Japan Certificate of Eligibility Application — Applicant Cover Sheet

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 cycle opened Japan, and why this candidate

This is the recurring "GovSchema Standard Research" cycle (GOV-2005), tasked with opening Japan as the registry's 28th jurisdiction — a G7 economy with no prior coverage at all. A prior cycle (GOV-1174) had already confirmed mofa.go.jp (Passport) is fully IP-blocked; everything else was unscreened.

Candidates screened this cycle

• DMV (driver's licence). npa.go.jp (National Police Agency) and keishicho.metro.tokyo.lg.jp (Tokyo Metropolitan Police) are both live, unblocked (HTTP 200). No downloadable, home-fillable driver's-licence application PDF was found on any prefectural police site checked (Tokyo, Osaka, Ibaraki, Shiga). Every source converges on the same fact: a driver's licence application/renewal in Japan is filled in on paper, in person, at the licence centre counter, handed out on the day — there is nothing to download in advance. The only genuinely extractable-text PDFs found in this vertical (Shiga Prefectural Police's proxy/power-of-attorney forms, pref.shiga.lg.jp/police/menkyo/dl/104540.html) cover only a narrow secondary sub-procedure (a third party collecting the licence on the applicant's behalf), not the licence application itself. Confirmed dead end for a home-fillable base application; not retried further.
• 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 header — simple bot mitigation, not an IP block. houmukyoku.moj.go.jp/homu/content/001331002.pdf (株式会社設立登記申請書 — Stock Company Establishment Registration Application, no-board-of-directors variant, 17pp) is live, has no AcroForm but a rich extractable Japanese text layer (商号/trade name, 本店/head office, 目的/business purpose, 発行可能株式総数/authorized shares, 資本金の額/capital amount, 役員に関する 事項/officer info, 添付書類/attachments). A genuinely strong candidate, flagged for a future cycle, not chosen this cycle (see "Why the Certificate of Eligibility" below).
• National ID (My Number Card). kojinbango-card.go.jp (J-LIS) is live, unblocked. kojinbango-card.go.jp/hpsv/wpmng/documents/tegaki-kofu-shinseisho-en.pdf is an official bilingual generic (non-personalized) blank application form — confirmed the common "pre-printed QR code, no blank form" dead-end pattern does not apply here, since J-LIS's own mail-application instructions page directs anyone without the QR postcard to this generic downloadable handwritten (手書用) form instead. No AcroForm, but a full extractable text layer plus an annotated field-by-field guide on page 2. Also a genuinely strong candidate, flagged for a future cycle, not chosen this cycle.
• Visa/immigration. mofa.go.jp (root and emb-japan.go.jp embassy subdomains) reconfirmed HTTP 403 even with a browser User-Agent — a domain-wide block, consistent with GOV-1174, not retried further. The Immigration Services Agency (moj.go.jp/isa), however, behaves like the rest of the moj.go.jp family: HTTP 403 to a plain fetch, HTTP 200 to a browser User-Agent. It hosts this document's source (see below) — chosen as this cycle's candidate.
• Passport. mofa.go.jp reconfirmed a dead end per GOV-1174; not retried.

Why the Certificate of Eligibility over the other two strong candidates

The Certificate of Eligibility (COE) application was chosen over the Business Formation and National ID candidates because: (a) it is officially bilingual Japanese/English on the same government-published page, removing translation-fidelity risk entirely (the other two candidates are Japanese-only, or bilingual only via a separate bulletin, in the National ID case); (b) its shared cover sheet is independently confirmed byte-for-byte identical across three unrelated category variants (see below), an unusually strong basis for scoping a "universal, category-agnostic" document; (c) it has the richest, most immigration-law-grounded field set of the three (34 fields across identity, travel, and disclosure history, versus roughly 15-20 for the My Number Card application); (d) Visa is the vertical with the largest proportional global gap (21/27 jurisdictions, 78%, per CATALOG.md at the start of this cycle) among the three verticals these candidates would have closed. The Business Formation and National ID leads are recorded above so a future cycle does not have to re-screen them from scratch.

Sources examined

• Document (id, version): jp/isa/certificate-of-eligibility-application / 0.1.0
• Spec version: GovSchema 0.3.0
• Authority: Immigration Services Agency (出入国在留管理庁, ISA), an external bureau of the Ministry of Justice (moj.go.jp).
• Primary field-by-field source: https://www.moj.go.jp/isa/content/930004044.pdf — 別記第六号の三様式 （第六条の二関係）, the "P" (Student, 留学) category variant of the Application for Certificate of Eligibility, linked live from https://www.moj.go.jp/isa/applications/status/student.html (fetched live, HTTP 200 with a browser User-Agent; the anchor text reads "在留資格認定 証明書交付申請書（PDF:509KB）", "Application for Certificate of Eligibility (PDF)"). 6 pages: pages 1 ("For applicant, part 1" — this document's scope), 2 ("For applicant, part 2/3", Student-specific), and 4-5 ("For organization, part 1/2", the school's own supplement) — out of scope, see "What is NOT modelled" below.
• Cross-check sources confirming page 1's universality (this cycle's own live fetches, not assumed): https://www.moj.go.jp/isa/content/930004054.pdf (the "T" — Spouse or Child of Permanent Resident/Japanese National/Long Term Resident — variant, 4 pages, linked from https://www.moj.go.jp/isa/applications/status/spouseorchildofpermanentresident.html) and https://www.moj.go.jp/isa/content/930004037.pdf (the "K" — Religious Activities — variant, 6 pages, linked from https://www.moj.go.jp/isa/applications/status/religiousactivities.html). All three PDFs were downloaded and their page-1 text streams extracted and diffed (see "Extraction method" below): identical content and item ordering (1-21) in every case, confirming page 1 is the shared, category-agnostic cover sheet this document models, and not an artifact of the one "Student" PDF chosen as the citation.
• Official worked example (used for the mock-data test run below): https://www.moj.go.jp/isa/content/001460075.pdf — 記載例 ("fill-in example"), linked from the same student.html page immediately after the blank-form link ("記載例は<a>こちら</a>"). A 5-page filled-in specimen using a placeholder name ("NYUKAN JAMES" — 入管 literally means "immigration," a government convention analogous to "John Doe") for a Student-category applicant, confirming realistic value shapes for every field (e.g. intendedLengthOfStay: "5 years"; portOfEntry: "Narita Airport"; intendedPlaceToApplyForVisa: "Washington DC"; pastCoeApplicationCount-style items filled with plausible small integers).
• Narrow bot-mitigation, not an IP block, and not a block against this repo's own tooling. Every moj.go.jp-family URL cited above returns HTTP 403 to a plain curl request using curl's own default User-Agent string, but HTTP 200 to a request carrying either an ordinary desktop-browser User-Agent or this repository's own tools/verify-sources.mjs User-Agent string (GovSchema-source-verifier/1 (+https://github.com/hellogov-ai/govschema)) — the block appears keyed on the default-curl signature specifically, not on "any non-browser client." This is materially different from mofa.go.jp, which returns 403 to both a plain curl request and a browser-User-Agent request alike (a domain-wide block, consistent with GOV-1174's "fully IP-blocked" finding). Confirmed directly and live, immediately before opening this PR: node tools/verify-sources.mjs registry/jp/isa/certificate-of-eligibility-application/0.1.0 reports "9 URLs checked, 0 warning(s)... all clear" — every cited moj.go.jp/houmukyoku.moj.go.jp URL resolves cleanly under that tool's real request path; no WARN/FAIL was needed for this document.
• Retrieved / reviewed: 2026-07-09.
• Reviewer: GovSchema Engineering (Standards Engineer — initial authoring source review).

Extraction method

The source PDFs have no AcroForm/Widget layer (confirmed via pdfjs-dist's getAnnotations() returning zero Widget-subtype annotations on every page of all three category variants) — they are meant to be printed and filled by hand, not completed in Acrobat. All three do have a full, genuine extractable text layer (not a scanned image): pdfjs-dist's getTextContent() returns thousands of real Japanese/English text-run items per page.

A naive linear concatenation of getTextContent() items (the technique this registry has used for simpler single-column forms) does not preserve reading order for item 11's purpose-of-entry grid, because the source PDF's content stream interleaves the grid's six-per-row Japanese labels, then all six English glosses for that row, before moving to the next row — and for some rows the checkbox glyph and the label are emitted as separate text runs out of visual sequence. To reconstruct the grid faithfully, this cycle extracted each text item's transform[4]/transform[5] (x/y position in PDF user space) via pdfjs-dist and sorted items by descending y (row, top to bottom) then ascending x (column, left to right) — reproducing the visual reading order exactly. This confirmed the grid is 6/5/4/5/4/3/3/4 = 34 checkboxes across 8 rows, each row pairing a lettered status-of-residence code with its Japanese and English labels in a fixed left-to-right order, exactly as modelled in purposeOfEntry's enum. Every other item (1-10, 12-21) was cross-checked the same way against its position-sorted output to confirm field boundaries and required/optional sub-item structure (e.g. that items 17, 18, 20, and 21 each have a Yes/No gate followed by conditional follow-up boxes, and that item 9's phone/cellular-phone pair has no distinguishing required/optional marking on the source itself).

What page 1 ("For applicant, part 1") maps to

• Items 1-10 (nationality, date of birth, name, sex, place of birth, marital status, occupation, home town/city, address and phone in Japan, passport) → nationality through passportExpiryDate. Item 6's Japanese label is literally "配偶者の有無" (whether the applicant has a spouse), glossed in the source's own English as "Marital status" with a binary Married/Single choice — narrower than the multi-option marital-status enums this registry uses for EU-style visa forms (e.g. ee/vm/long-stay-visa-application), because that is what this source actually presents.
• Item 11 (purpose of entry / status of residence, 34 checkboxes across 8 rows) → purposeOfEntry, position-reconstructed as described above. This is the field that determines which category-specific supplement (pages 2 onward of the matching lettered form) the applicant must also submit — modelled here as the routing value, with the supplement itself out of scope (see below).
• Items 12-16 (intended entry date, port of entry, intended length of stay, accompanying persons, intended place to apply for visa) → intendedEntryDate through intendedPlaceToApplyForVisa.
• Items 17, 18, 20 (past entry/exit history, past COE application history, deportation history) → three Yes/No gates (pastEntryExitHistory, pastCoeApplicationHistory, deportationHistory), each with requiredWhen-gated follow-up fields (count, and for items 17/20 a date or date-pair) that only apply when the gate is true.
• Item 19 (criminal record, "in Japan / overseas... including dispositions due to traffic violations") → criminalRecord / criminalRecordDetails (requiredWhen criminalRecord is true).
• Item 21 (family in Japan and co-residents) → familyInJapan / familyInJapanDetails. The source provides a repeating multi-row table (relationship / name / date of birth / nationality-region / intended co-residence / employer-or-school / residence-card or Special Permanent Resident Certificate number); per this registry's established GSP-0009 treatment for repeating tables (GovSchema v0.3 has no native array/repeating-field type), collapsed into one free-text field, the same pattern used elsewhere in this registry (e.g. ee/vm/long-stay-visa-application's schengenVisaOrPermitDetails).
• The photo box printed directly on page 1 (40mm × 30mm) → documents[].applicantPhoto.

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

• Every category-specific supplement (pages 2 onward of whichever lettered variant matches purposeOfEntry — e.g. the Student-specific pages 2-3, or the Spouse/Permanent-Resident-specific pages 3-4 seen in the variants cross-checked this cycle). There are roughly 30 such variants; each is its own candidate for a future companion-schedule cycle, mirroring how this registry already splits the Czech Republic's tax return (cz/mf/priznani-k-dani-z-prijmu-fyzickych-osob) from its four Přílohy annexes.
• The "for organization" pages (e.g. pages 4-5 of the Student variant, "所属機関等作成用" — completed and signed by the sponsoring school, employer, or host, not the applicant). Out of scope for an applicant-facing document; a candidate for a future cycle alongside the category-specific supplements above.
• The signature/declaration block ("I hereby declare that the statement given above is true and correct," with a signature and date) — printed on the category-specific supplement pages (e.g. item 31 of the Student variant), not on the shared page 1 modelled here. A real submission always includes at least one category-specific supplement, so this is not a gap in the real-world process, only a scope boundary of this specific document.
• The Excel (.xlsx) version of the application (e.g. 930004045.xlsx, linked alongside the PDF on the same status pages) — not opened or cross-checked this cycle; the PDF's text-layer content is the basis for this document.
• Additional required documents beyond the applicant photo (e.g. a return envelope, passport copy, or category-specific supporting evidence such as an enrollment certificate) — these vary by purposeOfEntry category and were only confirmed for the Student category's own submission checklist; not asserted here as universal, and therefore not modelled in documents[] beyond the photo, which is printed directly on the universal page 1 itself.
• DMV, Business Formation, and National ID candidates screened this cycle but not chosen — see "Candidates screened this cycle" above.

Mock-data test run

Per this registry's established practice (see e.g. registry/ee/vm/long-stay-visa-application/1.0.0/VERIFICATION.md), 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 two negative controls:

`` OK Scenario 1: Student, full disclosure history (entry/exit, COE, criminal record, family) OK Scenario 2: Student, simplest path (no history, no family in Japan) OK Negative control 1: missing pastEntryExitCount when pastEntryExitHistory=true (expected FAIL) - MISSING required field: pastEntryExitCount - MISSING required field: pastEntryLatestEntryDate - MISSING required field: pastEntryLatestDepartureDate OK Negative control 2: invalid purposeOfEntry enum value (expected FAIL) - INVALID enum value for purposeOfEntry: tourist ``

Scenario 1 models a Student applicant (purposeOfEntry: "student") who discloses a prior entry/exit, a prior COE application, a minor criminal record (a traffic violation, modelled to exercise criminalRecordDetails), and a sibling residing in Japan — exercising every requiredWhen-gated follow-up field this document defines. Scenario 2 is the opposite, simplest path: every Yes/No gate is false/absent and no follow-up field is supplied. The two negative controls confirm the check script actually enforces requiredWhen (correctly reporting three missing follow-up fields once pastEntryExitHistory is true) and validation.enum (correctly rejecting a purposeOfEntry value, "tourist", that is not one of the 34 enumerated categories) 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/isa/certificate-of-eligibility-application/0.1.0/schema.json ok registry/jp/isa/certificate-of-eligibility-application/0.1.0/schema.json 1/1 document(s) passed.

$ node tools/validate-ajv.mjs registry/jp/isa/certificate-of-eligibility-application/0.1.0/schema.json ok registry/jp/isa/certificate-of-eligibility-application/0.1.0/schema.json [v0.3] 1/1 document(s) validated against the meta-schema (ajv 2020-12). ```

Scope and jurisdiction notes

• This is Japan's first document in the registry, opening Japan as GovSchema's 28th jurisdiction, in the Visa vertical.
• Agency slug isa (Immigration Services Agency) is a new JP authority segment; jurisdiction.level is national (ISA is a national agency, not prefectural).
• id/process slug certificate-of-eligibility-application uses English, the official English name the source itself prints for this form ("APPLICATION FOR CERTIFICATE OF ELIGIBILITY").
• Conditional requiredness uses requiredWhen (GSP-0013), consistent with every other recent document in this registry.
• version set to 0.1.0 rather than 1.0.0, per CONTRIBUTING.md's guidance to start a new, not-yet-stable schema at 0.1.0 — this is Japan's first schema of any kind, and the document's scope (one shared cover sheet out of a multi-part application) is narrower than a typical 1.0.0 base-return/base-application 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 authoring one or more category-specific supplements (Student, Engineer/Specialist in Humanities/ International Services, and Spouse-or-Child-of-Japanese-National are the three variants already downloaded and cross-checked this cycle) as companion documents, and re-screening the Business Formation (houmukyoku.moj.go.jp stock-company registration) and National ID (J-LIS My Number Card) candidates flagged above as strong, unpursued leads.