.jp

Status:	Active
country:	Japan
Registry Provider:	Japan Registry Service
Registrations:	1,630,000 (March 2021)
Date Implemented:	1986
Type:	ccTLD
More information:

.jp is the ccTLD for Japan. It is managed by Japan Registry Services Co., Ltd.

Delegation History

In August 1986, the University of Southern California's Information Sciences Institute (which then performed the IANA functions) approved a request for establishment of the .jp ccTLD. Japan was an early participant in the Internet. JUNET (Japanese University Network) was established in 1984 to interconnect Japanese universities, and in 1985, network connectivity tests began. In 1986, JUNET became connected with CSNET and USENET. Jun Murai was the key person during this process. On 5 August 1986, soon after deployment of the current domain-name system in 1984 and 1985, the .jp ccTLD was delegated by Dr. Jon Postel (then in charge of the IANA function at the Information Sciences Institute) to Jun Murai.

Jun Murai began at first to manage and administer the .jp ccTLD from within the "junet-admin" group, which was responsible for the operation of JUNET. Initially, JUNET had been using the top-level domain name ".junet," but it was suggested by Jun Murai that the Japanese Internet community should instead use .jp, as international rules concerning top-level domains were being established. In April 1989, junet-admin began registration of .jp domain names. Transfer from .junet to .jp was completed in approximately three months, and .junet domain names were replaced with such domains as .ac.jp and .co.jp.

Considering the accelerating Internet development, it became difficult to quickly respond to the needs of the Internet users in Japan. After extensive discussion among various Japanese academic societies the JCRN (Japan Committee for Research Networks) was established, which made the decision to create JNIC (Japan Network Information Center) in December 1991 to provide an institutional framework for the management and administration of the .jp ccTLD. In April 1993, with Jun Murai's consent, JNIC reorganized itself as JPNIC (JaPan Network Information Center).

Due to the growing importance and size of the .jp registry, it was decided at the 11th General Meeting of JPNIC in December 2000 to create a new corporation that would manage the .jp domain. Thus, the Japan Registry Service (JPRS) was created, and on June 30, 2003, officially assumed the duties of the .jp registry.

Rules and Restrictions

Local presence is required to register a .jp domain name. Any individual, group or organization having a permanent postal address in Japan is eligible for registration.

There are three types of .jp domain names:

• General-use JP Domain Name: domain name type without restrictions on the number of registration per registrant. Any individual, group, or organization that has a permanent postal address in Japan may apply (e.g. EXAMPLE.JP).
• Prefecture Type JP Domain Name: Any person or organization having a residential address in Japan can register any number of domain names. Prefecture Type JP Domain Name includes one of the names of the 47 prefectures in its structure (e.g. EXAMPLE.HOKKAIDO.JP, EXAMPLE.TOKYO.JP, EXAMPLE.NAGASAKI.JP). The second and third-level domain can be registered in both ASCII and Japanese.
• Organizational/Geographic Type JP Domain Name: domain name types in which the number of registration is limited to one per registrant.

Second-level Domains

• .co.jp: companies (kaisha) having an official corporate registration in Japan. Non-Japanese companies that are registered as "Gaikoku Kaisha" ("Foreign Companies") may also apply;
• .or.jp: judicial persons (other than kaisha) established under the laws of Japan;
• .ne.jp: network service providers in Japan, offering network services to the general public on either profit or non-profit basis;
• .ac.jp: schools established under the School Education Law or other laws, institutions used by several different universities, universities, technical schools (shokugyo kunren-ko), incorporated schools, incorporated technical schools;
• .ad.jp: JPNIC members;
• .ed.jp: nurseries, kindergartens, primary schools, junior high schools, middle educational schools, high schools, schools for handicapped children, vocational schools (senshu gakko), and other types of schools which are mainly for people under the age of 18;
• .go.jp: Japanese government authorities, research institutes under Japanese authority's jurisdiction, and government-affiliated corporations;
• .gr.jp: groups which consist of two or more individuals residing in Japan, or groups of two or more corporations established under the laws of Japan. The representative and alternate representative of each group must be individuals who reside in Japan, or corporations established under the laws of Japan.
• .lg.jp: Japanese local authorities.

Characters

A General-use JP domain name containing Kanji, Hiragana, and/or Katakana must consist of one to fifteen (1~15) characters, excluding ".JP" suffix. The number of characters in an ASCII JP domain name must be from three to sixty-three (3~63). If ASCII, Kanji, Hiragana and/or Katakana characters coexist in a same label of a General-use JP domain name, each character will be counted as one, whether or not it is of double byte code or single byte code.

Country code top-level domain

Internet Assigned Numbers Authority