ministry · Japan
Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (厚生労働省)
Japan's national ministry responsible for health, medical and welfare policy. It issues and administers the national medical and dental licences and sets national medical-care policy; physicians and dentists are licensed at ministry level rather than through a separate professional council. Its official physician-search service (licenseif.mhlw.go.jp) is a non-UTF-8 (Windows-31J / Shift-JIS) frameset that is not reliably machine-readable, so no practitioner lookup URL is provided here.
Scope of authority
Ministry-level regulation of medicine and dentistry in Japan, including national licensing of physicians and dentists and administration of the Medical Care Act; individual medical-facility licensing is carried out by prefectural governors under that Act.
How to check a licence
- Open 医師等資格確認検索 (physician/dentist qualification check); the wrapper page is a frameset whose content is ./index.jsp (200).
- Choose 一般向け検索画面 (public search screen; /search_isei/jsp/top.jsp, 200): select 職種 (医師 physician / 歯科医師 dentist), 性別 (男性 / 女性), and enter 氏名 (full name; example '厚生 太郎' or 'ALBERT SCHWEITZER'), then press 検索.
- Page rules: the name must match exactly ('姓や名のみ又はフリガナでは、検索を行うことができません'), with a space between family and given name; old/common names registered can also be used.
- Page scope: 'Only doctors/dentists who submitted the Reiwa 6 (2024) biennial notification are searchable'; those not notified (except licences issued from January 2025) are not listed. Administrative-sanction information is shown for sanctioned practitioners until the suspension period ends.
- The 医療機関向け検索画面 (for medical institutions; /search_isei/ssl/isekikakuninTop.jsp, 200) additionally needs 生年月日, 登録番号, 登録年月日 and all must match.
- Language: Japanese
- Covers: practitioners
Documented from the register page on 2026-10-04: “医師、歯科医師の資格を確認することができます。”