Japan's Startup Visa After the 2025 Reform: What It Actually Buys You

If you have read what Japan now asks of a Business Manager applicant — ¥30 million devoted to the business, a qualifying full-time employee, Japanese at B2 somewhere in the company, three years of management or a graduate degree, and a business plan a certified professional will put their name to — the obvious next question is whether any of it can be assembled after you arrive.

It can. The route is the startup visa — a programme whose stated purpose is to strengthen the international competitiveness of Japanese industry and to build Japan into a hub for international economic activity, and which accepts that a company cannot be built from another continent.

But the startup visa was amended on 16 October 2025 as well — the same day, in the same direction — and a good deal of what circulates about it in English describes the version that no longer exists.

The honest summary is this. The startup visa does not lower the ¥30 million. It changes when you must have it. That is worth a great deal. It is also a different thing from what many people are told they are buying.

Everything below comes from the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry's notification and the Immigration Services Agency's published texts. Sources are linked at the end.

Two different routes, often confused

Japan has two Designated Activities statuses that let a foreign national prepare to start a business here. They are not variations of each other.

The practical difference: the startup visa turns on your business; J-Find turns on your degree. J-Find asks nothing about your company, because it was not designed as an entrepreneurship programme — job-hunting is an equally valid use of it.

For the rest of this article, "startup visa" means Designated Activities (44) — the one of the two that was built around a business rather than a degree.

The startup visa changed on the same day, in the same direction

The notification's current text is dated last amended 16 October 2025.

"Either" became "both" here too

Readers of the Business Manager reform will recognise the move. The notification's criterion for the confirmation certificate used to require that the business be expected, within one year, to meet any one of:

two or more full-time employees residing in Japan; or capital or total contributions of ¥5 million or more; or a scale equivalent to either.

It now requires that the business be expected to meet all of:

full-time employees residing in Japan other than the person managing the business; and total assets devoted to the business, including capital and contributions, of ¥30 million or more.

Same structural change: 「いずれか」 to 「いずれにも」, the equivalent-scale fallback deleted, and only then the number raised. If you have read that the startup visa lets you start with ¥5 million, you have read the version that was replaced.

What the startup visa actually changes: the deadline, not the number

Here is the distinction that matters, and it is a real one.

The Business Manager visa asks whether the ¥30 million is devoted to the business. It is a present-tense test, applied before you are allowed in.

The startup visa asks whether there is a prospect (見込み) that the business will reach that scale within one year of your landing — and, at renewal, within six months of the renewal. It is a forward-looking test, and you are lawfully in Japan while the clock runs.

The same applies to the office. The Business Manager reform made a home address unacceptable as a place of business; the startup visa asks only that you are expected to have premises in Japan within one year.

So what you are buying is not a discount. You are buying the right to be here, legally, while you raise the money, find the premises, and hire the person — instead of having to complete all three from abroad, through intermediaries, before anyone will let you in.

For a founder with capital in motion rather than capital in hand, that difference decides whether the plan is possible at all.

One thing was added rather than relaxed: you must now reside in Japan during the preparation period. Before the amendment there was no such condition. The status is no longer compatible with running the preparation remotely and visiting.

The requirement that is genuinely lower

Compare the background tests side by side.

The degree route is identical. The experience route is not: one year against three.

This is the startup visa's least discussed advantage. A founder who has run something for a year — a division, a practice, a company of their own — clears the startup visa's background test but not the Business Manager's. The startup visa is where that person belongs.

The arithmetic almost nobody points out

Now put two provisions together.

The startup visa asks for one year of management experience.

The Business Manager criteria ask for three years — and the ordinance defines that period to include time spent in Japan under Designated Activities carrying out startup-preparation activities:

three years or more of experience in the operation or management of a business (where there is a period of residence in Japan under the Designated Activities status for activities including securing an office and other preparatory acts necessary to begin a trading or other business, that period is included)

The Immigration Services Agency's guidance repeats the point in its own note.

So: one year of management experience gets you the startup visa. Up to two years on the startup visa are then counted toward the Business Manager requirement. One plus two is three.

That is the arithmetic. It is not a guarantee — the Agency decides each application on its facts, and the other four requirements still have to be met at conversion. But it means the startup visa is not merely a waiting room. For the right applicant, the time spent in it is productive against a requirement that would otherwise take years to satisfy elsewhere.

The date that decides which criteria you will face

This is where people are most likely to be given stale advice, because the answer depends on a date that has already passed.

Two consequences follow.

If you are starting now, you face the new criteria. There is no version of the old route still open to a new applicant. Any guide telling you that ¥5 million is enough is describing a door that closed.

If you already hold a certificate issued on or before 15 October 2025, the old criteria still govern your conversion — and that is worth knowing precisely, because the startup visa is capped at two years. Certificates issued in the final days before the amendment can still be live well into 2027. If that is your situation, the timing of your conversion is a decision worth taking deliberately rather than by default.

The two-year ceiling counts more than you think

The notification caps the combined total of:

• the period of your startup-preparation activity, and
• any period you held Business Manager status for activities in a National Strategic Special Zone that included startup activity

at two years. Time under the special-zone scheme is not additional runway; it comes out of the same allowance.

Plan the two years as a budget, not as a horizon. The milestones inside it are fixed by the notification: the business must be expected to reach scale within one year of landing on the first certificate, and within six months of each renewal.

Where you apply changes what you have to prove

The confirmation certificate does not come from the Immigration Services Agency. It comes from a body certified by the Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry — twenty-five of them as of February 2026, including Osaka City (certified March 2019) and the Tokyo Metropolitan Government (February 2025). Since March 2025 the list also includes a private-sector operator, so these bodies are no longer exclusively local governments.

The choice is not merely administrative, because of how the notification words the first criterion. The startup preparation must be appropriate for strengthening the international competitiveness of the industry of Japan — or, where the certifying body is a local government, of that local government.

Read that again if you are choosing between cities. Applying through a municipality means your business has to make sense for that municipality's economy, not just for Japan's. A plan that reads well nationally can read poorly against a particular city's industrial priorities, and the body deciding is the city.

Each body also publishes its own procedures and timetable. The notification requires the body to hear the opinion of a person with knowledge of business start-ups and management before issuing a certificate, so this is a substantive review with its own lead time — not a counter you can visit on the way to the immigration office.

What is waiting at conversion

When you convert to Business Manager status, the five requirements apply in full: ¥30 million devoted to the business, at least one full-time employee from the qualifying categories, Japanese at B2 held by someone in the business and residing in Japan, the background test, and a business plan evaluated by a certified management professional.

If you are working toward that conversion, those five are the specification your two years are building to. They are set out in detail in the companion article on the Business Manager reform, including the trap where "full-time employee" is defined differently in two adjacent requirements.

Reading your own situation

Six questions decide whether this route fits:

1. Do you have one year of experience operating or managing a business, or a qualifying graduate degree?
2. Is there a credible path to ¥30 million devoted to the business within one year of landing — not a balance you hold, but assets in the business?
3. Can you reside in Japan throughout the preparation period?
4. Which body will you apply through, and does your business serve that locality's economy?
5. Does your two-year allowance already have anything charged against it?
6. When you convert, which of the five Business Manager requirements will still be open?

Question 4 is the one most often answered last and should be answered early. It shapes the plan you write.

Sources

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

• Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, Revision of the Startup Visa Requirements (effective 16 October 2025) (「スタートアップビザ」要件見直し) — PDF
• Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, Notification on the Business for Promoting Startup Activities by Foreign Nationals (外国人起業活動促進事業に関する告示), last amended 16 October 2025 — PDF
• Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, Business for Promoting Startup Activities by Foreign Nationals (Startup Visa) — programme overview and the list of certified bodies — meti.go.jp
• Immigration Services Agency, Foreign Entrepreneurs (Business for Promoting Startup Activities by Foreign Nationals) — moj.go.jp
• Immigration Services Agency, Where a graduate of a highly ranked overseas university carries out startup or job-seeking activities (J-Find) — moj.go.jp
• Immigration Services Agency, A list of Universities eligible for J-Find — PDF
• Immigration Services Agency, Amendment of the Permission Criteria for "Business Manager" (effective 16 October 2025) — the conversion rules for Designated Activities (44) and (51) — 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

This article explains the published criteria. It is not advice on an individual case, and the certifying body and the Immigration Services Agency each decide on their own facts.

If you are weighing this route

I practise in Osaka, where Osaka City has been one of the certified bodies since 2019, and I handle Business Manager cases under the post-reform criteria.

A note on language, because it decides how we would work together. Written enquiries in English are answered in English. Spoken consultations are conducted in Japanese; if you would prefer an interpreted video meeting, say so in your first message and we will arrange how to do it. I would rather you knew that now than discovered it at the first call.

If you are considering this route, send me the outline: how long you have been running something, what the business is, what funding is realistically available and when, and whether anyone on your side speaks Japanese. I will tell you whether the startup visa is the right door, which body it makes sense to apply through, and what the two years would have to accomplish.