Japan Procurement MCP Server

@pipeworx/japan-procurement

Japanese government tender notices — bid announcements from national ministries, all 47 prefectures and municipalities, sourced from the 官公需情報ポータルサイト (Kankōju public procurement portal) run by the Japan Small and Medium Enterprise Agency.

Part of Pipeworx — an MCP gateway connecting AI agents to 1865+ live data sources. This is an independent, unofficial integration — not affiliated with, endorsed by, or published by the upstream provider.

Tools

• japan_tenders_search(query, …) — keyword search across every publishing body. Accepts Japanese or ASCII and the portal's operators (AND / OR / ANDNOT / NOT, parentheses). Filters: category, prefecture, procedure type, organisation, notice title, announcement-date range.
• japan_tenders_by_prefecture(prefecture, …) — browse a prefecture's notices with no keyword. Takes "Tokyo", "東京都" or "13", comma-separated for several.
• japan_tenders_by_organization(organization_name, …) — everything a named buyer published ("国土交通省", "横浜市"), partial match.
• japan_tender_reference() — the accepted categories, procedure types and all 47 JIS X0401 prefecture codes. Call it when a filter value is rejected.

Every notice carries the buyer, title, announcement date, the original notice URL, attachment links, and — where the publisher supplied them — the bid submission date, opening date, delivery deadline, performance location and required bidder certification.

Auth

Keyless.

Data sources

• https://www.kkj.go.jp/api/ — the portal's documented search API, XML. Spec: https://www.kkj.go.jp/doc/ja/api_guide.pdf (V1.1, 2016-05-27).

Things the next person would otherwise rediscover the hard way:

• LG_Code must be zero-padded to two digits. LG_Code=1 returns SearchHits=0 — a clean 200 that reads as "Hokkaido publishes no tenders". LG_Code=01 returns ~50k. The pack pads for you; don't undo that.
• Category must be the numeric code (1 物品 / 2 工事 / 3 役務). Passing the Japanese label returns internal error: query error: syntax error. Same for Procedure_Type (1–3). The pack maps names and labels to codes and rejects anything unmappable with the valid set named, rather than forwarding it.
• No offset or page parameter exists. Count caps at 1,000 per call (values above that are silently treated as 1,000). To walk a larger result set, narrow with CFT_Issue_Date — the pack surfaces this as paging in the response whenever total_hits exceeds what it returned.
• At least one of Query / Project_Name / Organization_Name / LG_Code is required; with none the API answers <Error>no searchword</Error>. That is why the browse tools require a prefecture or an organisation.
• ProjectDescription is the full extracted notice text, routinely tens of thousands of characters (it is the OCR/extract of the linked PDF, and can include the whole unit-price schedule). The pack returns a 600-character preview with description_truncated, and up to 20,000 characters under full_text: true.
• Optional fields are omitted, not emptied, when the publisher did not supply them — TenderSubmissionDeadline, OpeningTendersEvent, Location, Certification and ItemCode are frequently absent, especially on municipal notices.

Quick Start

Add to your MCP client (Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf, etc.):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "japan-procurement": {
      "url": "https://gateway.pipeworx.io/japan-procurement/mcp"
    }
  }
}

What this endpoint actually serves

tools/list at https://gateway.pipeworx.io/japan-procurement/mcp returns the tools in the table above plus the shared Pipeworx meta-tools — ask_pipeworx, discover_tools, search_within, remember/recall and the rest of the gateway-wide set. So the tool count you see is larger than this table: a single-pack endpoint currently lists roughly 30 shared tools alongside the pack's own. The connection's initialize response states its exact scope, and is the authoritative answer for a given day.

This is deliberate, not multiplexing by accident. The meta-tools are what let a scoped connection answer a question this pack does not cover — via ask_pipeworx, which routes across the whole catalog — without you adding a second MCP server. There is currently no way to mount a pack endpoint without them; if the extra schemas cost you more context than the routing is worth, connect to the full gateway once rather than to several pack endpoints.

Or connect to the full Pipeworx gateway to get every pack's tools listed directly, instead of just this one's:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "pipeworx": {
      "url": "https://gateway.pipeworx.io/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Both URLs reach the same gateway and the same 1865+ data sources. The only difference is which pack's tools are listed directly; ask_pipeworx reaches all of them from either one.

No MCP client? Call it over HTTP

curl -X POST https://gateway.pipeworx.io/v1/tools/japan_tenders_search \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"query":"橋梁","category":"works","prefecture":"Tokyo","limit":3}'

No account needed for the first calls. Inspect any tool: GET https://gateway.pipeworx.io/v1/tools/japan_tenders_search. Find one: POST https://gateway.pipeworx.io/v1/tools/search_packs with {"query":"..."}.

Run it from npm

@pipeworx/mcp-japan-procurement is a local stdio bridge to the Pipeworx gateway: your MCP client starts it with npx, and it forwards every call to the same https://gateway.pipeworx.io/japan-procurement/mcp endpoint shown above. It needs network access; there is no offline mode.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "japan-procurement": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@pipeworx/mcp-japan-procurement"]
    }
  }
}

Without a key it calls anonymously, capped at 50 calls a day. A free account raises that to 200 a day: get a key at https://pipeworx.io/signup and add "env": { "PIPEWORX_API_KEY": "<your key>" } to the server entry. The key is sent as a Bearer token, the same way a hosted connection sends it, so calls are metered and billed exactly as they are there.

It lists only this pack's tools by default. Set PIPEWORX_META_TOOLS=1 to also list ask_pipeworx and the other gateway-wide tools.

Behind an HTTPS proxy: Node's built-in fetch does not read HTTPS_PROXY by default. Newer Node releases honour it when NODE_USE_ENV_PROXY=1 is set; check your Node version's documentation.

Using with ask_pipeworx

Instead of calling tools directly, you can ask questions in plain English — this works on the pack endpoint above as well as on the full gateway:

ask_pipeworx({ question: "your question about Japan Procurement data" })

The gateway picks the right tool and fills the arguments automatically.

More

• Docs and guides
• pipeworx.io

License

MIT