Japan Driving Licence (運転免許証) OCR API

What Makes the Japanese driving licence (運転免許証) Hard to Parse

The Japanese driving licence (運転免許証) is issued by the Public Safety Commission of each prefecture. The Japanese 運転免許証 carries a 12-digit licence number, the holder's name and address, and a colour band (green, blue or gold) that reflects the holder's driving record. Dates are often printed in the Japanese era calendar (for example 令和), so a pipeline that expects Gregorian dates has to convert them.

One API Call, Named Fields

The StructOCR Driver License OCR API returns the licence number, the holder's name, date of birth, address, issue and expiry dates and licence categories. Dates are returned as YYYY-MM-DD. Send a JPG, PNG, WebP or PDF as Base64 JSON or as a multipart upload; there is no SDK to embed in your app, although official Python and Node.js SDKs are available. Step-by-step code is in the Python guide. Usage is billed per successful scan with pay-as-you-go pricing.

Where Teams Use It in Japan

Integration & AI Prompts

Install the official SDK and pass a photo of the licence. Full request and response details are in the driver license API reference.

# pip install structocr
import os
from structocr import StructOCR

client = StructOCR(api_key=os.environ["STRUCTOCR_API_KEY"])
result = client.scan_driver_license("licence.jpg")

if result.get("success"):
    data = result["data"]
    print(data["document_number"], data["surname"], data["date_of_expiry"])

{
  "success": true,
  "data": {
    "type": "drivers_license",
    "country_code": "JPN",
    "region": null,
    "document_number": "123456789012",
    "personal_number": null,
    "surname": "YAMADA",
    "given_names": "HANAKO",
    "sex": null,
    "date_of_birth": "1988-10-05",
    "place_of_birth": null,
    "date_of_issue": "2023-10-05",
    "date_of_expiry": "2028-11-05",
    "date_of_first_issue": null,
    "issuing_authority": null,
    "address": "東京都千代田区サンプル1-2-3",
    "vehicle_class": "普通"
  }
}