How we compare banks

Which banks are included

The directory covers all 187 member institutions of the Japanese Bankers Association, plus all 254 shinkin (credit associations). Nothing is included or excluded because of a commercial relationship.

Coverage comes in two depths, and we always say which one you are reading. 16 consumer-facing banks are researched individually against official documents — that is where our fee, eligibility and English-support claims come from. The remaining institutions are directory-verified: their name, bank code, classification and market are confirmed against the JBA member list, and their service coverage is mapped across 20 dimensions.

Verified versus typical for the category

This is the most important distinction on any bank page. A service marked “Offered” means a reviewed official page evidenced it. A service marked “Typical for this category — verify” means banks of this kind normally offer it, but we have not checked it for this particular bank. The two are drawn differently, labelled differently in words, and counted separately at the top of every profile ("13 of 20 items were checked on official pages").

Filters are deliberately more generous than claims. Filtering for “Mortgage” shortlists banks where a mortgage is offered or typical, because that is a useful starting list — and each result then tells you which of the two it is. We never convert an inference into a verified fact to make a table look complete.

Institutions that are listed but not recommended

65 of the listed institutions — foreign-bank branches, custody and markets providers, and cooperative central institutions — do not offer general retail banking in Japan. They have a page, because a directory that quietly omits them is misleading, but that page opens by saying so and is excluded from search indexing rather than competing for personal-banking searches.

Shinkin are cooperative institutions under a different legal framework from banks, with membership and service-area rules of their own. They are indexed by prefecture rather than given individual profiles, because product-level facts for them have not been researched institution by institution and we will not publish 254 pages that say the same thing.

How information is collected and verified

Every comparable field is a structured record with its own source, source type, verification status and verification date. We check facts against the provider’s official pages, the regulator, or the relevant industry body. Each field carries a status: officially verified, verified by a reliable secondary source, or not verified.

How unknown fields are handled

If we cannot verify a value, we leave it blank and display “Not confirmed”. We never infer it from a similar bank, and we never present community claims as official facts. Every “Not confirmed” field is an open item in our research queue. Volatile figures — ATM and transfer fees, campaign rates, free-transaction allowances — are treated as time-sensitive and are shown as “Not confirmed” until re-verified rather than published as a value that will quietly go stale.

How “best for” labels are assigned

There is no single universal score. We assign situational labels — best for English support, best for cash and branches, best for a given ecosystem — from verified fields only. A bank can be a strong fit for one situation and a poor fit for another, and we say so.

English support and “foreigner-friendly”

We never label a bank “foreigner-friendly” on anecdotes. We break the idea into verifiable channels — website, application, app, phone and branch — each verified separately. Where English support is not documented, it reads “Not confirmed”. We never estimate approval probability or call any bank “easy to open”.

How affiliate relationships are handled

Some outbound links may be affiliate links. Commercial compensation never affects inclusion, ordering, filtering, “best for” assignments, or editorial conclusions. Affiliate relationships are disclosed near the relevant links.

What this comparison cannot determine

We have not personally opened an account at every bank, and we do not describe firsthand experience we have not documented. We cannot tell you whether you personally will be approved, and we do not predict it. Always confirm current fees, rates and requirements on the bank’s official pages before deciding.

Corrections

Found something out of date or wrong? Corrections are welcome and are treated as priority research items.