Selling into Japan on Shopify — the compliance work nobody warns you about

Shopify makes it easy to open a storefront for Japanese customers. What it does not do is tell you which Japanese rules start applying the moment you take orders there.

This is a practical summary of the three that reliably catch overseas merchants.

1. Electronic bookkeeping retention

Since January 2024, records exchanged electronically cannot be kept as printouts. If you receive a supplier invoice as a PDF, the PDF itself is the record you must retain.

Two conditions have to hold:

• Tamper evidence — a timestamp, a system that logs edits and deletions, or a documented internal procedure prohibiting silent edits
• Searchability — you must be able to find a record by transaction date, amount, and counterparty

The internal-procedure route is the cheapest way to satisfy the first condition, and it is explicitly permitted. Many small merchants start there.

2. Qualified invoices

Japan’s invoice system took effect in October 2023. Business customers can only deduct consumption tax if they hold a qualified invoice from a registered issuer.

A qualified invoice must carry the issuer’s registration number, the transaction date, a description, the tax-exclusive total per rate, and the tax amount per rate.

Shopify’s built-in documents do not include the registration number or per-rate breakdown, so a document app is required. Note that the reduced 8% rate applies to food and beverages, which means stores with mixed catalogues must set tax rates per product, not per store.

If you sell only to consumers, registration is optional. If any meaningful share of your revenue is B2B, not registering will cost you those customers.

3. Pricing and claims display

Two rules matter here.

Total-price display: prices shown to consumers must include consumption tax. A tax-exclusive price shown prominently with the tax-inclusive figure in small print does not satisfy this.

Stealth-marketing regulation: since October 2023, advertising that is not identifiable as advertising is prohibited. Influencer and affiliate content promoting your store must be clearly marked. The liability sits with the advertiser — you — not with the creator.

What this means in practice

None of this blocks you from selling. But it does mean three things have to exist before you scale:

1. A retention system for electronic records that satisfies search requirements
2. A document flow that issues compliant invoices
3. A review step for how prices and claims are presented

The first two are usually solved with apps. The third is a process problem, and it is the one most often left undone.

Mumu Labo builds DenchoBox, which archives Shopify order documents against the retention rules and issues qualified invoices as PDFs, alongside checks for pricing and disclosure requirements.

This article is a general summary and is not tax or legal advice. Confirm your own position with a licensed tax accountant in Japan.