Japan's small-business support agency has opened the first round of a disaster-relief subsidy earmarked for companies hit by what the program itself calls the Reiwa 8 Kumamoto Earthquake, the 2026 quake that struck Kumamoto Prefecture. The subsidy is a special disaster-support track of the long-running Small Business Sustainability Subsidy (General Type), and it targets businesses with 20 or fewer employees anywhere in the prefecture.
Under the terms posted to the J-Grants portal, the program covers two-thirds of eligible recovery costs, capped at ¥2mn per applicant, with a fixed-amount option available to businesses that meet additional requirements the listing does not spell out. Eligible activities span an unusually wide slice of the economy: fishing, construction, manufacturing, wholesale and retail, finance and insurance, real estate, academic and technical services, accommodation and food service, education, and medical and welfare businesses are all named as qualifying industries.
The agency split the rollout into two parallel filings that route applicants through different local business-support offices. One listing, numbered S-00009785, funnels businesses through chamber of commerce and industry district offices; the other, numbered S-00009814, funnels them through chamber of commerce district offices.
| Application channel | Subsidy number | Application window |
|---|---|---|
| Chamber of commerce and industry district | S-00009785 | Sep 16 - Oct 16, 2026 |
| Chamber of commerce district | S-00009814 | Sep 16 - Oct 16, 2026 |
Both windows opened September 16 and close October 16, 2026, a one-month application period. The chamber-of-commerce-and-industry filing also states that funded projects must be completed by October 31, 2027, giving successful applicants roughly a year to spend the money and finish recovery work; the parallel chamber-of-commerce filing does not repeat that completion date in the supplied text.
What the portal listings do not say is just as notable. Neither filing describes the scale of damage from the earthquake, the total budget set aside for the disaster-support track, or how many businesses the agency expects to fund. The public text is largely procedural, instructing applicants to follow a link and consult the J-Grants operation manual for filing steps. For now, the concrete facts are the ones that matter to an affected shopkeeper or factory owner: a two-thirds match, a ¥2mn ceiling, a 20-employee cutoff, and a closing date one month away.