Food additives in Japan
Consumer Affairs Agency
Japan prohibits the sale, manufacture, import or use of any additive other than one that has been designated, and the designated additives are listed in Appended Table 1 to the Regulations for Enforcement of the Food Sanitation Act. Since April 2024 designation is administered by the Consumer Affairs Agency.
Three things sit outside that table and are permitted all the same: existing additives — substances already in use when the system changed in 1995, kept on a separate register — natural flavouring agents, and ordinary foods used as additives. Many substances a European reader thinks of as additives are Japanese existing additives rather than designated ones.
The table gives names only. Conditions of use are set separately, in the Specifications and Standards for Foods, Food Additives, etc.
What this index holds
307 of the 1189 substances on this site carry a Japan entry, across 307 provisions. Last retrieved 2026-10-18 from Japan: List of Designated Additives (Appended Table 1, Regulations for Enforcement of the Food Sanitation Act), under Public Data License 1.0 (compatible with CC BY 4.0) on all three sites — e-Gov, Japanese Law Translation and the MHLW website; statute text is excluded from copyright (Copyright Act, Art. 13).
- 307 permitted, with conditions
What is read, and what is not
Read:
- Appended Table 1, the list of designated additives, matched to pages through the Ministry of Justice's unofficial English translation of the same table.
- The standards for use (使用基準) that go with them, from the Specifications and Standards for Foods, Food Additives, etc. (MHW Notification No. 370 of 1959), as conditions on each designation. Every row carries the Japanese, which is the rule; the English beside it is this site's description of what the rule does, not a translation.
Not read:
- The list of existing additives (既存添加物名簿, 327 items), natural flavouring agents and ordinary foods used as additives. No official consolidated list of the existing additives is published in a reusable form — rechecked on 22 September 2026: the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare's own additives page links to a third-party copy for it, and its own documents are the notices that struck individual items off.
- The compositional specifications, including the 10th edition of the Japan's Specifications and Standards for Food Additives.
What an empty row means
A page with no Japan row proves very little: the substance may be an existing additive, a natural flavouring, or designated under a name this site could not match. Treat Japan's absences as unconfirmed.
The instruments
- Regulations for Enforcement of the Food Sanitation Act, Appended Table 1
- Food Sanitation Act, Article 12
Elsewhere
Compare Japan with another regulator on the comparison pages, or read how the whole index is built in the method.