Japan Permanent Residency: What the Draft Revision Says

What is known so far: which requirements are being touched

Permanent residency (永住許可) in Japan rests on three statutory requirements: good conduct (素行善良), independent livelihood (独立生計要件), and conformity with the national interest (国益要件). The draft revises the latter two. The livelihood requirement gains concrete economic yardsticks — income, pension entitlement, financial assets. The national-interest requirement shifts from “does no harm” toward “demonstrates benefit”, and picks up new angles such as Japanese ability, understanding of the rules, and children’s schooling.

If the draft is adopted as written, the familiar route — ten years of residence, taxes and social insurance paid, paperwork in order — would be replaced by a set of quantified economic and integration screens.

• 01Applicant’s household income continuously reaches a level above the average income of Japanese households, scaled to household size
• 02Projected future pension benefits reach the level obtainable from 30 years of Employees’ Pension (厚生年金) enrolment at that income level
• 03Any shortfall may be covered by financial assets such as savings (“supplementary assets”, 補塡資産); the required amount scales with the applicant’s age
• 04The applicant’s permanent residence must bring positive and concrete benefit to Japan
• 05Even those exempt from the livelihood requirement (spouses and children of Japanese nationals, permanent residents and special permanent residents, recognised refugees, etc.) may be assessed negatively where there is a realistic risk of becoming a “public burden” (公共の負担)
• 06Japanese-language ability at CEFR B1 or above (Highly Skilled Professionals and similar are excluded)
• 07Understanding of Japan’s systems and rules at or above a certain level
• 08Where the applicant has school-age children, that they attend elementary or junior high school

The most common misreading: it is not “30 years of pension contributions”

The line that spread fastest after the reports was “you will now need 30 years of pension contributions to apply.” That reading is the wrong way round.

The draft looks at your projected future pension benefit and compares it against a benchmark. The benchmark is defined like this:

So “30 years” is a parameter used to construct the yardstick, not a contribution requirement imposed on you. Whether you personally have 8 or 15 years of record is not the test. The test is whether your projected benefit — estimated from your current age, contribution history and current income — reaches that line.

Age, not years paid, is what actually bites

Translated into real situations (assuming benefits start at 65):

The draft acknowledges this and builds in a cushion: the required amount of supplementary assets is set according to age at the time of application, and is lower for younger applicants — the reasoning being that younger people still have many years in which to accumulate assets. Which also means the closer you are to pension age, the more assets you need to show.

My reading: the younger you are, the easier this gets; if you are older, it becomes either a high-income route or a bring-your-assets route. How assets convert into pension shortfall, though, has not been published at all.

The income test: three traps that are easy to miss

On the surface the income rule is one sentence: household income above the Japanese household average. The detail in the draft excerpts is where the real effects are.

Trap 1: a Dependent-visa spouse’s income does not count, but the person does

The draft states that where a household member holds a status of residence not intended for work — “Dependent” (家族滞在) being the typical case — income they earn under a permission to engage in activity outside their status (資格外活動許可, i.e. part-time work) is not added to household income, on the grounds that such earnings are exceptional and limited by design.

That person is nevertheless counted in household size — and the income threshold scales with household size.

Trap 2: relatives living abroad count towards household size

The draft states explicitly that relatives the applicant supports are included in household size even if they do not live with the applicant, and spells out that this includes relatives residing overseas.

Plenty of people list parents abroad as dependants for tax purposes (扶養控除). Under the draft, doing so raises the income line you have to clear. Whether to keep overseas relatives as dependants may turn into a calculation you have to run deliberately.

Trap 3: households of five or more get an extra add-on

Where household size reaches five or more, the draft adds an increment for higher living costs on top of the size-based income level, and asks whether household income meets that increased figure. Larger families — including those enlarged by overseas dependants under Trap 2 — run straight into this.

So how much money is the line?

At this point the Agency has neither published a figure nor said which statistic it will use. For a sense of scale only, here are the latest published averages from the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare’s Comprehensive Survey of Living Conditions (2025 survey, covering income earned during 2024):

Two things worth noting. First, the choice of category matters enormously: a line drawn on “households with children” sits nearly ¥3 million above one drawn on “all households”. Second, the average itself is climbing fast — 2024 income rose 7.3% on the year (though reportedly still below the 1990s peak). If the benchmark is pinned to “the latest survey average”, it will drift upward every year: clearing it this year is no guarantee for next.

Pensions and supplementary assets: judged per household

The pension test is not applied to the applicant in isolation. The draft states that the benchmark and the supplementary-asset amount are also assessed per same-livelihood household in principle:

• Where there is a spouse, the projected benefits of applicant and spouse are combined;
• the comparison figure is the benchmark plus what the spouse would receive had they been a Category-3 insured person (国民年金第3号被保険者) as a dependant over the same period;
• the supplementary-asset amount is increased correspondingly.

The practical implication: a single-earner household is not automatically disqualified because the spouse has no Employees’ Pension record — the benchmark side is adjusted too. But both partners’ pension records now enter the assessment.

Japanese at B1: the conversion table already exists

The draft asks for Japanese ability at “B1 equivalent (independent user) or above”, excluding Highly Skilled Professionals and similar. B1 is a CEFR level, not a JLPT level — which raises the obvious question: what JLPT result counts as B1?

No guesswork needed. The JLPT has announced that from the December 2025 session, score reports for successful candidates carry a reference CEFR level, and the mapping is public:

Two consequences:

• Passing N3 is not the same as B1. A narrow N3 pass (95–103) is labelled A2. You need 104 or more.
• Passing N2 means B1 from the outset — 90 is the N2 pass mark, and the B1 band starts there.

Two easy-to-miss conditions:

• The CEFR label is only given to candidates who pass. The JLPT requires both a total score and a minimum sectional score in each section; fall below a sectional minimum and you fail regardless of total, and the level field shows “＊” instead.
• The mapping covers only part of what CEFR measures. The JLPT states that the correspondence applies to what the test assesses — language knowledge (vocabulary/grammar), reading and listening — and not to production (speaking and writing) or interaction. A B1 label therefore reflects receptive ability only.

What the Agency has not published: which certificates will be accepted, how older score reports (before December 2025, with no CEFR line) will be treated, and whether graduating from a Japanese university can substitute. This is one of the biggest blanks in the draft.

The national-interest test: from “no harm” to “clear benefit”

If there is one sentence to remember from the draft, it is this one, from the section explaining the national-interest requirement:

If that line survives into the final version, it is a shift in how the test works. In practice the requirement has functioned much like a negative checklist — no criminal record, taxes paid, social insurance paid, notifications filed. The draft reframes it as something requiring affirmative evidence: your contribution to Japan’s economy and public finances, industry, diplomacy, local communities, education, healthcare, social welfare, culture, arts and sport.

The draft also restates that the decision rests on the broad discretion of the Minister of Justice, and that relevant perspectives include the international environment surrounding immigration control, Japan’s population trends, and labour demand in industry. In other words, identical personal circumstances could be judged differently depending on the macro backdrop.

Those exempt from the livelihood test are not in a safe zone either

The Immigration Control Act allows permanent residence for spouses and children of Japanese nationals, permanent residents and special permanent residents, and for recognised refugees, without satisfying the livelihood requirement. The draft keeps that exception but adds: where the household is in fact a “public burden”, or where that risk is realistic and no special circumstances are found, the assessment may be negative.

The same passage says this element is to be judged holistically, with weight on stability of residence as a family unit and humanitarian considerations. According to government sources cited in the reporting, screening has long applied this perspective; the draft simply puts it in writing.

My own reading is that the target here is long-term reliance on the social safety net — the expectation being that you carry your own share.

Timing: three dates that are easy to confuse

This is the part worth reading slowly, because it decides whether you are still in time. There are three dates and they are not the same date:

Unpacking the third row: the revision date is 1 October 2026, and six months before that is 1 April 2026. Which means:

Worth distinguishing: this is not retroactive legislation but a change of screening criteria, with pending cases judged against the criteria in force at the time of decision. That is not unusual in administrative practice, though it feels the same from where the applicant is standing: you filed under one set of rules and may be decided under another.

Two other things happening on the same timeline

Looking at the guideline alone misses the picture. Those two dates — 1 October 2026 and 1 April 2027 — are also milestones for two separate changes.

Fees: PR applications from ¥10,000 to ¥200,000 (draft ordinance)

This has two layers. The statute: an amendment to the Immigration Control Act, enacted on 29 May 2026 and promulgated on 5 June 2026, raised the ceilings for immigration procedure fees (the PR ceiling going to 30 times the current level). The ordinance: the actual amounts and start date are set by cabinet ordinance — and on 3 July 2026 the Agency published a draft ordinance and opened public comment (3 July – 2 August 2026). The draft says:

Details that are easy to skim past:

• The trigger is the date of acceptance, not the date of approval — applications accepted on or after 1 October 2026 pay the new fee.
• Extensions and changes move to a tiered scale based on the period granted: the longer the period you receive, the more you pay.
• A reduction exists but is narrow: it requires being in need to a degree comparable to a person requiring protection under the Public Assistance Act and warranting humanitarian consideration — reducing residence procedures to ¥10,000 and PR to ¥20,000.
• PR applications cannot be filed online and are outside the scope of the online discount.

This too is at draft ordinance plus public comment stage; final amounts follow the enacted ordinance.

PR revocation rules take effect on 1 April 2027

The Immigration Control Act amendment enacted and promulgated in June 2024 (Act No. 59 of 2024) expanded the grounds for revoking status of residence specifically for permanent residents. The commencement date has been fixed by ordinance at 1 April 2027 — the same day the new screening criteria apply in principle (and also the day the new Employment for Skill Development system starts, with the Technical Intern Training system heading for abolition over a transition of roughly three years). The added grounds centre on wilful non-payment of taxes and social insurance contributions, certain criminal sentences, and breaches of obligations under the Act.

The common reading is that “wilful and malicious” is the operative standard, and that non-payment caused by illness or job loss is not what the system targets, with circumstances judged individually. But the direction is unmistakable: getting PR is no longer the finish line — the conditions have to keep holding afterwards.

The debate inside Japan is not one-sided

This matters more than it might seem, because it is easy to assume the only people objecting are foreign residents themselves. The Asahi article carries a commentary panel, and both contributors were pointed in their criticism.

Eriko Suzuki, professor at Kokushikan University and a specialist in immigration policy, noted that the 2024 amendment already introduced revocation grounds aimed specifically at permanent residents, and that the guideline itself has already been revised twice since then (November 2024 and February 2026), leaving the bar substantially higher than before. Layering this revision on top — and applying “income” and “public burden” retroactively to applications from April onward — she characterised as state-driven exclusionism.

Ayaka Wada, a musician and writer, questioned the framing itself: why the phrase “malicious permanent residents” is needed at all, what counts as malicious, and what proportion of permanent residents it supposedly describes. The stated rationale is protecting non-malicious permanent residents from prejudice, she noted, yet the added burden falls on every prospective applicant. She also asked why foreign workers who pay the same taxes should be framed around not becoming a “public burden” — and whether applying such a phrase to human beings is appropriate at all.

What you can do now, without waiting

• 01Check your projected pension benefit via Nenkin Teiki-bin or Nenkin Net. It is the only element of the new package you can quantify about yourself today.
• 02Audit your tax and social insurance record. Even under current rules, paying by the deadline is what keeps you clear of negative assessment — late payments leave a trace on the certificates.
• 03Count your household properly, including a Dependent-visa spouse and any overseas relatives you claim as dependants, and see whether you land in the five-or-more bracket.
• 04Check the timing of your Japanese certificate. Do you hold an N2 pass, or N3 with 104+? If you plan to sit the test, note that only score reports from December 2025 onwards carry a CEFR line.
• 05Treat “when to file” as arithmetic: the fee difference, the retroactive reach, and whether your documents are genuinely ready. Filing while clearly short risks a refusal — and a refiling under the new fee schedule.
• 06Watch the official page. When the version line on the Agency’s guideline page moves off “revised 24 February 2026”, the final text has landed.

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