Export License vs. Export Approval in Japan: Reading the Difference Through Statute, Appended Table, and Purpose

Hello, this is Ryuta Hamamoto from TIMEWELL. Whenever I take questions about export control, the very first place people stumble is the difference between an "export license" and an "export approval." Both are dispositions issued by the Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry, and in Japanese their names differ by a single character. Out in the field, I have watched more than a few practitioners freeze up because they could not tell, from the paperwork in front of them, which of the two procedures they were even looking at.

Let me give you the conclusion first: these are two different regimes that happen to have been given similar names. The governing statute is different, the purpose they set out to protect is different, and the very list of goods they cover is different. Once you separate the two cleanly, the whole landscape of export control becomes remarkably easy to read. Leave the distinction fuzzy, on the other hand, and you invite exactly the kind of accidents that plague this field — forgetting to obtain a required approval, or citing the wrong provision as your basis.

In this article I line the two up side by side using three anchors: the statute, the cabinet order, and the appended table. The goal is for you to be able to judge which of the two your own company's goods run into. If you are worried about the state of your current system, feel free to start with our free export-control readiness assessment — it takes three minutes to see where your gaps are — and then come back to read on.

The bottom line: the difference in one minute

First, take in the whole picture from a single table. An export license and an export approval can be organized like this.

Item	Export License	Export Approval
Statutory basis	Article 48(1), Foreign Exchange Act	Article 48(3), Foreign Exchange Act
Cabinet order provision	Article 1, Export Trade Control Order	Article 2, Export Trade Control Order
Controlled-goods list	Appended Table 1	Appended Table 2 (and Appended Table 2-2)
Main purpose	Maintenance of international peace and security (security export control)	Faithful performance of treaties and international commitments, supply-and-demand adjustment, international cooperation, etc.
Examples of controlled goods	Goods divertible to weapons or weapons of mass destruction (carbon fiber, machine tools, semiconductor-related items, etc.)	Ivory from rare fauna and flora (CITES), specified hazardous waste (Basel Convention), precursors of narcotics and psychotropic substances, hazardous chemicals, compound feed, etc.
Structure of the controls	List controls (Items 1-15 of Appended Table 1) and catch-all controls (Item 16)	Individual items based on treaty performance and supply-and-demand adjustment
Authority granting the disposition	Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry	Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry (with the consent of relevant ministers for some items)
Common ground	Both are dispositions by the Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry. Both require proof of the license or approval to customs at the time of the export declaration (Article 70, Customs Act). Exporting without a license or approval violates the Foreign Exchange Act.	Same as at left

Look again at the top row, the statutory basis. An export license rests on Article 48(1) of the Foreign Exchange Act (the Foreign Exchange and Foreign Trade Act, Act No. 228 of 1949), while an export approval rests on Article 48(3) of the very same Article 48¹. Because it is only the paragraph that differs within the same article number, the two are easily confused — but this "paragraph 1 or paragraph 3" question is the first fork that separates the entrances to the two regimes.

The difference in statute then becomes a difference in appended tables once you drop down to the cabinet order. The Export Trade Control Order (the "Export Order," Cabinet Order No. 378 of 1949) provides in Article 1 for the "license" of the goods listed in Appended Table 1, and in Article 2 for the "approval" of the goods listed in Appended Table 2². In other words, if your goods appear on Appended Table 1 you are in the world of licenses; if they appear on Appended Table 2 you are in the world of approvals. Which procedure applies is something you can judge simply by consulting the appended table. There is no need to agonize over the name. What you should look at is the table.

What an export license is: Article 48(1) and Appended Table 1, for security

An export license is a license from the Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry based on Article 48(1) of the Foreign Exchange Act. The provision reads: "A person who intends to export specific kinds of goods to specific regions designated by Cabinet Order as being likely to impede the maintenance of international peace and security must obtain the license of the Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry, as prescribed by Cabinet Order"¹. The wording is stiff, but the point is that its purpose is security. Beyond weapons themselves, it is a mechanism for keeping out of dangerous hands those goods that — however peaceful their outward appearance — could be diverted to the development of weapons of mass destruction or conventional weapons.

The goods covered are those listed in Appended Table 1 of the Export Order. Internally, Appended Table 1 divides into two large structures. Items 1 through 15 are the "list controls," which focus on the specifications and performance (the specs) of goods. Specific numeric thresholds — the tensile strength of carbon fiber, the positioning accuracy of machine tools, the capability of semiconductor manufacturing equipment — are set out, corresponding to the agreements of the international export-control regimes (frameworks such as the Wassenaar Arrangement, in which major countries coordinate their controls). If your product's specs reach these thresholds, they fall under the list controls, and a license is required regardless of destination.

The other structure is Item 16, which is the "catch-all controls (complementary export controls)"³. This one focuses not on specs but on end use and end user. Even ordinary goods that slip through the net of the list controls will require a license if it becomes clear that they may be used to develop weapons of mass destruction or the like, or that they are headed to an end user of concern. List controls catch goods by their specs; catch-all controls catch them by how they are used. It is this two-tier structure that casts the security net of Appended Table 1. Keep in mind that in both cases the basis is the same license under Article 48(1).

The work of checking, line by line, where in Appended Table 1 your goods fall is called "classification" (gaihi hantei). If you would like to grasp the overall shape of this classification, and the structure of the Export Order itself, first take a look at my companion article on how to read the Export Trade Control Order. It will show you exactly where in the cabinet order the skeleton of export control is written.

What an export approval is: Article 48(3) and Appended Table 2, for international cooperation and supply-and-demand adjustment

An export approval, by contrast, is based on Article 48(3) of the Foreign Exchange Act. This is the first stumbling point: you will occasionally see materials explaining the basis of the approval as "Article 48(2)," but that is wrong. Article 48(2) is a provision expanding the licensing regime — it allows a license obligation to be imposed even when specific kinds of goods are exported to regions "other than the specific regions," so that the license regime of paragraph 1 can be implemented reliably. It is not the basis of the approval. Remember that the approval rests squarely on Article 48(3)¹.

That Article 48(3) provides that the Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry may impose an approval obligation to the extent necessary for certain purposes. The purposes listed in the provision are: maintenance of the equilibrium of the balance of international payments; sound development of foreign trade and the national economy; faithful performance of treaties and other international commitments concluded by Japan; contribution to international efforts for international peace; and implementation of a Cabinet decision under Article 10(1) of the Foreign Exchange Act¹. Unlike a license, which can be described in terms of the single pillar of security, the purposes of an approval are broader, taking on the character of international cooperation and supply-and-demand adjustment.

The goods covered are those listed in Appended Table 2 of the Export Order⁴. To give concrete examples: the rare fauna and flora that CITES seeks to protect, the representative case being ivory; the specified hazardous waste whose cross-border movement the Basel Convention regulates; precursors of narcotics and psychotropic substances; hazardous chemicals; and compound feed all line up here. What they share is that they are items whose export needs to be controlled in order for Japan to faithfully keep the treaties it has concluded, or from the standpoint of supply-and-demand or international cooperation. It clicks into place once you understand these controls as being less about security and more about keeping promises made to the international community.

Article 2 of the Export Order provides for an approval obligation not only for the goods in Appended Table 2, but also for goods destined for North Korea as listed in Appended Table 2-2 (in effect, a comprehensive control), and for the export of processing raw materials under consignment-processing trade contracts, among others². Even under the single word "approval," the coverage is not monolithic. If you would like to know more about the thinking behind each item in Appended Table 2 and the practical work of applying for an approval, please see the practical guide to Appended Table 2 and export approvals.

Incidentally, TIMEWELL's TRAFEED, which supports export control with AI, cuts across both the list controls of Appended Table 1 and the approval targets of Appended Table 2 to visualize, in a short time, which controls a given item may touch. Because it is designed to reflect each country's legal amendments on the day they take effect, it is used to prevent missed cross-checks when an appended table's item numbers shift. That said, the premise does not change: the final classification and the choice of procedure are matters for your company's export-control manager.

Why they are split in two, and how the practice flows

By now you can probably see why they are deliberately split into a license and an approval. It is because the values they set out to protect are different. A license is about security; an approval is about international cooperation and supply-and-demand adjustment. Where the purpose differs, so do the criteria for judgment, the perspective of the review, and the list of goods that should be covered. Even though they share the same outward form — the Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry being able to stop an export — it is more accurate to regard them as separate policies at heart.

So how do you handle the two in practice? The flow is a single line. The starting point is classification: confirming whether the goods you handle fall under Appended Table 1, Appended Table 2, or both. If they fall under Appended Table 1, you proceed to the license under Article 48(1); if under Appended Table 2, to the approval under Article 48(3). If they fall under neither, a license or approval under the Foreign Exchange Act is, in principle, unnecessary. But this "in principle" carries two provisos. One is the catch-all controls: even ordinary goods not listed in an appended table may require a license depending on the end use or end user. The other is that regulations under laws other than the Foreign Exchange Act (controls administered by other ministries) may apply separately. The understanding that "it isn't on the appended table, so I can export anything freely" is dangerous.

And here is the step that is most often overlooked — the last one. Even after you obtain a license or an approval at METI, that alone will not get your goods out of port. Article 70(1) of the Customs Act (Act No. 61 of 1954) requires that, for goods needing an export license or approval under other laws, you prove to customs at the time of the export declaration that you hold the required license or approval⁵. For goods where this is not proven, customs will not permit the export (Article 70(3))⁵. Obtaining the license or approval at METI, and proving it at customs, are two separate steps⁶. The elementary accident of leaving the license in the safe and forgetting to present it at declaration happens precisely when people do not know this structure.

One more thing that is most often confused in practice: the difference between goods and technology. The licenses and approvals I have described so far are all about the export of "goods" under Article 48. The act of providing design drawings, programs, or technical information to a non-resident (a service transaction) is based on a different provision, Article 25 of the Foreign Exchange Act¹. It is not unusual for a company that assumed "we don't ship physical things, so export control has nothing to do with us" to discover that its technology transfers were in fact touching Article 25. The stars of this article are the license and approval for goods, but keep it in a corner of your mind that technology travels a different route.

The latest developments in 2025: removal of glass eels and the overhaul of the catch-all controls

The appended tables are not fixed; they are amended almost every year. This is where practice demands care, because shipping on last year's classification risks missing a regulatory change. Let me point to two recent developments worth keeping in view.

The first is the removal of "glass eels" (juvenile eels) from Appended Table 2. By a cabinet order partially amending the Export Trade Control Order, glass eels, which had sat under Item 33 of Appended Table 2, were removed. This amendment was promulgated on November 14, 2025 (Reiwa 7) and took effect on December 1, 2025⁷⁸. The reason for the removal was to avoid a duplication of controls. From that same December 1, 2025, glass eels became subject to export controls under the Act on Ensuring the Proper Domestic Distribution of Specified Aquatic Animals and Plants, administered by the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries. Removing them from the approval targets on the Foreign Exchange Act side was the tidy-up that resolved a state of double regulation under two laws⁹. What I want you to notice here is that being removed from the approval targets does not mean "you can now export them freely." The administering law merely moved from METI to MAFF; the control itself continues. If you only memorize the appended table's item numbers, you will miss this kind of shift in jurisdiction.

The second is the overhaul of the catch-all controls (complementary export controls, Item 16 of Appended Table 1). This overhaul took effect on October 9, 2025 (Reiwa 7)¹⁰. The detailed operation must be confirmed in METI's own materials, but you should register the fact that the framework for looking at end use and end user, outside the list controls, has been updated. Every time the international security environment shifts, the operation of the catch-all controls shifts too. It is a development that shows just how precarious the mindset of "it isn't on the list, so I'm safe" really is.

As for how to face amendments, what I tell people in the field is simple. Do not ship on the old classification for transactions that straddle an effective date. For Appended Table 2 items, do not memorize the item numbers; check the latest in-force version each time. Simply enforcing these two habits will prevent a great many amendment-driven accidents.

Correcting common misunderstandings and putting them into practice

Finally, let me organize the misunderstandings I meet again and again in consultations. Every one of them tends to linger once you stumble on it.

First, the misunderstanding that "license" and "approval" are just two ways of saying the same thing. As you have read, they are separate regimes: the statutory basis (Article 48(1) or (3)), the purpose, and the covered list (Appended Table 1 or 2) all differ. The names merely resemble each other; separate them out as different things at heart.

Second, the error of writing the basis of the approval as Article 48(2). The approval rests on Article 48(3). Article 48(2) is a provision expanding the license obligation to regions other than the specific ones, and it has nothing to do with the approval. If you get the paragraph wrong when copying from source materials, the error will get baked into your internal manual — so take care.

Third, the misunderstanding that you may export anything not listed on an appended table. The catch-all controls, or regulations under other laws, may apply. Fourth, the misunderstanding that METI's license or approval alone means a free pass through customs. Under Article 70 of the Customs Act, separate proof to customs at the time of the export declaration is required, and without that proof the export will not be permitted. Fifth, confusing Article 48 for goods with Article 25 for the provision of technology. And sixth, the error of memorizing the item numbers of Appended Table 2 as if they were fixed. Just as glass eels were removed from Item 33, item numbers and listed items alike move with amendments.

Most of these misunderstandings can be prevented if you once carefully match the statute against the appended table. Exporting without a license or approval violates the Foreign Exchange Act and can expose you to criminal penalties and administrative sanctions (such as an export prohibition). License violations concerning Appended Table 1, which touch on security, are treated especially seriously. The specific statutory penalties depend on the penal provisions of the Foreign Exchange Act, but before you worry about the severity of the punishment, I believe it is far more important to firm up your pre-export classification and your internal export-control system.

Separating the regimes is not hard once you are used to it. But as the goods you handle multiply, your destinations widen, and the laws move every year, keeping this running without gaps by human effort alone becomes a considerable burden. If you have doubts about your own classification and system, please start from a one-on-one consultation about TRAFEED, our export-control AI agent, and let us organize an approach tailored to your current operations together. Separating license from approval is only the entrance to the long road that is export control. Firm this up, and the judgments that lie beyond it become far easier.

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References

For the overall picture of the system and the basic terminology, the Center for Information on Security Trade Control (CISTEC) "Basics of Export Control" (https://www.cistec.or.jp/export/yukan_kiso/anpo_gaiyou/index.html) is also a useful reference. The statutory and appended-table descriptions in this article were cross-checked against e-Gov Law Search and METI's published materials as of the date of publication, but for actual export procedures please always confirm the latest in-force version.

Footnotes

1. e-Gov Law Search, "Foreign Exchange and Foreign Trade Act (Act No. 228 of 1949)," Articles 48 and 25 https://laws.e-gov.go.jp/law/324AC0000000228 ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵

2. e-Gov Law Search, "Export Trade Control Order (Cabinet Order No. 378 of 1949)," Articles 1 and 2, Appended Table 1 and Appended Table 2 https://laws.e-gov.go.jp/law/324CO0000000378/ ↩ ↩²

3. METI, "Complementary Export Controls (Catch-All Controls)" https://www.meti.go.jp/policy/anpo/catchall.html ↩

4. METI, "List of Goods Subject to Export Approval (Appended Table 2)" https://www.meti.go.jp/policy/external_economy/trade_control/04_kamotsu/01_export/export_kamotsu.html ↩

5. e-Gov Law Search, "Customs Act (Act No. 61 of 1954)," Article 70 (Certification or Confirmation) https://laws.e-gov.go.jp/law/329AC0000000061 ↩ ↩²

6. Japan Customs, "5501 Overview of Other Laws and Regulations Relating to Exports Confirmed at Customs (Article 70 of the Customs Act)" https://www.customs.go.jp/tetsuzuki/c-answer/extsukan/5501_jr.htm ↩

7. METI, "A Cabinet Order Partially Amending the Export Trade Control Order Was Approved by the Cabinet" (November 11, 2025) https://www.meti.go.jp/press/2025/11/20251111001/20251111001.html ↩

8. METI, "Overview of the Amendment to the Export Trade Control Order and Related Regulations (November 2025; removal of glass eels from Appended Table 2)" https://www.meti.go.jp/policy/anpo/law_document/seirei/20251114_gaiyo01.pdf ↩

9. METI, "On the Export of Glass Eels" https://www.meti.go.jp/policy/external_economy/trade_control/02_export/03_suisan/export_unagi.html ↩

10. METI, "On the Review of the Complementary Export Controls (in force October 9, 2025)" https://www.meti.go.jp/policy/anpo/catch-all/20251009_frouzu.pdf ↩