Concerns over banks' reluctance to lend following the global financial crisis have made it more important for countries to expand small businesses' access to securities markets. Japan has been implementing measures to promote financing through securities markets for more than 20 years, based on lessons learned during its financial basis of the 1990s. In this paper, we look at how well Japan has been able to balance deregulation aimed at encouraging companies to issue securities with regulations aimed at protecting investors, while drawing comparisons with US policies. We also show that the challenge is to equity financing for Japan's smaller companies are rooted in the low level of investment activity by Angel investors and the tendency to put more emphasis on easing listing criteria than on easing disclosure requirements.