Japan healthcare and pharmaceutical data, in English

1,863 medicines in Japan are not shipping normally today

That is one in nine of every prescription product on the national price list, and it changes every day. We track it, along with the market size behind each molecule and the hospitals, pharmacies and physicians that use them. If you are deciding whether to enter Japan, or where, start here.

14,529 normal supply 963 limited supply 900 supply suspended

Every company marketing a prescription product in Japan reports its supply status to the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare. We publish that report the day it changes. Figures above: 28 August 2026, across 16,392 products from 175 companies.

Three things we hold

Each stands on its own. Together they answer the question most overseas teams actually have: is there a business here, and who would we have to reach.

Molecules

Market size, competition and supply risk, by molecule

One page per molecule: annual demand at national price, how many products compete, how many of them are constrained, and where in Japan it is used.

Browse → Facilities

Hospitals, clinics, pharmacies and care providers

Each care setting as its own database, joined to the corporation that operates it — with beds, patient volumes, departments and, for medical corporations, financial statements.

Around 320,000 doctors, with what they are certified in

Affiliation, more than 500 kinds of board certification, intractable-disease designations, research and trial involvement, and outpatient session counts.

National, and then much smaller than national

Japan is not one market. Prescribing, care capacity and physician supply vary sharply between and inside prefectures, and our data goes down to the level where that shows.

47prefectures

330secondary medical areas

1,913municipalities

The map is schematic — one square per prefecture, arranged as Japan is arranged, so that no prefecture is harder to see than another. Secondary medical areas (二次医療圏) are the units Japan uses to plan hospital care, and are the level at which most clinical volume data is published.

How this usually goes

You tell us the question A therapeutic area, a list of molecules, a type of facility, or just the decision you are trying to make. In English, by email.

We tell you what the data can and cannot answer Before you spend anything. Some questions have no answer in Japanese public data — brand-level market share is the common one — and we would rather say so up front.

A commissioned extract, or a database licence For a screening question, an Excel extract: one row per molecule, 24 fields, plus a detail sheet each. For ongoing work, a licensed database delivered as CSV on a standing refresh cycle.

What we will not sell you

Brand-level market share for Japanese generics. Most generic products here are listed under a unified non-proprietary name: several companies share one code on the national price list, and public statistics are aggregated at that code. Volume and value cannot be split back out by company. Anyone quoting you Japanese brand share is using proprietary distributor sales data, or estimating — and those are very different things to buy. We will tell you which one you are being offered.

Start with the question, not the dataset

Write to us in English with what you are trying to decide. We will come back with what we hold, what it costs, and what it will not tell you.

Send an enquiry

Our Database Division replies in English within three business days (Japan time).