Board of Audit
body to audit government expenditures of Japan
The Board of Audit (会計検査院, Kaikeikensain) reviews government expenditures and submits an annual report to the Diet. Article 90 of the Constitution of Japan and the Board of Audit Act of 1947 give this body substantial independence from both cabinet and Diet control.
In 1968, it hosted the INCOSAI VI, the sixth triennial convention of the International Organization of Supreme Audit Institutions.
The headquarters is located at 3-2-2 Kasumigaseki, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 100-8941, Japan.
History
The origins of the Board of Audit can be traced back to a division established in 1869 under the Daijō-kan. It was reorganized as an auditing organ under the Daijō-kan in 1880.
Article 90 of the Constitution of 1947 states: "Final accounts of the expenditures and revenues of the State shall be audited annually by a Board of Audit and submitted by the Cabinet to the Diet, together with the statement of audit, during the fiscal year immediately following the period covered." The original Japanese uses the word subete to indicate that all state expenditures and revenues are subject to audit. In 2013, the Abe government tried to circumvent this under the State Secrecy Law, but relented in 2015.
References
Works cited
Jones, Colin P.A. (4 December 2016). "Japan's Board of Audit: unlikely guardians of the Constitution?".
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Board of Audit” as body to audit government expenditures of Japan. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the history & society register because the source frames it as body to audit government expenditures of Japan. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q615225. VIAF identifies the subject as 253207714. The Library of Congress control number is n82104227. 2 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1947, 1968, 1869 and 1880.
Institutional narratives can privilege the records that survived while minimizing voices that were never formally collected. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.
- Event chronology
- Institutional context
- Locating named record creators
Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Board of Audit”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Board of Audit primary sources, Board of Audit archive and Board research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Board of Audit”?
- Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
- Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Board of Audit” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.