Japan

Japan admits visitors under one of twenty-nine statuses of residence, the one for tourism being Temporary Visitor. The Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Act requires a valid passport carrying a Japanese visa, and lifts that requirement for nationals of countries with which Japan has a visa exemption arrangement - 74 countries and regions, on the Foreign Ministry's own count. The permission granted at the border is ninety days, thirty days or fifteen days, and which of the three you get is set by the arrangement with your country rather than by anything you do at the counter. Paid work is not among the activities a Temporary Visitor may carry out.

Japan has no general work permit. It has a closed list of twenty-nine statuses of residence set out in two tables attached to the Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Act, and each one authorises a named kind of activity and nothing else. The status most people arrive on is Engineer / Specialist in Humanities / International Services, which covers work requiring knowledge in the natural sciences or the humanities, or work requiring a sensibility grounded in a foreign culture. It needs a contract with an organisation in Japan before anything else happens; the Ministerial Ordinance on criteria then asks for a relevant degree, a relevant Japanese vocational qualification or ten years of practice, and - on every employment status without exception - pay no lower than a Japanese national would receive for the same work.

Japan's route for someone who comes to run a business is the Business Manager status of residence. There is no passive investment route beside it: the status describes operating or managing a business, not owning one. The conditions were rewritten by a ministerial ordinance and the text in force from 1 April 2026 asks for all of five things at once - an office in Japan, a full-time employee living in Japan who is not you, property devoted to the business of thirty million yen or more, someone in the business who can understand and use Japanese at a high level and who will live in Japan, and either a postgraduate degree in a relevant field or three years of managing a business. The older rule, which much of the published guidance still describes, asked for any one of two employees or five million yen of capital.

Japan grants residence for doing something, not for having something. The two tables attached to the Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Act hold twenty-nine statuses of residence between them, each tied to a named activity or a named family position, and not one of them is granted to a person who lives on money from abroad. The nearest thing is a designation under the Minister of Justice's public notice on Designated Activities: item 40 lets someone aged eighteen or over stay for up to a year for sightseeing and recreation if the applicant and spouse together hold thirty million yen in savings, carry insurance, and come from one of seventy-four listed countries. It tests a balance rather than an income, it runs for a year rather than indefinitely, and it is not a route to anything else.

There is no retirement visa for Japan. Age appears nowhere in the twenty-nine statuses of residence attached to the Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Act, and no status is granted on the strength of a pension. The only category that answers anything like the question is item 40 of the Minister of Justice's public notice on Designated Activities, and it is not a retirement route: it asks for eighteen years of age rather than sixty, it measures savings rather than a pension, it is defined as a stay of not more than one year, and the activity it permits is sightseeing and recreation. A person who wants to grow old in Japan arrives on one of the ordinary statuses - work, family or long-term residence - and ages into it.

One status of residence, Student, covers every level of Japanese education from primary school to a doctorate, and the criteria ordinance sorts applicants by the kind of institution rather than by the level of the course. Admission to a recognised institution is the first condition; the second is money - enough assets, a scholarship or other means to live on, unless somebody else is paying. Since the institution has to maintain a system for managing attendance and compliance, the school carries part of the immigration burden. The period of stay is set by the Minister within a ceiling of four years and three months, which is the only status in the table measured that way.

Marriage to a Japanese national gives a status of residence in the second appended table of the Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Act - the table of positions rather than activities - which means it carries no work restriction at all: the holder may do anything a Japanese resident may do. It also means the Minister's criteria ordinance does not touch it, because that ordinance governs only the activity statuses in the first table. The periods granted are five, three or one year or six months, and nothing in the instruments says which. Naturalisation later is easier for a spouse than for anyone else: three years of residence instead of five, and three years of marriage with one year of residence as an alternative.

Japanese descent does open a door, but the Act does not say so: the Long-Term Resident status in the second appended table simply says the Minister of Justice may authorise residence where special grounds exist, and the content is filled in by a public notice. Descendants of Japanese emigrants have used that notice since 1990. For the fourth generation there is a separate route in the Designated Activities notice, and it is readable in full: eighteen to thirty-five years old, a supporter in Japan providing help free of charge, insurance, good conduct, means to return home, and a Japanese-language test that gets harder the longer the stay runs and the older the applicant is. It runs for a maximum of five years and it is not a residence permit by descent so much as a cultural-exchange permission with a wage attached.

Naturalisation in Japan is permitted rather than earned: article 4 says a foreign national may acquire Japanese nationality by naturalisation and that the Minister of Justice's permission is needed, and article 5 then lists five conditions the Minister may not waive except where the Act says so. Five years of continuous domicile, eighteen years of age with legal capacity under your own country's law, good conduct, the means to make a living, and - the condition that decides it for most people - having no nationality or being due to lose the one you have on acquiring Japanese nationality. Japan does not accept a second passport from an adult: article 11 strips Japanese nationality from anyone who takes a foreign one voluntarily, and article 14 makes a dual national born that way choose.

Japan's residence test is in article 2 of the Income Tax Act and it has two limbs: having a 住所 - a domicile - in Japan, or having had a 居所, a place of abode, continuously for one year up to now. There is no day count. The Order for Enforcement then supplies what decides most cases: someone who comes to live in Japan is presumed to have a domicile here if they hold a job that normally requires living here continuously for a year or more. Japan's distinctive move is the third category. A resident without Japanese nationality who has had a domicile or abode here for five years or less out of the last ten is a non-permanent resident, and is taxed on foreign-source income only to the extent it is paid in Japan or remitted here.

Japan has no residence test for health insurance and no waiting period. Article 5 of the National Health Insurance Act says that a person who has an address in a prefecture is an insured person of that prefecture's National Health Insurance, and article 6 lists the people it does not cover - which turns out to be everyone already covered by something else, principally employees under the Health Insurance Act. Between them, the two leave almost nobody out. Nationality is not mentioned in either. What does the work for a foreign national is the municipal register: a person given a status of residence for more than three months is a mid-to-long-term resident, gets a residence card, has to register an address, and is therefore a person with an address in a prefecture. The patient pays three tenths of the cost at the counter.

Japan lets a visitor drive for one year from the day of landing on an international driving permit in the 1949 Geneva Convention form, or - for six jurisdictions only - on the national licence itself with a Japanese translation from an approved maker. Those six are Switzerland, Germany, France, Belgium, Monaco and Taiwan, and the list is in a Cabinet Order rather than in any treaty. After that year, or where neither route applies, the licence has to be converted. Conversion is not automatic: the Act lets the prefectural public safety commission waive part of the examination after confirming the applicant can drive, and the Cabinet Order sets the condition that decides most cases - a stay of three months or more in the issuing country after the licence was obtained. Since 2026 the application also requires a copy of the applicant's Japanese resident record.

Japan belongs to no free-movement area and no agreement gives any nationality a right to live there. Nothing in the twenty-nine statuses of residence turns on a treaty, with one exception that is not a residence right at all: the Minister of Justice's public notice on Designated Activities creates named categories for people notified to Japan under its economic partnership agreements with Indonesia and the Philippines and under an exchange of notes with Vietnam, and the activity is training towards a Japanese nursing or care-worker qualification. The route carries dependants. It reaches three nationalities, two professions, and nobody else.

No Japanese statute says a foreign national may or may not open a bank account. What the law does is tell the bank what it must verify, and the answer decides the question in practice: the Act on Prevention of Transfer of Criminal Proceeds makes a bank confirm the customer's name, residence and date of birth before carrying out a specified transaction, and residence means a residence - the same 住居 a municipality records. A foreign national gets a record of residence only on a period of stay longer than three months, so the account follows the residence card rather than the other way round. A second rule runs alongside it: the Foreign Exchange Act divides everybody into residents and non-residents by whether they have a domicile or a place of abode in Japan, and banks apply different account rules to each.

The Customs Tariff Act grants unconditional exemption from duty on two neighbouring items, and which one applies to you turns on a single question: whether you are entering Japan in order to move your domicile here. A person who is not - a visitor - gets exemption for personal effects they carry or send separately, for their own use, and for tools needed in their occupation. A person who is gets the same exemption but widened to the belongings of their family as well. Both exclude motor vehicles, vessels and aircraft, which pay duty like any other import.