Verified: 2026-07-10 · Author: Danil Glukhov, Head of International at Maketto
On January 7, 2025, LY Corporation renamed its overseas-facing services: Yahoo! Auctions became JDirectItems Auction and Yahoo! Shopping became JDirectItems Shopping. It is a name change for international users only. Inside Japan the sites keep the Yahoo name, and the URL, listings, sellers, accounts and bidding rules are unchanged.
What exactly changed on January 7, 2025?
Only the name shown to overseas users changed. From January 7, 2025, LY Corporation started presenting Yahoo! Auctions as JDirectItems Auction and Yahoo! Shopping as JDirectItems Shopping to people outside Japan. According to the notices published by proxy services that work with the platform, there were no changes to the auction management company, the listed products, or the service content — only the name. If you have used Yahoo Auctions through a proxy before, you are using the same marketplace with a new label.
The website and URL are unchanged
No. The core Japanese site is still auctions.yahoo.co.jp, and it still carries the Japanese Yahoo branding (Yahoo!オークション). There is no new "jdirectitems" domain that replaces it, and there is no auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jdirectitems section that swaps out the old site. "JDirectItems" is the name you now see on English-facing surfaces and on proxy-shopping websites; the underlying platform, listing pages and item IDs are identical to before. In practice, if you paste an old auctions.yahoo.co.jp item link into a proxy service, it still resolves to the same lot.
Is it renamed in Japan too?
No. This is the point most guides get wrong. Inside Japan, the service is still called Yahoo! Auctions and Yahoo! Shopping. Japanese sellers and buyers see the familiar Yahoo names. The JDirectItems name is used for the overseas / international-facing presentation of the same platform. So a lot listed by a seller in Osaka still appears to them as a Yahoo! Auctions listing, while an overseas buyer using an English service may see it labelled "JDirectItems."
What stayed the same for buyers?
Almost everything. The rebrand did not touch how the marketplace actually works:
| Area | Status after Jan 7, 2025 |
|---|---|
| Operating company | Unchanged — LY Corporation |
| Listings / catalogue | Unchanged — 50M+ items, same sellers |
| Item pages & IDs | Unchanged — same auctions.yahoo.co.jp links |
| Auction format | Unchanged — timed bids, sniping near the end |
| Buyout ("Buy It Now") | Unchanged where sellers offer it |
| Accounts & active bids | Carried over — nothing to re-create |
| Domestic name | Still "Yahoo! Auctions" in Japan |
Source: proxy-service change notices (Sendico, DEJAPAN, Tenso/Buyee, ZenMarket) and the live auctions.yahoo.co.jp site, checked 2026-07-10.
Why did LY Corporation rename it?
We will be honest: we could not find an official LY Corporation press release, in English, that states the reason. The public notices we found are from proxy-shopping companies, not from Yahoo/LY Corp directly, and they describe what changed, not why. A commonly repeated explanation is that the "Yahoo" brand is licensed for use only inside Japan, so an overseas-facing service needs a non-Yahoo name — but that is background context, not a statement confirmed by an official source. For our readers the practical answer is simpler: the change is cosmetic for international users and does not affect price, availability or how you bid.
LY Corporation, the operator
LY Corporation is the company that runs the platform. It was formed in 2023 from the merger of Yahoo! Japan's parent (Z Holdings) with LINE and other group companies, so today the same operator sits behind Yahoo! Japan, LINE and this auction service. That is why English guides sometimes call the operator "LINE Yahoo Japan Corporation" or "LY Corporation" — they are the same group. The auction platform remains Japan's largest, with tens of millions of live listings at any time.
The effect on proxy-shopping services
For services that buy on your behalf, the change was mostly a label swap. Proxy companies updated the wording on their sites — "Yahoo Auctions" buttons and pages became "JDirectItems Auction" — but the way they place bids, win lots and ship them abroad is the same as before.
Your existing account, saved searches and active bids were not reset. If you see two different names in old guides versus new ones, they refer to the same marketplace. (Note: claims that any one proxy service "handed its auctions to another" are not something we could verify from an official source, so we do not repeat them.)
In one line, then: since January 7, 2025 only the overseas-facing names changed — Yahoo! Auctions to JDirectItems Auction and Yahoo! Shopping to JDirectItems Shopping — while the name shown in Japan, the auctions.yahoo.co.jp URL and the operator (LY Corporation) all stayed the same.
Buying JDirectItems from abroad with Maketto
JDirectItems stays domestic-first — Japanese site, Japanese payment, domestic shipping — and that is the gap Maketto closes by bidding and buying lots on your behalf. Before you commit, the maketto.jp homepage calculator turns a weight and a destination country into a shipping estimate, so the number is not a mystery; the item price and our fee (10%, minimum ¥1,000 for the whole service) are visible from the start, and the exact shipping cost follows once the lot is weighed at the warehouse. Combining several lots into one parcel usually brings that cost down further. Open the Japanese auctions catalog →
FAQ
Is JDirectItems a new website or a scam? Neither. It is the new overseas name for Yahoo! Auctions / Yahoo! Shopping, run by the same company (LY Corporation). Be cautious only with sites that copy the name but are not real proxy services.
Did prices or fees on the marketplace change because of the rebrand? No. The rebrand was a name change only. Any price differences you see come from sellers or from your proxy service's fees, not from the renaming.
Can I still buy directly without a proxy? In practice, no. The platform is in Japanese, and most sellers only accept domestic payment and shipping — so overseas buyers use a proxy service.
In brief
Effective January 7, 2025, the overseas-facing name "Yahoo! Auctions" became "JDirectItems Auction" (and Yahoo! Shopping became JDirectItems Shopping), but it was only a display-name change for foreign users: the same operator, LY Corporation, still runs the same marketplace — 50M+ listings, the same sellers, the same bidding and buyout mechanics. In Japan the service is still Yahoo! Auctions (Yahoo!オークション) at the unchanged auctions.yahoo.co.jp, and nothing changed for proxy buying, with existing accounts, active bids and platform rules all carried over. We could not find an official LY Corporation English press release explaining the reason, so treat any rationale as context, not confirmed fact.
Sources
- Yahoo! Auctions live site (domestic name and domain unchanged):
https://auctions.yahoo.co.jp/— checked 2026-07-10. - ZenMarket announcement of the transition to JDirectItems, posted December 2024:
https://x.com/zenmarket_en/status/1872047290682081511 - Sendico — "Yahoo Auctions & Yahoo Shopping Name Update":
https://sendico.com/blog/news/yahoo-auctions-yahoo-shopping-name-update - DEJAPAN — "Notice of Yahoo! Japan Site Name Update":
https://www.dejapan.com/en/news/view/151 - Tenso / Buyee — JDirectItems Auction pages:
https://www.tensojapan.com/en/guide/auction_aboutandhttps://buyee.jp/jdirectitems/auction?lang=en - LY Corporation (operating company / corporate parent):
https://www.lycorp.co.jp/en/
Note on sourcing: the confirmations above come from the live Yahoo/JDirectItems platform and from coordinated notices published by multiple established proxy services. We did not find a first-party LY Corporation / Yahoo Japan press release in English stating the reason for the rebrand; where an official rationale is missing, we say so rather than invent one.
Update history
- 2026-07-10 — article published.