The broadfin sawtail catshark is found in the northwestern Pacific from Sagami Bay off southeastern Honshu, Japan to the East China Sea, including the Ryukyu Islands and the Kyushu-Palau Ridge.
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This shark was formally described as a new species in a 1975 volume of the scientific journal Memoirs of the Faculty of Fisheries, Hokkaido University by Kazuhiro Nakaya, who gave it the specific epithet nipponensis from Nippon (Japan).