Gyoseishoshi vs Shihoshoshi vs Zeirishi vs Sharoushi: Who Actually Does What in a Japan Market Entry

Quick answer: Japan divides the legal-administrative work of a company setup across four separately licensed professions, each with an exclusive scope: the gyoseishoshi (行政書士, administrative scrivener) prepares immigration and government-agency filings, the shihoshoshi (司法書士, judicial scrivener) handles corporate and real-estate registration at the Legal Affairs Bureau, the zeirishi (税理士, licensed tax accountant) handles tax filings and representation before the tax office, and the sharoushi (社会保険労務士, labor and social insurance attorney) handles employment, payroll, and social insurance procedures. A foreign founder entering Japan typically needs all four — usually within the same three-month window — and none of them is licensed to do the others' work.

Why does Japan split this across four licenses?

Quick answer: Each profession has a statutory monopoly over its filings. A shihoshoshi cannot file your visa application; a gyoseishoshi cannot register your company's incorporation; a zeirishi cannot enroll your employee in social insurance. This is not turf-guarding by convention — performing another profession's reserved work for compensation is illegal.

For founders from the US or Australia, this is the single most disorienting structural difference. In your home market, one corporate law firm (or even one online service) can take you from incorporation through tax registration. In Japan, the equivalent scope is legally fragmented, and each specialist typically works in Japanese, on their own intake process, with their own document requests — many of which overlap. That fragmentation, not any single filing's difficulty, is what makes unmanaged Japan entries slow.

The four professions, one at a time

Gyoseishoshi (行政書士) — administrative scrivener

Prepares and submits applications to government agencies, most relevantly the Immigration Services Agency: Certificate of Eligibility (COE) applications, Business Manager visa applications and renewals, and status changes. Also handles many license/permit applications (restaurant licenses, construction permits, etc.). For a founder, this is your visa specialist. See our COE explainer for where their work begins.

At Smart Contents, this is the one profession we hold in-house rather than coordinate externally: SMC行政書士事務所 (principal gyoseishoshi 桂陳悦, Tokyo Metropolitan Association of Administrative Scriveners registration 第24081451号) operates within the company, so visa and immigration filings happen directly inside the same team running your entry — not through a third-party referral.

Shihoshoshi (司法書士) — judicial scrivener

Owns filings to the Legal Affairs Bureau (法務局): company incorporation registration (KK or GK), changes to registered directors or capital, registered address changes. When your capital increase during the Business Manager visa transitional period needs to be registered, that registration is shihoshoshi work. The GK vs KK choice is made before this filing, but the filing itself is theirs.

Zeirishi (税理士) — licensed tax accountant

Handles corporate tax registration and filings: the incorporation notifications to the national tax office and local tax authorities, blue-form return election (with its loss-carryforward benefits and filing deadline), consumption tax / Qualified Invoice System registration, year-end corporate returns, and representation in tax examinations. Since the October 2025 reform, zeirishi are also among the professionals licensed to provide the now-mandatory business plan certification for Business Manager visa applications — one of the few places two workstreams (tax and immigration) formally intersect.

Sharoushi (社会保険労務士) — labor and social insurance attorney

Owns labor and social insurance procedures: enrolling the company and employees in health insurance and pension (Japan Pension Service), employment insurance (Hello Work), workers' accident compensation insurance, drafting work rules (就業規則), and payroll compliance. The moment you make your first hire — which the post-2025 visa rules effectively require — sharoushi-scope obligations begin, and gaps here surface later as visa renewal problems.

Responsibility × timeline matrix

A typical founder-led entry (incorporation + Business Manager visa + first hire) sequences like this:

Note how many rows touch two or three columns at once, and how the dependencies run across professions: the visa file needs the registry certificate (shihoshoshi) and the certified plan (zeirishi); the renewal file needs clean social insurance records (sharoushi). No single specialist sees the whole board — each one, reasonably, optimizes their own filing.

Who coordinates them?

Quick answer: By default, you do — in Japanese, across four separate professional relationships with different intake forms, overlapping document requests, and no shared timeline. That coordination load, rather than any individual filing, is where founder-led entries lose weeks.

There are three common ways founders solve this. Some law/accounting groups bundle two of the four licenses in one office (a gyoseishoshi–shihoshoshi joint practice, for example), which shrinks but doesn't eliminate the coordination surface. Big-4-style firms will project-manage everything at enterprise pricing. The model we run at Smart Contents sits between: the gyoseishoshi function is in-house (SMC行政書士事務所, above), the remaining professions — including our tax accountant partner and labor/social insurance specialists — are licensed professionals we work with routinely, and a single English-speaking project manager — what we call a Smart PM — owns the cross-specialist timeline, deduplicates the document requests, and sequences the filings so the dependencies above don't serialize. Whichever model you choose, the useful takeaway is the same: budget for coordination as a real workstream, because Japan's licensing structure guarantees it exists.

FAQ

Can't a bengoshi (lawyer, 弁護士) just do all of this? A bengoshi's license is broad enough to cover most of these filings in principle, but full-service market-entry work is not how most Japanese law firms operate, and bengoshi rates make them an expensive substitute for scrivener-scope filings. In practice even lawyer-led entries subcontract to the four professions above.

Do I need all four even for a tiny one-person entity? You need shihoshoshi-scope work to incorporate, zeirishi-scope filings from day one, and gyoseishoshi-scope work if you need a visa. Sharoushi-scope obligations start with your first employee — which, under the post-October-2025 Business Manager rules, is no longer optional for visa-sponsored founders.

Are these roles interchangeable with an English-speaking accountant or consultant? No. An unlicensed consultant preparing reserved filings for compensation is acting illegally, and Immigration and the Legal Affairs Bureau treat professional attribution seriously. Verify the license, not just the English.

How do fees typically split across the four? Each profession bills separately for its own scope. Rather than quote ranges that vary widely by city and case, see our published stage-based pricing for how we package the combined work.

This article describes Japan's professional licensing structure in general terms as of July 2026 and is not legal advice. Scope boundaries have statutory nuance beyond this summary — for a specific filing, confirm with the relevant licensed professional.