# e-Gov Japan Laws AI Agent Connect

> Japan's official legislation portal as an MCP: browse all 18,000+ acts, cabinet orders and ordinances, fetch full structured text (chapters > articles > paragraphs), extract single articles or search keywords inside laws — keyless.

## Overview
- **Category:** government-public-data
- **Price:** Free
- **Endpoint:** https://edge.vinkius.com/vk_preview_dAryGn3t9RZAaUEKNBG0jJAjmZm5TJSrlhTmKudp/ai-agent-connect
- **Tags:** japan, laws, legislation, legal-tech, compliance, government-data

## Description

**e-Gov** is the Japanese government's official legal portal — every law in force in Japan, as a single MCP server.

### What you can do
- **Browse the catalog** — the Constitution + all acts (~9,000), cabinet orders (~2,100), imperial orders (~2,400) and ministerial ordinances (~4,500), each with law ID, number and promulgation date
- **Fetch full structured text** — complete law as a clean hierarchy: Law > Chapter > Article > Paragraph > Sentence
- **Get the outline first** — chapters and article titles without the text, the fast way to understand a law's coverage
- **Extract one article** — "what does Article 29 of the Constitution say", answered with the exact promulgated text
- **Search inside laws** — find where a topic is regulated: 消費税 (consumption tax), 労働 (labour), 選挙 (elections) across every article of a law

### Why it matters
Japanese law text is famously opaque to outsiders: kanji numbering, era-based dates (令和/Reiwa), mixed act/order hierarchy. This MCP gives you the authoritative source — the same text courts and companies cite — in structured form an AI can navigate.

### Who is this for?
Legal-tech builders, compliance teams, researchers, translators, journalists and AI agents that need the actual text of Japanese law.

## Tools

### get_law
Use law_id from list_laws (e.g. 321CONSTITUTION = the Constitution). Large laws can be several hundred KB. Text is Japanese.

Get the FULL structured text of a Japanese law (articles, chapters, provisions)

### list_laws
Categories: 1=Constitution + Acts (all laws, ~9000), 2=Cabinet Orders (~2100), 3=Imperial Orders (~2400), 4=Ministerial Ordinances (~4500). Each entry: law_id (use in get_law), law_name, law_number, promulgation date. Japanese text. Use query_terms to filter client-side — the API has no server-side search.

List Japanese laws by category (constitution, acts, imperial orders, ministerial ordinances) with law IDs

### get_law_outline
The fast way to see what a law covers before fetching specific articles.

Get the structural outline of a law WITHOUT the full text (chapters + article titles)

### get_law_article
For "what does Article 29 of the Constitution say". Tip: article Num attribute follows the kanji numbering order — use get_law_outline first to map article numbers.

Extract ONE article (or chapter) of a Japanese law with its full text

### search_law_articles
Japanese keyword required (e.g. 消費税 for consumption tax, 労働 for labour, 選挙 for elections).

Search every article of a law for a keyword (finds where a topic is regulated)

## Prompt Examples

**Prompt:** 
```
What does Article 29 of the Japanese Constitution say?
```

**Response:** 
```
⚖️ **Constitution (日本国憲法) — Article 29**

Paragraph 1: The right to own or to hold property is inviolable.
Paragraph 2: Property rights shall be defined by law, in conformity with the public welfare.
Paragraph 3: Private property may be taken for public use upon just compensation therefor.

Sources straight from e-Gov (321CONSTITUTION). Want the preceding property-rights articles or the English context?
```

**Prompt:** 
```
Where is consumption tax regulated? Search the consumption tax act for 消費税
```

**Response:** 
```
🔎 **Consumption Tax Act — keyword search 消費税**

Found 47 matching articles. Key ones:
- Article 4 (課税物件): taxable goods and transactions
- Article 28: tax rate application per category
- Article 57: export exemptions

I can pull the full text of any of these articles or search another law.
```

**Prompt:** 
```
Give me the outline of Japan's Labour Standards Act
```

**Response:** 
```
📋 **Labour Standards Act (労働基準法) — outline**

Chapter 1: General provisions (arts. 1-13)
Chapter 2: Labour contracts (14-18)
Chapter 3: Wages (24-26) · Chapter 4: Working hours (32-40) · Chapter 5: Safety and health…

13 chapters, ~120 articles. Want the full text of the working-hours chapter?
```

## Frequently Asked Questions

**Do I need an API key or registration?**
No. The e-Gov Laws API is fully public — list, full text, outline, article extraction and keyword search all work without authentication.

**How do I find the law_id I need?**
Use list_laws with query_terms — e.g. category 1 with 労働 (labour) returns every act whose name contains it. Law IDs look like 321CONSTITUTION or 平成五年法律第八十九号 encoded as IDs. There is no server-side keyword search in the e-Gov API, so filtering happens client-side.