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Japan has joined the Hague Convention Abolishing the Requirement of Legalization for Foreign Public Documents in the year 1970. Therefore no diplomatic authentication or legalization of documents from Japan is required for the legal communication with another member state of the convention. The documents only need to be stamped with an "apostille" by the issuing state's authorities in order to be valid in the state of destination.
Responsible for issuing the apostille is the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. However, the departments of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs accept only public documents issued by state bodies.
Documents issued privately are submitted either through state notary offices (in Tokyo, Osaka and Kanagawa) or through a state notary office with subsequent certification of a document by the director of the relevant legal affairs office.
Documents issued by most universities, private hospitals, associations, charity foundations of chambers of commerce and industry can not be directly apostilled.
Documents issued by Japanese authorities or other authorized structures published in Japanese can be legalized.
The process of legalizing documents in Japan involves verifying their origin and authenticity by authorized government officials. After passing through this procedure, a special stamp is placed on the document - an apostille. Most often, the apostille is placed on the back of the document, or on a separate sheet, after which the document is stitched.
An apostille is a stamp of rectangular shape. The heading "Apostille (Convention de La Haye du 5 Octobre 1961)" must be in French.
The following documents can be authenticated by apostille:
- Certificates of civil status (certificates of birth, death, marriage and divorce)
- Education documents (school reports, certificates, diplomas)
- Trade register excerpts
- Judicial decisions
- Notarially certified copies of documents
- Notarially certified translations
- Further notarial documents (authorizations, last will, declarations)
- Commercial documents legalized by a state organ of registration (articles of incorporation, registration certificates, tax registrations etc.)
Requirements for the documents:
An apostille can be issued exclusively on an original document. Therefore, the latter must be in an apparent good condition, all stamps and signatures have to be clear and readable. Furthermore, it must not contain alien marking and labels.
Additional services
In addition to the legalization of your documents, we can provide you with high quality translations.
If you want to bring company information before the court, it needs to be legalised as well. We are therefore offering extracts from the commercial register of Japan including apostille and translation.
Japan Apostille Service - Original Documents Express Service
14 Business Days Service