Did a bit of testing, it seems to be limited to the newgen players created in Japan at the start of a save. With default settings for a J league 3 start, large db and player count of ~40k, the only free agents in Japan were 35 generated players. None of these can be approached.
When starting on the your world mode, Japan has some real free agents (I assume ones who now have clubs in real life). In this case both the Japanese and other nationality players can be approached. I still found 2 generated players on this mode that could not be approached.
So the issue seems to be 2 things:
1. Japan has no real player free agents (I don't know if this is a licensing thing rather than a bug?)
2. The generated free agents can't be signed by the player.
Unable to Sign Domestic Players (Japan)
in Transfers, Scouting, Contracts and Intermediaries
Posted
Did a bit of testing, it seems to be limited to the newgen players created in Japan at the start of a save. With default settings for a J league 3 start, large db and player count of ~40k, the only free agents in Japan were 35 generated players. None of these can be approached.
When starting on the your world mode, Japan has some real free agents (I assume ones who now have clubs in real life). In this case both the Japanese and other nationality players can be approached. I still found 2 generated players on this mode that could not be approached.
So the issue seems to be 2 things:
1. Japan has no real player free agents (I don't know if this is a licensing thing rather than a bug?)
2. The generated free agents can't be signed by the player.