Do cars in Japan have a written service history?

Service histories are kept on database with dealers in Japan, rather than on paper. For this reason, for example when we take our cars in Japan to a local dealer, he knows what was last done to it, when, where, what's due, etc. They even know the registered keeper’s address in case there's a reason to contact, such as for recall.
In our experience, we have asked to stamp the service books when having our own cars worked on in Japanese Official dealers. They did not stamp the book and explained as above.
It's true some cars come with service books, but these will only have the delivery date and first check documented. What some owners do - is keep is the "Shaken" certificates for each time the car passed the bi-annual test. Some people in UK confuse this with service history - easily done, as it shows a whole lot of checks with ticks and of course it's in Japanese.
In our experience, it's very rare for a car to come with lots of receipts etc. Service histories are available only to registered keepers of vehicles, dealers and authorized companies, such as auctions - for example. It's through this history that auctions are also able to verify a car's original mileage. It may be interesting to know that oil changes are recommended every 3,000 - 4,000 km in Japan. The Japanese, being the rule abiding people they generally are, especially those who care about their cars - do have oil changes done regularly. This is perhaps the reason why most cars we inspect at auctions have very clean oil and rarely black stuff - as seen on cars in UK with longer oil change intervals. When a car has a service book with it, we send it to the customer.

Het komt van de site "http://www.neweraimports.com/". Dat is een Japans / Engels bedrijf, gerund door een Portugees (erg internationaal ) dat zich specialiseert in de export van "bijzondere" auto's vanuit Japan naar de EU.