How to read a Japanese auction sheet

1. What an auction sheet is

Every car sold through a Japanese auction house is inspected before it goes under the hammer. The seller consigns it with its identity, mileage, paperwork and sales points on a single page. The auction house's inspector, who does not work for the seller, then adds what they find: an overall grade, a letter each for the interior and exterior, a panel diagram marked with damage codes, and free-text notes. That page is the auction sheet, 出品票 in Japanese.

The whole trade prices from it. Bidders abroad cannot see the car before the sale, so the sheet is the evidence they bid on, and it is the document your advisor translates for you before any bid goes in. Learning to read one yourself means you can judge a shortlist before asking, and spot the cars that deserve a closer look.

Two things to hold onto. The sheet is written in Japanese shorthand, so most of the work is vocabulary, and this guide ends with a glossary of the terms inspectors actually write. And the sheet is honest but not complete: an inspector has minutes with each car, so the grade and the notes tell you where to look, not whether to buy.

2. The anatomy of a sheet

The sheet below is redrawn, cell for cell, from a real USS sheet: the one photographed under it, for a car we bought for a customer. Every field sits where the form prints it, with the same values, numbered in the order you read them. The lot number and chassis serial are blanked on both.

Where to look first

1. 1. The grade, top right, and the two letters under it.
2. 2. The diagram, bottom right: the XX at the back of the left rear door and the two W2 on the same side.
3. 3. The inspector's box, bottom left, which the notes section walks through line by line.

Find the label, not the position

Other houses print the same fields in different places. The labels are what to look for, so here is every one on the form, in the order it appears.

3. The overall grade, S and 6 down to 1

The grade sums up the car's condition in one figure. The inspector sets it and the seller cannot influence it. Half points exist, so a 4.5 sits between a 4 and a 5. Two things pull a grade down, bodywork wear and accident repair, and once repair history is involved the letters R and RA replace the number entirely.

A grade is only comparable within the same auction house, and only against a car of similar age. Inspectors grade against what is reasonable for the age, so a 4 on a two-year-old car and a 4 on a twelve-year-old car describe different things. The house-to-house difference has its own section below.

4. Interior and exterior letters, A to D

Next to the number, most sheets carry one or two letters. USS gives both an interior and an exterior letter; some houses give only the interior. Both use the same scale, read as below. Each house writes its own definitions, so treat the wording as a guide rather than a rule.

The interior letter deserves more attention than most buyers give it. Bodywork can be priced from the diagram. A cabin that has been smoked in or left to fade cannot, and only the notes will say which, so a C interior is a reason to read the notes box twice.

5. The panel diagram and damage codes

The diagram is a top-down outline of the car. On each panel the inspector writes a letter for the type of mark and a number for its size. The letter says what, the number says how much, and the position says where.

Severity runs from 1 to 3 on most sheets; a few houses use 4. Together with the position, the codes are what your advisor turns into a bodywork estimate before bidding, which is the realistic way to compare a 4 with two A2 marks against a 4.5 with a W1 on the bonnet.

6. Repair history: R, RA and what XX means

Japanese auction houses draw a firm line between damage and repair history. A scratched grade 4 is still a grade 4. A car that has had a structural panel repaired or replaced after an accident is no longer graded on condition at all: it becomes an R or an RA, and the notes describe the repair.

Structural means the frame and the panels welded to it: the radiator core support, the inner wings and side members, the pillars, the floor and the rear panel. A replaced door or bolt-on wing is bodywork, not repair history, which is why an XX on a door is a smaller matter than an XX on a rear panel.

• R: repair history the inspector considers significant. The notes name the panels.
• RA: repair history that is light or well executed, often a single panel. The car may drive and look like a grade 4, but it is priced as an RA at its next sale.
• 修復歴有 (shūfukureki ari) in the notes means the same thing in words. 修復歴無 means none is declared.
• XX on the diagram marks a replaced panel. Look at where it sits before deciding what it means.

We do not bid on R or RA cars for customers. The saving at the hammer looks tempting, but the history follows the car to its next sale in Malaysia, and the quality of the repair behind it cannot be judged from the sheet.

7. Equipment and option codes

The equipment line lists what the car has in a handful of letters. They are much the same across auction houses, and on the USS form they are the seller's entry, like the sales points: they say the car has navigation, not that it works. A fault is the inspector's to record, and it appears in the notes box instead, as AC不良 for a faulty air conditioner.

8. Mileage, shaken and the model year

Three fields on the sheet are misread more often than the grade.

Mileage

Mileage is in kilometres, read from the odometer on the day. A star beside the figure, or メーター交換車 in the notes, means the odometer was replaced and the true mileage is higher than shown. 走行不明 means the mileage cannot be verified at all and the car is sold on that basis. Japanese cars tend to cover few kilometres a year, so a low figure is common rather than suspicious, and the service record book, 記録簿, is how it is confirmed.

Shaken

車検 is Japan's roadworthiness certificate, due at three years and then every two. The sheet gives its expiry; blank, 無 or 切れ means it has lapsed. For a car being exported the expiry itself does not matter, because the car leaves Japan's system. The field is still worth reading: a car with a fresh shaken has just passed its mandatory inspection.

Model year

The year field, 初年度登録 on the USS form and 年式 on others, is the date of first registration in Japan, written in the imperial era: a number for the year within the era, and sometimes a letter for the era itself. Often only the number is printed. 24/8 on the sheet in the anatomy section is Heisei 24, August, so 2012. Convert it before you compare cars, and before you check it against Malaysia's import age rules.

When no letter is printed, the number and the car together tell you the era. Heisei ran to 31 and ended in April 2019; Reiwa began in May 2019 and reached 8 in 2026. So 9 to 31 can only be Heisei, and 1 to 8 is Reiwa unless the car is plainly from the 1990s. Some houses now print the Western year as well. Where only the era appears, do the sum. It is the difference between a car that qualifies for an import permit and one that does not.

9. Reading the inspector's notes

The notes box is where the inspector writes what the diagram cannot show: mechanical faults, cabin condition, smells, missing items and anything about repairs. It is clipped Japanese, mostly katakana, with the same few hundred words recurring. Here is the box from the sheet in the anatomy section, line by line, then the diagram it sits beside and the seller's box above it.

The diagram beside it

The XX sits at the back of the left rear door, where the door meets the quarter, and a W2 sits on the left rear quarter beside it: the panel next to the replaced pillar has been refinished. A second W2 at the front of the left side, where the wing meets the door, is the same kind of mark further forward. Read together, the marks point to one repair along the left side, and they are why the pillar line matters more than the grade. A and A1 on the bonnet, the roof, the rear doors, the right rear quarter, the boot and both bumpers are light scratches all round, the ordinary wear of a car at this mileage.

The seller's box

The sales points are the seller's list, not the inspector's: one owner, factory navigation with a reversing camera, leather seats, a smart key, a flip-down monitor and factory alloys. The equipment row is the seller's too, which is why ナビ and AW are circled there as well. The check that matters runs the other way, the inspector's lines against the seller's. Here the inspector found aftermarket suspension the seller did not list, and a replaced pillar no sales point would show. Read what the seller claims against what the inspector wrote.

Read together: a 3.5 that is honest about why. High mileage, a worn cabin, light scratches all round, non-factory suspension, and a repaired left side the house judged bodywork rather than repair history. The grade gives the price bracket. The diagram and the notes say what you are actually buying, and which question to ask before bidding.

10. Why the same grade differs between auction houses

Japan's auctions are run by several groups, each with its own inspectors and its own house standard. USS is the largest network, with Tokyo, Nagoya and Yokohama among the biggest single sales anywhere. TAA, HAA Kobe, JU, CAA, BAYAUC and ARAI make up most of the rest.

That is why a 4 at one house is not always a 4 at another. Some houses grade strictly, and their 4 would be a 4.5 elsewhere; others are known to be generous. Sheets also differ in whether they give both interior and exterior letters, and in how much the inspector writes.

Layouts move too. The USS form in the anatomy section puts the grade top right and the diagram bottom right, with the seller's and inspector's boxes beside it. Other houses move the diagram, set the letters beside the grade rather than under it, and mark the printed lists their own way. The field labels hardly change, which is why the anatomy section lists them. Find the label, not the position.

Rather than memorise the reputation of each house, compare within one. Two cars from the same sale were graded by the same team on the same day, and their sheets are directly comparable. Across houses, lean on the diagram and the notes, which describe the car rather than the standard.

Sale location matters for one more reason. Japan's snow regions salt their roads, and a car that has lived in Hokkaido or along the Sea of Japan coast carries underbody corrosion that no photograph shows. That is why C codes on sills and arches deserve a second look, and why 下廻りサビ, underbody rust, is a line we never skip.

11. How Carimport reads a sheet before bidding

We obsess over the sheet because it is the one moment in an import where a decision is cheap. After the hammer it is a shipped car. These are the rules we read by.

• We generally bid on grade 4 and higher. A lower grade can be right for a restoration or a rare car, and we will say so when it is, but it is the exception.
• We skip R and RA cars. Repair history follows the car to its next sale in Malaysia, and the quality of the repair cannot be judged from the sheet.
• Our buying agent inspects the car at the auction house before we bid. The sheet tells us where to look, the walk-around confirms it, and a car that does not match its sheet is dropped.
• We avoid snow-region auction houses such as Sapporo and Gunma, where salted roads leave the corrosion a diagram understates.
• We convert the year and price the coded marks before we set a maximum bid, so the bid already reflects the bodywork.

Every car on your shortlist comes with its sheet, translated, and your advisor walks you through it before the bid goes in. If you are researching on your own, you can buy the sheet for any car you are looking at.

12. Glossary of inspector's terms

The words inspectors actually write, grouped by where they appear on the sheet. Filter by Japanese, romaji or English. Where a term is common in both kanji and katakana, both are listed.