Japan Market MCP — Cross-Shop Price Comparison for AI Agents

An MCP server that lets AI agents (Claude, Cursor, VS Code Copilot, ChatGPT) compare used-good prices across leading Japanese shops in a single tool call. Instead of scraping site by site, an agent queries one server and gets inter-store price gaps for the same product — perfect for reseller arbitrage, price monitoring, and market research on the Japanese second-hand market.

How it works

The server wraps market-scraping and official-API actors (Rakuten Ichiba included) behind one MCP endpoint. Each tool returns price, brand, shop, condition and a link per item, with the shop-pair crossed so you see the price spread at a glance.

Related MCP server: Secondhand MCP

Available tools

Each tool takes a keyword (e.g. SONY α7, ROLEX, Hermes, Fender) and returns results from the crossed shops. Leaving the keyword empty scans the full category.

Pricing

Pay per event — $0.001 per search + actor start fee. Runs finish in seconds, so a full keyword lookup typically costs well under $0.01.

Connect as an MCP server

Run it from the Apify Store (Run button), then point your MCP client at the endpoint. It stays in standby mode.

MCP client config (Claude Desktop / Cursor / VS Code):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "japan-market-mcp": {
      "url": "https://fruitful-quintessence--japan-market-mcp.apify.actor/mcp",
      "headers": {
        "Authorization": "Bearer YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN"
      }
    }
  }
}

• URL: <your-username>--japan-market-mcp.apify.actor/mcp

• Auth: Apify API token in the Authorization: Bearer header (Apify Console → Settings → Integrations)

URL note: use a hyphen in the username (fruitful-quintessence), not an underscore — an underscore hostname will not resolve.

Discovery & registry

• Agent install guide: see llms-install.md — grounded guidance for AI agents (Cline, Claude Code, Cursor) that set up this server for a user.

• MCP discovery manifest: .well-known/mcp.json advertises the endpoint, auth, tool list, and pricing in the standard MCP Directory discovery format.

• Cline MCP Marketplace: submitted for review at cline/mcp-marketplace — once approved it becomes one-click installable from Cline's marketplace.

• Apify Store: deployed as the public actor fruitful_quintessence/japan-market-mcp (pay-per-event).

Related Apify Actors

This MCP server connects to 86+ Apify Actors in the Kensho ecosystem for real-time data. Key related actors include:

Marketplace & Price Comparison

• fruitful_quintessence/japan-market-mcp — Core MCP server

• fruitful_quintessence/japan-anime-figure-price-data — Anime figure prices

• fruitful_quintessence/japan-figure-plamo-resale-price-stats — Figure/plamo resale stats

• fruitful_quintessence/japan-minimum-wage-mcp — Minimum wage data

• fruitful_quintessence/japan-food-delivery-mcp — Food delivery prices

Retail & E-commerce

• fruitful_quintessence/rakuten-japan-mcp — Rakuten Ichiba data

• fruitful_quintessence/japan-kakaku-price-search — Kakaku.com price comparison

• fruitful_quintessence/amazon-japan-bestsellers — Amazon JP bestsellers

• fruitful_quintessence/yahoo-shopping-japan — Yahoo! Shopping

• fruitful_quintessence/mercari-japan-price — Mercari pricing

Used Goods & Auctions

• fruitful_quintessence/yahoo-auctions-japan-scraper — Yahoo! Auctions

• fruitful_quintessence/mercari-japan-search-scraper — Mercari search

• fruitful_quintessence/surugaya-japan-hobby-prices — Suruga-ya hobby

• fruitful_quintessence/mandarake-auction-scraper — Mandarake auction

• fruitful_quintessence/off-mall-japan-scraper — OffMall (Hard Off)

Local Business & Services

• fruitful_quintessence/google-maps-japan-reviews — Google Maps reviews

• fruitful_quintessence/tabelog-japan-restaurants — Tabelog restaurants

• fruitful_quintessence/hotpepper-beauty-salons — Beauty salons

• fruitful_quintessence/japan-post-office-locations — Post offices

Government & Public Data

• fruitful_quintessence/japan-maff-markets — MAFF wholesale markets

• fruitful_quintessence/japan-maff-price-trend — MAFF price trends

• fruitful_quintessence/japan-maff-top-movers — MAFF top movers

• fruitful_quintessence/japan-maff-market-report — MAFF market reports

Specialized Collections

• fruitful_quintessence/japan-anime-figure-demand-features — Anime figure demand

• fruitful_quintessence/japan-vintage-clothing-prices — Vintage clothing

• fruitful_quintessence/japan-used-book-prices — Used books

• fruitful_quintessence/japan-record-store-prices — Record stores

• fruitful_quintessence/japan-toy-collector-prices — Toy collector

MCP Connection Examples

6. External run example (fallback)

# If GitHub API returns 403, use curl + git clone
curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/atushi1841/japan-market-mcp/main/README.md > README.patch
# edit README.patch as needed
git clone https://github.com/atushi1841/japan-market-mcp.git
cd japan-market-mcp
cp ../README.patch README.md
git add README.md
git commit -m "update README via external run"
git push

1. Standard I/O (stdio) — Claude Desktop, Cursor, etc.

In your claude_desktop_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "japan-market-mcp": {
      "command": "python",
      "args": ["-m", "src.main"]
    }
  }
}

2. HTTP Server Mode

# Install dependencies
pip install -r requirements.txt

# Run as HTTP server on port 3000
APIFY_TOKEN=your_token python -m src.main --http --port 3000

# Test the endpoint
curl http://localhost:3000/mcp/tools | jq .

3. Direct Python Import

from src.main import mcp
# FastMCP instance can be embedded directly

4. n8n / Apify Workflow (via HTTP)

Use Apify's Webhook node to POST JSON-RPC to POST /mcp endpoint.

5. Docker Deployment

docker build -t japan-market-mcp .
docker run -p 3000:3000 -e APIFY_TOKEN=your_token japan-market-mcp

"Compare used prices for Sony a7 III between Kitamura and Fujiya"
→ search_camera_market(keyword="SONY α7 III")

"What's the inter-store price gap for a Rolex Submariner?"
→ search_watch_market(keyword="ROLEX Submariner")

"What's the market price for a Hermes Birkin 25?"
→ search_luxury_market(keyword="Hermes Birkin 25")

"What's a used Fender Stratocaster going for?"
→ search_instrument_market(keyword="Fender Stratocaster")

"Show this 旬's wholesale market report for Tokyo (Toyosu) fresh vegetables"
→ get_maff_market_report(market="toyosu")

"Which fresh produce items have spiked in price vs last year at Osaka?"
→ get_maff_top_movers(market="oosakaho")

"Track the price of daikon (だいこん) across Tokyo and Osaka this month"
→ search_maff_price_trend(item="だいこん", markets=["toyosu","oosakaho"])

Use cases

• Reseller arbitrage — spot the same product priced differently across shops

• Market research — track used prices for cameras, watches, luxury goods, instruments, cars

• Export sourcing — goo-net JDM inventory and goo-net price checks for exporters

• Collector price checks — condition-ranked physical used items from OffMall

Data sources

• Each actor collects factual data only (product name, price, brand, condition, inventory, URL). No photos or descriptions are harvested.

• All target sites allow crawling via their robots.txt.

• MAFF 青果物卸売市場調査（旬別・市場別） is served from the official 農林水産省 open-data CSV — no scraping, direct download. Published under the Government Standard Terms of Use v2.0 (政府標準利用規約2.0): commercial use allowed with attribution. Price is JPY per 100kg. Data updates are published by MAFF each 旬 (10-day period).

Local development

pip install -r requirements.txt
APIFY_TOKEN=apify_api_xxx python -m src.main
# Streamable HTTP endpoint at http://localhost:3000/mcp

License

MIT

Install via Smithery

Connect this MCP server to your AI client (Claude Desktop, Cursor, VS Code) in one command:

npx @smithery/cli install atushi1841/japan-market-mcp --client claude

Replace claude with cursor, vscode, or cline for other clients.

Alternatively, install directly from the Smithery registry.

Note: Smithery server listing is pending verification. Once verified, this server will appear in search results with useCount tracking.