Convert a Japanese Bank Statement to Excel
Japanese bank statement conversion: yen amounts with no decimal fraction, and era-based years that have to be converted to Gregorian.
Japanese bank statements have two characteristics that break converters built for Western formats: whole-yen amounts and era-based dates.
Yen has no decimal fraction
The yen is not subdivided in practice, so amounts print as whole numbers: 15,000 rather than 15,000.00.
A converter that requires a decimal point to recognise an amount will reject every row. One that treats the comma as a decimal separator will read 15,000 as fifteen.
Japanese era dates
Japanese documents often use era-based years. The Reiwa era began in 2019, so Reiwa 8 is 2026. Statements may print 令和8年 or R8, alongside or instead of a Gregorian year.
Read as a Gregorian year, 8 places the transaction two thousand years in the past. The era has to be recognised and converted.
This converter does not convert era years. The Excel and CSV keep every date exactly as printed, 令和8年 included, so use the table below to convert the year in the spreadsheet. The QBO, QFX and OFX downloads do not read era years either, so convert the year in the spreadsheet first and make the ledger file from that with CSV to QBO.
| Era | Started | Convert by |
|---|---|---|
| Reiwa (令和) | 2019 | year + 2018 |
| Heisei (平成) | 1989 | year + 1988 |
| Shōwa (昭和) | 1926 | year + 1925 |
Column headers
Japanese statements label columns 日付 (date), 摘要 (description), お支払金額 (payment amount), お預り金額 (deposit amount) and 残高 (balance). As with Chinese statements, column identification works from content rather than header text.
Furikomi transfer descriptors
Japanese bank transfers carry the sender's name, frequently in katakana, along with a reference. Company names in particular are often abbreviated in ways that are consistent per payer, which makes them practical to match against with a lookup table.
The katakana rendering is worth preserving as-is rather than attempting to transliterate — it is what appears on every subsequent statement, so consistency matters more than readability for matching purposes.
Verifying a Japanese statement
Two checks specific to this format are worth adding to the usual pair:
- Confirm the dates are in the statement period — this catches an unconverted era year immediately
- Sanity-check one amount against the PDF — this catches a comma being read as a decimal separator, which would make every amount 1,000x too small
Both take seconds and between them they cover the two failure modes this format is prone to.
Frequently asked questions
Are era dates converted automatically?
No. Dates are kept exactly as printed, so convert the era year yourself — Reiwa years plus 2018 — and then confirm the dates fall inside the statement period.
Why are my amounts a thousand times too small?
The thousands separator was read as a decimal point. Yen amounts have no decimal fraction, which removes the usual signal — check one row against the PDF to confirm.
Will my Japanese bank's statement convert?
There is no list of supported Japanese banks: the reader works from the table on the page. On your first statement, read the Completeness sheet and compare one amount and one date against the PDF before relying on the rest.
Related posts
- Convert a UOB Bank Statement to Excel
- Convert a Philippine Bank Statement to Excel
- Convert an ADCB Statement to Excel
Convert a statement now
Bank Statement PDF to Excel, or see every format. More in the guides.