Yahoo! Japan Auctions is the largest auction site in Japan. Yahoo!
Japan Auctions is the Japanese equivalent of the popular U.S.
online auction site, e-Bay.
The Japanese call Yahoo! Japan Auctions "YAFU-OKU". With a
current registered membership of about 4,000,000, estimated users of Yahoo! Japan Auction easily tops 5,000,000 because of the access of friends and family members to registered member
accounts.
Yahoo! Japan Corporation, an affiliate of Yahoo!, is based in
Roppongi Hills Mori Tower, in Minato, Tokyo, with SoftBank as the
largest stockholder. Yahoo! Japan Auction is a youth-oriented
company (average employee age is 32) and employs 1,740 workers.
Yahoo! Japan is similar to Yahoo!, but adapted to the needs of
Japanese users. (An outstanding feature of Yahoo! Japan Auctions
is the elimination of sniping in the bidding system by resetting the
auction timer in 5-minute increments, as commented on by a
non-Japanese user of the system.)
Yahoo! Japan launched their auction service in September of 1999
(eBay started their Japanese operations in 2001 but had to cease in March 2002).

The number of items put up for auction or sale is estimated at more than 7,000,000 daily, a figure almost on par with the daily sales of major department stores in Japan.
Currently, an average of 8,810,000 items are put up for auction monthly at Yahoo! Japan, with daily sales reaching ¥1.67B. Unfortunately, it’s very difficult for a non-Japanese speaker to reap the benefits of Yahoo! Japan, because everything is in the local language!
Yahoo! Japan guidelines specify that to participate in their auctions:
1. You must be able to read, write, and fully understand Japanese;
2. You must be over 20 years of age;
3. You must agree to the Yahoo! Japan Terms of Service (TOS), and read and agree to the Yahoo! Auctions service guidelines. And the rest is all in Japanese.
It is not necessary to be a Japanese citizen to participate in Yahoo! Japan Auctions, although you must be able to read, understand, and write Japanese.
Exhibition Fee is ¥ 10.5 (inclusive of 5% Japanese TAV) and ¥ 2,940 (inclusive of tax) for cars (bodies only) and ¥ 1,890 (inclusive of tax) for motorcycles.
Should an exhibitor decide to cancel an item for auction, he must pay ¥ 500 + 5% TAV.
Only Yahoo Premium members can participate in Yahoo! Japan Auctions, after registering with Yahoo! Wallet in
order to register and confirm their credit card information.
Confirmation of address is also obligatory.
Yahoo! gets a commission of 3% of the transaction amount (except in the case of cars and motorcycles, where the
commission is fixed at ¥2,940 and ¥1,980 respectively).
Out of all the Japanese auction sites, Yahoo! Japan Auctions is the only one that charges a membership fee to its users (¥ 80 monthly).
Please note that the Yahoo Japan Auctions service may slow down at busy times.

With more than 3 million registered users, Bidders is one of the major players in the Japanese online auction and shopping market. It is owned and managed by Dena Co. Ltd., with headquarters in the Sasazuka Building of Shibuya (Tokyo), in
collaboration with Excite Japan, MSN Japan and Biglobe auctions.
Bidders auctions, Japan’s second largest auction site, has more than 1.2M listings of items on the auction block. Biglobe does not charge its members or users any subscription or listing fees; however, a 2.5% commission on items sold is levied, which is much cheaper than the Yahoo! Japan Auctions rates.

Rakuten has positioned itself as a one-stop solution for online shopping. From its initial business core as an electronic shopping mall with more than 15 million products in their inventory, Rakuten Ichiba has expanded its operations to include Internet portal and media services (Infoseek, Ynot, Target, Rakuten TV, ShowTime
Minano Shushoku and Cyber Brains), travel and entertainment (Rakuten Travel, Ctrip.com International Ltd.), and financial services (Rakuten Credit) which offer their own branded credit card and e-banking capabilities.
They have single, power, and Dutch auctions, but no proxy bid system.

Established in 1998, Wanted is operated jointly by Win Corporation (Shibuya Tokyo) and Sara Corporation (Yokohama).
This site is especially noteworthy for its variety of "Made in Japan" collections, animation and adult section. Buyers and sellers don't need to pay a registration fee and there is no fee collected for selling or buying an item.