Build date proof › Japan
Export Certificate (yushutsu massho kari-toroku shomeisho, or yushutsu yotei todokede shomeisho)
This is the workhorse document of every JDM import, and it does NOT state a build date. Two widely-read broker guides claim it gives a date of manufacture or a build date. Both are wrong.
- covers
- Nissan, Toyota, Honda, Mazda, Mitsubishi, Subaru, Suzuki, Daihatsu
- issuer
- District Transport Bureau (MLIT). Kei cars: Light Motor Vehicle Inspection Organization.
- cost
- JPY 350 in revenue stamps; JPY 500 for a kei car. An English translation costs about JPY 5,000-10,000 and is not official.
- time
- Issued at the counter. Obtainable up to six months before the scheduled export date.
No date of manufacture
Carries no date of manufacture. Useful for other things; useless for proving a car's age.
What you have to supply
Handled by your exporter as part of deregistration.
Who can order it
Every exported Japanese vehicle gets one. It is not reproducible if lost.
Limits and gaps
It records shodo toroku nengetsu - the month and year of FIRST REGISTRATION. There is no date-of-manufacture field, because the shaken-sho it is derived from has no such field either.
Notes
What it does give is a first-registration date on an official government document, and that satisfies NHTSA's second tier: a registration document showing the vehicle was registered at least 25 years ago. First registration is always at or after manufacture, so it can only ever make a car look younger than it is - which is why NHTSA accepts it, and why it cannot rescue a borderline car. Australia names the Japanese de-registration certificate explicitly as acceptable evidence. No CBP regulation requires an English translation, but every customs broker treats one as mandatory in practice.
Checked against the issuer's own page issuer page · retrieved 25 September 2026
Marques this covers
The Build Date Proof Pack
This page tells you which document to order. The pack gets it ordered — and tells you what to do when the answer is that no document exists.
- A ready-to-send request for every archive, in the language it wants
- Exactly which numbers to photograph, and where they are on the car
- What to ask the seller for before you pay the deposit
- The fallback ladder when the manufacturer has no records
- What US, Canadian and Australian officials each accept as proof