Directory assistance (104) was a service from NTT East and NTT West: give an operator a name and an address, and they read back the phone number. It ran in an unbroken line from the telephone operator era, with live operators answering right up to the last day. Calls were billed per inquiry, and a flat-rate option was also offered. The two companies jointly announced the closure on 19 July 2024, and the service ended on 31 March 2026. Printed directories such as Town Page, and NTT Fax 104, which returned the answer by fax, closed on the same day.
Only numbers whose owners had asked to be listed in the directories (Town Page and Hello Page) were given out. Even after Hello Page ceased publication in 2023, numbers held in NTT's database remained available through 104. Numbers withheld from listing, and mobile numbers, were never given out. A number that 104 could not find was therefore not necessarily a number that did not exist. The service only worked in one direction - from a name and address to a number - so it was no help for a reverse lookup of who was behind an incoming call.
The closure followed a long slide in demand. In its July 2024 announcement, NTT explained that as the ways of looking up a phone number multiplied, advertising in Town Page fell off and use of directory assistance dropped sharply. Cutting paper consumption to lower the environmental burden was given as a reason as well.
With 104 gone, business numbers can still be found through iTownpage (itp.ne.jp), the web directory run by NTT Townpage. Fureai Annai, the free directory service for people with disabilities, and the Braille directory both continue past the 104 shutdown, and NTT has said it plans to revise their hours of operation.
Besides 104, three-digit services such as 117 (time signal) and 113 (fault reporting) remain in place. Like 104, both have been offered for decades as add-ons to the telephone network, reachable through a short three-digit number. 177 (weather forecast) went the same way as 104, closing a year earlier on 31 March 2025. See extinct phone numbers for service numbers that have been retired.