This is a guideline for the management of sepsis, developed by the Sepsis Registry Committee of The Japanese Society of Intensive Care Medicine (JSICM) launched in March 2007. This guideline was developed on the basis of evidence-based medicine and focuses on unique treatments in Japan that have not been included in the Surviving Sepsis Campaign guidelines (SSCG), as well as treatments that are viewed differently in Japan and in Western countries. Although the methods in this guideline conform to the 2008 SSCG, the Japanese literature and the results of the Sepsis Registry Survey, which was performed twice by the Sepsis Registry Committee in intensive care units (ICUs) registered with JSICM, are also referred. This is the first and original guideline for sepsis in Japan and is expected to be properly used in daily clinical practice. This article is translated from Japanese, originally published as "The Japanese Guidelines for the Management of Sepsis" in the Journal of the Japanese Society of Intensive Care Medicine (J Jpn Soc Intensive Care Med), 2013; 20:124-73. The original work is at http://dx.doi.org/10.3918/jsicm.20.124.