The present status, progress and usage of Japanese speech database has been described. The database project in Japan started in the early 1980s. The first was by the Japan Electronic Industry Development Association (JEIDA), which aimed at creating a speech database to evaluate performance of the existing speech input/output machines and systems. Several database projects have been undertaken since then, including the one initiated by the Advanced Telecommunication Research Institute (ATR), and now we have reached a point where an enormous amount of spontaneous speech data is available. A survey was conducted recently on usage of the presently existing speech databases among industry and university institutions in Japan where speech research is now actively going on. It was revealed that the ATR’s continuous speech database is the most frequently used, followed by the equivalent version from the Acoustical Society of Japan.