Japan's Business Manager Visa: The 2025 Reform and Its Five Requirements

If you are researching how to start a company in Japan, you have almost certainly read that the Business Manager visa requires ¥5 million in capital.

That figure stopped being correct on 16 October 2025.

The replacement number — ¥30 million — has been reported widely enough. But the capital figure is the easiest part of the reform to report, and it is not the part that decides who now qualifies. Underneath it, the structure of the rule changed: conditions that used to be alternatives now have to be satisfied together, one escape route was deleted outright, and three requirements that did not exist in any form were added.

An applicant who reads only the headline number can arrive at a plan that is six times more expensive and still inadmissible.

Everything below is taken from the Immigration Services Agency's own published texts — the amending ministerial ordinances, the Agency's implementation guidance, and its residence statistics. Sources are linked at the end.

What changed on 16 October 2025

The amendments were signed on 10 October 2025 (Ministry of Justice Ordinances No. 50 and No. 51) and took effect on 16 October 2025.

The change most English guides miss: "either" became "both"

The reform is usually described as a six-fold increase in the capital requirement. That description is incomplete in a way that matters, and you can see why by reading the two versions of the ordinance side by side.

The old text required that the scale of the business fall under any one of the following:

the business is carried on with two or more full-time employees residing in Japan, other than the person engaged in its operation or management; or the amount of capital or total contributions is ¥5 million or more; or a scale recognised as equivalent to either of the above.

The new text requires that the scale of the business fall under all of the following:

the business is carried on with full-time employees residing in Japan, other than the person engaged in its operation or management; and the total value of assets devoted to the business (including capital and total contributions) is ¥30 million or more.

Three things happened in that rewrite.

The word changed from "any" to "all." In Japanese, 「いずれか」 became 「いずれにも」. Capital and employment stopped being two ways of demonstrating the same thing and became two separate hurdles.

The third option was deleted. The old subparagraph (c) — a scale "recognised as equivalent" — was the provision that gave examiners room to accept a business that did not fit either mould. It no longer exists.

Only then did the number rise.

So the practical effect is larger than the headline suggests. Under the old rule, a founder with limited cash could qualify by employing two people. Under the new rule, that founder needs ¥30 million and an employee — and the employee has to be the right kind of employee, which is where the next section comes in.

The five requirements, one at a time

1. ¥30 million in assets devoted to the business

The wording is worth reading closely, because it is broader than "capital."

The old provision spoke of 「資本金の額又は出資の総額」 — the amount of stated capital, or the total of contributions. The new provision speaks of 「申請に係る事業の用に供される財産の総額（資本金の額及び出資の総額を含む。）」: the total value of the assets devoted to the business for which the application is made, capital and contributions included.

The Agency's guidance explains how this is read in each case:

• Where the business is a corporation — the paid-in capital of a kabushiki kaisha, or the total contributions of a gomei, goshi or godo kaisha.
• Where the business is a sole proprietorship — the total invested in what the business needs: securing premises, one year of salary for the staff employed, capital equipment.

Note the direction of travel. The old test looked at a number on your incorporation documents. The new test looks at what has actually been put into the business. Money parked in an account to be withdrawn after the visa is granted does not sit comfortably with the new wording.

2. At least one full-time employee — and not just anyone counts

The employee must be someone other than the person operating or managing the business, and must be residing in Japan.

The restriction that catches people out is in the parenthesis of the ordinance, which excludes persons residing under a status in Appended Table I of the Immigration Control Act. Appended Table I is where the work statuses live — Engineer/Specialist in Humanities/International Services, Intra-company Transferee, Skilled Labour, Specified Skilled Worker, and so on.

For this requirement, the Agency's guidance states that the employee must be one of:

• a Japanese national
• a special permanent resident
• a person holding a status in Appended Table II: Permanent Resident, Spouse or Child of Japanese National, Spouse or Child of Permanent Resident, or Long-Term Resident

In plain terms: hiring a talented engineer from overseas on a work visa does not satisfy this requirement, however senior they are and however well they are paid.

3. Japanese at B2 — though not necessarily yours

This requirement is new, and it is more flexible than it first appears.

The ordinance requires that any one of the people operating the business or working in it (excluding part-time staff) holds Japanese ability at a level of "understanding and using Japanese with a high degree of autonomy" or above — and that this person will be residing in Japan when the applicant takes up the management of the business.

The Agency's guidance ties that standard to B2 or above on the Reference Framework for Japanese Language Education, which corresponds to CEFR B2, and lists what it will accept as proof. For anyone other than a Japanese national or special permanent resident, one of the following:

• JLPT N2 or above
• BJT Business Japanese Proficiency Test: 400 points or above
• residence in Japan as a mid- to long-term resident for 20 years or more
• graduation from a Japanese university or other higher education institution
• completion of Japanese compulsory education and graduation from a Japanese high school

The word "any one" does real work here. A founder who speaks no Japanese can satisfy this requirement through a qualifying employee. Importantly, this is the one place where the definition of employee is wider — see the next section.

4. A graduate degree, or three years of management

The applicant must satisfy one of two limbs.

The degree limb. A doctoral degree, master's degree, or professional degree in the field of business management, or in a field of technology or knowledge required for the business. Equivalent degrees awarded outside Japan count.

The experience limb. Three years or more of experience in the operation or management of a business. Time spent in Japan under the Designated Activities status while carrying out startup-preparation activities — securing premises and other preparatory steps for beginning a business — counts toward the three years.

There is a related change that is easy to miss. The old ordinance imposed a three-year experience requirement only on applicants coming in to manage a business, and let time spent studying management at graduate school count toward it. That provision has been narrowed to a pay requirement alone — remuneration at least equal to what a Japanese national doing the same work would receive — while the experience-or-degree test has moved up and now applies to every applicant, founders included.

5. A business plan verified by a certified professional

Under the amended Enforcement Regulations, the document to be submitted is no longer "a copy of the business plan" but 「経営に関する専門的な知識を有する者による評価を受けた事業計画書の写し」 — a copy of the business plan that has been evaluated by a person with specialised knowledge of business management.

As at the effective date, the Agency identifies three professions as qualifying:

• 中小企業診断士 (SME management consultant)
• 公認会計士 (certified public accountant)
• 税理士 (certified tax accountant)

What the evaluation is for is set out in the same provision: to assess whether the plan is specific, rational, and feasible. This is a substantive review, not a countersignature.

"Full-time employee" means two different things in the same reform

This is the detail most worth carrying away, because the same Japanese term — 常勤職員 — is defined differently in two adjacent requirements, and the Agency says so explicitly in its own footnotes.

Read together, the consequence is concrete. Suppose you hire a project manager from Taiwan who holds Engineer/Specialist in Humanities/International Services status and passed JLPT N1.

That person satisfies your Japanese language requirement. That person does not count toward your employment requirement. You still need a second hire from the Japanese-national or Appended Table II pool.

Plan your first two hires with both definitions in front of you, not one.

Three operating rules that decide renewals

The reform did not stop at the admission criteria. The Agency's guidance sets out how it will treat the business once you are here, and these points determine whether the status is renewed.

A home address is no longer an acceptable office

The guidance is direct: because the business must now have premises appropriate to its revised scale, 「自宅を事業所と兼ねることは、原則として認められません」 — using your residence as your place of business is not accepted as a general rule.

Outsourcing the management itself

Where the work is contracted out to the point that there is no real evidence of the applicant acting as an operator of the business, the Agency will treat the applicant as not carrying out the activity that the Business Manager status covers.

The status is granted for running a business. A holding structure that runs itself, with the visa holder as a name on the register, does not fit the status as the Agency now reads it.

Taxes and social insurance are verified at renewal

At renewal the Agency will check performance of the following obligations:

• Labour insurance — acquisition of employment insurance coverage, payment of employment insurance premiums, and the status of workers' accident compensation insurance procedures
• Social insurance — acquisition of health insurance and employees' pension coverage, and payment of those premiums
• National and local taxes payable by the business — withholding income tax and special reconstruction income tax, corporation tax, consumption tax and local consumption tax; corporate inhabitant tax and enterprise tax (or, for a sole proprietor, the equivalent personal taxes)

Separately, the guidance states that prolonged absence from Japan without good reason will be treated as an absence of real activity in Japan, and renewal will not be granted.

What the reform means for permanent residency

For many people the Business Manager visa is a step toward permanent residency rather than the destination. The reform reaches that far.

Where the post-reform criteria are not met, the Agency's guidance states that permission for permanent residence will not be granted from Business Manager status, from Highly Skilled Professional (i)(c), or from Highly Skilled Professional (ii) where these are premised on Business Manager activity. Nor will a change from Highly Skilled Professional (i)(c) to (ii) be permitted.

This is not a hypothetical branch. Highly Skilled Professional (i)(c) — the management track — rose 48.9% during 2025, to 4,971 people at year end, and Business Manager itself stood at 46,781, up 12.4%. Both grew faster than Japan's foreign resident population as a whole, which rose 9.5% to 4,125,395.

If the permanent residency track is why you are doing this, meeting the criteria is not something to defer to a later renewal.

If you already hold the visa: the transition period to 16 October 2028

There are three separate transitional rules, and which one applies to you depends on where your application was on 16 October 2025.

Applications already filed. Applications for a Certificate of Eligibility or for an extension of period of stay that had been received and were still under examination on the day before the effective date are decided under the old criteria.

Certificates of Eligibility already issued. If you held a Certificate of Eligibility before the effective date, the old criteria apply to your landing application for three months from the effective date (or from the date of issue, where the certificate was issued under the transitional rule above).

Existing residents. If you already hold Business Manager status, renewal applications made up to 16 October 2028 — three years from the effective date — will be decided taking into account your business condition and the prospect of your meeting the new criteria, even if you do not currently meet them. The Agency notes it may ask you to submit a document that has been evaluated by a management professional.

After 16 October 2028, renewals require compliance with the new criteria. Even then, the guidance preserves a margin: where the business is in good condition, corporation tax and similar obligations have been properly discharged, and there is a prospect of meeting the criteria by the next renewal, the Agency will weigh the circumstances as a whole.

Holders of Highly Skilled Professional (i)(c) premised on Business Manager activity are treated the same way.

Three years sounds generous. In practice it is the time available to raise assets to ¥30 million, recruit into a restricted pool of eligible employees, secure premises separate from your home, and — if the language requirement falls on you — reach B2.

Who may verify your plan, and who may file your application

These are two different questions, and the Immigration Services Agency answers both in the same document.

Immediately after listing the three professions that may evaluate a business plan, the guidance adds a note:

「なお、弁護士及び行政書士以外の方が、官公署に提出する申請書等の書類の作成を報酬を得て業として行うことは、行政書士法違反に当たるおそれがありますので御留意願います。」

In English: preparing, for remuneration and as a business, documents to be submitted to public offices is restricted under the Administrative Scriveners Act to attorneys (bengoshi) and administrative scriveners (gyoseishoshi).

So the professional who evaluates your business plan is, in the ordinary case, not the professional who prepares and files your application. Those are different roles held by different qualifications, and a complete application generally requires both. It is worth establishing which role a prospective adviser is offering before you engage them.

Reading your own situation against the new rules

If you are weighing a move to Japan, the five requirements are best approached as five separate questions rather than a single threshold:

1. Will ¥30 million actually be devoted to the business, or is it a balance you intend to hold?
2. Does your first hire fall within the Japanese-national or Appended Table II pool?
3. Who in the business will hold B2 Japanese, and will they be residing in Japan when you begin managing?
4. Can you document three years of management, or a qualifying degree — and can you document it in a form a Japanese examiner will accept?
5. Where will the office be, and is it genuinely separate from where you live?

Most of the difficulty in a post-reform application is not any single requirement. It is that the five interact: the employee you hire affects the language requirement, the assets figure affects the premises you need, and the plan has to make all of it coherent enough that a management professional will put their name to it.

If the honest answer is that you cannot assemble all five from abroad before you arrive, that is not the end of the route. Japan has a separate status that lets you prepare in the country while you build toward them — it was amended on the same day and in the same direction, and it is covered in the companion article on the startup visa.

Sources

Every figure, date and quotation in this article is taken from the following official texts. All were checked on 14 September 2026.

• Immigration Services Agency, Amendment of the Landing Criteria Ordinance for the "Business Manager" Status of Residence (在留資格「経営・管理」に係る上陸基準省令等の改正について) — moj.go.jp
• Immigration Services Agency, Amendment of the Permission Criteria for "Business Manager" (effective 16 October 2025) (「経営・管理」の許可基準の改正等について), published 10 October 2025, updated 30 October 2025 — PDF
• Immigration Services Agency, Review of the Permission Criteria for "Business Manager" — comparison of the former and amended requirements (「経営・管理」許可基準に係る見直しについて) — PDF
• Ministry of Justice Ordinance No. 50 of 2025, amending the Ministerial Ordinance to Provide for Criteria Pursuant to Article 7(1)(ii) of the Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Act — PDF
• Ministry of Justice Ordinance No. 51 of 2025, amending the Regulations for Enforcement of the Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Act — PDF
• Immigration Services Agency, Status of Residence: Business Manager — periods of stay and required documents — moj.go.jp
• Immigration Services Agency, Number of Foreign Residents as at the End of 2025 (令和７年末現在における在留外国人数について) — moj.go.jp

This article explains the published criteria. It is not advice on an individual case, and the Immigration Services Agency decides each application on its own facts.

About this office

I am a gyoseishoshi (administrative scrivener) in Osaka, and I handle Business Manager cases under the post-reform criteria. Before qualifying I spent 18 years with the Osaka Prefectural Police, followed by a period as a company director, so business plans and the realities behind them are familiar ground.

A note on language, because it matters more than politeness. This office corresponds in English in writing, and written enquiries are answered in English. Spoken consultations are conducted in Japanese. If you would like an interpreted video meeting, say so in your first message and we will arrange how to do it. I would rather tell you this at the start than have you discover it at the first call.

If you are considering Japan and want to know where you stand against the five requirements, send the outline of your situation and I will tell you which of them you already meet and which will take work.