (since a company could in principle omit this registered matter) plus the clause text itself.
• 「役員に関する事項」 (officer particulars) → directorNames (every director's name, semicolon-separated, per the same GSP-0009 repeating-table treatment used elsewhere in this registry, e.g. jp/isa/certificate-of-eligibility-application's familyInJapanDetails) plus representativeDirectorName / representativeDirectorAddress for the director separately designated to represent the company (registered a second time together with an address, since a representative director's address — unlike an ordinary director's — is itself a public registration item). hasAuditor / auditorNames are modelled as an optional extension, grounded not in the worked example itself (which has no auditor) but in the source's own attachment note explicitly addressing the auditor case (see documents[].identityVerificationDocumentsFile's sourceRef).
• The filing block (page 2 of the blank template) → applicationDate, legalAffairsBureauOffice, contactPhoneNumber (modelled optional, consistent with this registry's treatment of an unmarked contact-number line elsewhere in Japanese government forms), and the agent/proxy fields filedByAgent / agentName / agentAddress (requiredWhen filedByAgent is true), the latter three sourced from the worked example's own annotation on the agent row (the blank template's page 2 prints the row itself but not that explanatory annotation).
• The attachment list (「添付書類」) → documents[], ten attachment requirements, several required: false or requiredWhen-gated per the source's own explanatory notes (e.g. the promoters' consent letter is only needed when certain matters are not already fixed in the articles of incorporation; the capital-amount certificate is unnecessary when incorporation capital is cash-only; the power of attorney is needed only when filedByAgent is true).

What is NOT modelled (out of scope), and why

• The other three published variants of this same application (board of directors installed + incorporation by promoters, board of directors installed + public subscription, no board of directors + public subscription — rows 1-1, 1-2, 1-4 of the same index-page section) — each its own distinct template, a candidate for a future companion-schedule cycle, mirroring how this registry already splits Japan's own jp/isa/certificate-of-eligibility-application cover sheet from its category-specific supplements, and the Czech Republic's base tax return from its four Přílohy annexes.
• The internal content of every attached supporting document (the articles of incorporation's own 28 model articles; the promoters' consent/resolution letters; the investigation report; the capital-payment proof; the capital-amount certificate; the power of attorney) — each is modelled only as a documents[] attachment requirement, not decomposed field-by-field. These illustrative specimens are printed on pages 4-18 of both source PDFs purely as guidance for drafting each attachment, and are themselves candidates for future companion-schedule cycles.
• The registration-fee/tax computation (「課税標準金額」and 「登録免許税」, page 2 of both source PDFs) — both source documents show 課税標準金額 exactly equal to capitalAmount, and give 登録免許税's own formula in full: 0.7% of capitalAmount, with a ¥150,000 statutory floor, rounded down to the nearest ¥100 ("資本金の額の１０００分の７の額です。 ただし、この額が１５万円に満たない場合は、１５万円になります。また、 １００円未満の端数があるときは、その端数金額は切り捨てます。"). Both values are purely arithmetic derivations of capitalAmount with no independent input, so — per this registry's established excludable-arithmetic-vs-input test (refined across the Czech Republic's Příloha č. 3/4 tax-annex cycles) — neither is modelled as its own field.
• 「登記記録に関する事項」「設立」 — a fixed constant printed on every filing of this kind ("設立" / "Incorporation"), not a variable the applicant supplies; excluded as a non-field constant rather than modelled.
• 印鑑届書 (Seal Registration Notification) — a related but legally separate filing, referenced in the worked example's own opening annotation ("代表取締役が申請書又は委任状に印鑑を押印する場合は、登記所に提出した 印鑑を押印しなければなりません。印鑑の提出は、印鑑届書により行います。"), with its own distinct template/worked-example pair linked from the same index page (001188608.pdf/001188212.pdf) — out of scope for this document, a candidate for a future cycle.
• The Word (.docx) edition of the blank template (001249253.docx, linked alongside the PDF at the same index-page row) — not opened or cross-checked this cycle; the PDF's text-layer content is the basis for this document.

Mock-data test run

Per this registry's established practice, a one-off Node.js script (not committed to the repo) checking every type/required/requiredWhen/ validation constraint in schema.json was run against two realistic scenarios plus three negative controls:

``` PASS [OK] Scenario 1: worked-example values, filed by representative director personally PASS [OK] Scenario 2: sole-director incorporation with auditor, filed via agent PASS [FAIL] Negative control 1: missing shareTransferRestrictionClause when required - MISSING required field: shareTransferRestrictionClause PASS [FAIL] Negative control 2: missing agentName/agentAddress when filedByAgent=true - MISSING required field: agentName - MISSING required field: agentAddress PASS [FAIL] Negative control 3: capitalAmount below minimum (0) - INVALID minimum for capitalAmount: 0 < 1

ALL SCENARIOS BEHAVED AS EXPECTED ```

Scenario 1 reproduces the source's own worked-example values (fictional company "○○商事株式会社" rendered here as the illustrative "○○商事株式会社" placeholder itself, two directors, one also representative director, no auditor, filed by the representative director personally — filedByAgent: false). Scenario 2 is an independently-constructed fictional scenario (a sole-founder incorporation, "藤崎コンサルティング株式会社", with an auditor appointed and the application filed through a judicial-scrivener agent — exercising hasAuditor/auditorNames and filedByAgent/agentName/ agentAddress together). The three negative controls confirm the check script actually enforces requiredWhen (twice, for shareTransferRestrictionClause and for the filedByAgent-gated agent fields) and validation.minimum (rejecting a zero-yen capitalAmount) rather than trivially passing everything. No defects were found in the schema itself.

Both registry validators were run against the schema document and pass:

``` $ node tools/validate.mjs registry/jp/houmukyoku/stock-company-establishment-registration-application/1.0.0/schema.json ok registry/jp/houmukyoku/stock-company-establishment-registration-application/1.0.0/schema.json 1/1 document(s) passed.

$ node tools/validate-ajv.mjs registry/jp/houmukyoku/stock-company-establishment-registration-application/1.0.0/schema.json ok registry/jp/houmukyoku/stock-company-establishment-registration-application/1.0.0/schema.json [v0.3] 1/1 document(s) validated against the meta-schema (ajv 2020-12). ```

Full-registry validation (314/314 including this document, plus 3/3 mapping.json companions) and node tools/verify-sources.mjs registry/jp/houmukyoku/stock-company-establishment-registration-application/1.0.0 ("1 directory, 6 URLs checked, 0 warning(s), 0 allowlisted, all clear") were both re-run clean immediately before opening this PR.

Scope and jurisdiction notes

• This is Japan's third document in the registry (after jp/isa/certificate-of-eligibility-application, GOV-2005, and jp/j-lis/individual-number-card-issuing-application, GOV-2012), and its first in the Business Formation vertical — Japan now stands at 3 of its 6 verticals (Visa, National ID, Business Formation). DMV and Passport remain confirmed dead ends (GOV-2005).
• Agency slug houmukyoku (法務局, Legal Affairs Bureau) is a new JP authority segment, distinct from isa and j-lis; jurisdiction.level is national (the Legal Affairs Bureau system operates nationwide, even though a specific application is filed at a local branch/sub-office selected via legalAffairsBureauOffice).
• id/process slug stock-company-establishment-registration-application uses English, following this registry's established convention for a Japanese-only source with no official English name printed on the source itself (the same convention jp/j-lis/individual-number-card-issuing-application used, in that case for a source that also had an official English title).
• version set to 1.0.0: like jp/j-lis/individual-number-card-issuing-application, this document models one complete, self-contained procedural variant in full (every page of its own application template, not a partial cover sheet awaiting an indispensable companion page from a different template) — the same basis this registry has used elsewhere for a 1.0.0 initial release.
• Conditional requiredness uses requiredWhen (GSP-0013), consistent with every other recent document in this registry.

Re-verification

Per the practice's cadence, nextReviewBy is set to 2027-01-09 (6 months). A future review should prioritize the three sibling incorporation variants (board of directors installed + incorporation by promoters or public subscription; no board of directors + public subscription) and the Seal Registration Notification (印鑑届書) as companion documents, all flagged above as strong, unpursued leads on the same houmukyoku.moj.go.jp index page.