We deeply appreciate the great contributions of many physicians in the registry of esophageal cancer cases. The Comprehensive Registry of Esophageal Cancer in Japan, 2006, was published here, despite some delay. The registry complies with the Act for the Protection of Personal Information. The encryption with a HASH function is used for ‘‘anonymity in an unlinkable fashion’’. We briefly summarized the Comprehensive Registry of Esophageal Cancer in Japan, 2006. Japanese Classification of Esophageal Cancer 9th and UICC TNM Classification 6th were used for cancer staging according to the subjected year. A total of 4994 cases were registered from 239 institutions in Japan. Tumor locations were cervical: 4.2 %, upper thoracic: 13.4 %, middle thoracic: 48.7 %, lower thoracic: 26.0 % and EG junction: 6.7 %. Superficial carcinomas (Tis, T1a, T1b) were 35.9 %. As for the histologic type of biopsy specimens, squamous cell carcinoma and adenocarcinoma accounted for 90.8 and 3.9 %, respectively. Regarding clinical results, the 5-year survival rates of patients treated using endoscopic mucosal resection, concurrent chemoradiotherapy, radiotherapy alone, chemotherapy alone, or esophagectomy were 84.5, 25.8, 22.0, 3.0, and 48.0 %, respectively. Esophagectomy was performed in 2545 cases. Concerning the approach used for esophagectomy, 15.4 % of the cases were treated These data were first made available on July 1, 2013, as the Comprehensive Registry of Esophageal Cancer in Japan, 2006. Not all the pages are reprinted here; however, the original table and figure numbers have been maintained.