The Business Manager visa
Last updated
The visa that lets you live in Japan and run a company you own is called 経営・管理. The bar for getting it was rewritten in October 2025. Here is what it takes now, and where buying a business that already trades helps.
Highlights
What it is. It's the visa for running a company in Japan, and it lasts as long as you genuinely do.1
What it takes. Five conditions, including ¥30 million in the company and one full-time employee.2
What changed. The bar was rewritten on 16 October 2025, and most guides online still describe the old one.2
Where buying helps. A trading business can cover several conditions at once, but not the one that says you run it yourself.3
- 1Immigration Services Agency: the 経営・管理 status, read on 2026-10-01
- 2Immigration Services Agency: the 2025 revision, read on 2026-10-01
- 3Immigration Services Agency: guidance on the revision, read on 2026-10-01
Check you qualify
Japan has no investor visa. What it has is a status of residence attached to an activity: running a company here. If you buy a Japanese business and intend to live here and run it, this is the one you end up at.
Five conditions, and they stack. Four out of five is a refusal. Three of the five arrived in October 2025, which is why older guides are worth ignoring.
Step 1: Make sure this is the right visaIt covers operating a business in Japan, or managing one. The people who hold it are company directors and managers.
Immigration Services Agency: the 経営・管理 status
- When
- Before anything else
- Who's involved
- The Immigration Services Agency (出入国在留管理庁), through the bureau covering where the business sits.
The exact rule
The Immigration Services Agency words the activity as 「本邦において貿易その他の事業の経営を行い又は当該事業の管理に従事する活動」 — conducting the operation of trade or other business in Japan, or engaging in the management of that business. The examples it gives are executives and administrators of companies.
Source: 出入国在留管理庁 — 在留資格「経営・管理」 — read on 2026-10-01
Step 2: Money in the company¥30 million or more has to be in the business.
Immigration Services Agency: the 2025 revision
- When
- Before you apply
The exact rule
For a company this means the amount of paid-in capital in a 株式会社, or the total contributed capital in a 合名会社, 合資会社 or 合同会社. For a sole proprietor it means the total actually invested in order to run the business: securing premises, a year of employee wages, capital equipment and the like.
Source: 出入国在留管理庁 —「経営・管理」の許可基準の改正等について（令和7年10月16日施行） — read on 2026-10-01
Watch out
The wording is about money already in: paid-in capital for a company, and for a sole proprietor the total already invested. A commitment to fund the business later is a different thing, and savings sitting outside the business are not invested in it.
Step 3: One full-time employee
The company has to employ at least one full-time member of staff.
Immigration Services Agency: the 2025 revision
- When
- Before you apply
The exact rule
The rule names who counts: Japanese nationals, special permanent residents, and foreign nationals residing under one of the Appendix II statuses — Permanent Resident, Spouse or Child of a Japanese National, Spouse or Child of a Permanent Resident, and Long-Term Resident.
Source: 出入国在留管理庁 —「経営・管理」の許可基準の改正等について（令和7年10月16日施行） — read on 2026-10-01
Scout's tip
Full-time is judged against part-time work: for example, at least five working days a week, 217 days a year and 30 hours a week, with the employee enrolled in employment insurance. Seconded, agency and contracted workers are not counted as the business's own full-time staff.
Watch out
A foreign national on one of the Appendix I statuses — which includes every ordinary working visa — does not count toward this condition.
Step 4: Japanese at B2, yours or a colleague's
Either you or one of your full-time employees needs Japanese at around B2. It does not have to be you.
Immigration Services Agency: the 2025 revision
- When
- Before you apply
The exact rule
B2 or above on the Reference Framework for Japanese Language Education. For anybody other than a Japanese national or special permanent resident, one of five things is checked: JLPT N2 or above; 400 points or more on the BJT Business Japanese Proficiency Test; twenty years or more in Japan as a mid- to long-term resident; graduation from a Japanese university or other higher education institution; or completion of Japanese compulsory education followed by graduation from a Japanese high school.
Source: 出入国在留管理庁 —「経営・管理」の許可基準の改正等について（令和7年10月16日施行） — read on 2026-10-01
Scout's tip
One full-time employee who is a Japanese national or a special permanent resident meets both this condition and the employee condition before it.
Watch out
If neither you nor a full-time employee can show one of those five things, the condition is not met. Note that the employee who can satisfy this one is counted more widely than the employee in the condition above: here, somebody on an ordinary working visa does count.
Step 5: A postgraduate degree, or three years running something
Either a doctorate, master's or professional degree in a field the business needs, or three years of experience running or managing a business.
Immigration Services Agency: the 2025 revision
- When
- Before you apply
The exact rule
Degrees awarded outside Japan that correspond to a doctorate, a master's or a professional degree are included. The alternative is three years or more of career history in the operation or management of a business.
Source: 出入国在留管理庁 —「経営・管理」の許可基準の改正等について（令和7年10月16日施行） — read on 2026-10-01
Scout's tip
An employment certificate or degree certificate written in English generally needs no Japanese translation. If it uses specialist terms, a translation may be asked for later.
Watch out
The three degrees named are doctoral, master's and professional. A bachelor's degree is not among them, which for most applicants makes the three-year route the one that matters.
If you're buying a business
This is the part specific to what we do, and it is why we wrote the page. Several of the conditions above describe things a trading business already has and a company registered last week does not: people on the payroll, premises, and numbers that came from somewhere real.
None of it is automatic. "The business has staff" and "the business has the employee the rule describes" are not the same sentence, and the gap between them tends to surface late. And one condition is not for sale at any price: you have to run the business yourself.
Step 6: Check the company's registered capitalFor a company, the figure is its paid-in capital alone. Capital reserves and retained earnings are not included, and salaries or office costs cannot be added to reach it.
Immigration Services Agency: the 2025 revision
- When
- Before you make an offer
Scout's tip
Immigration confirms the figure from documents such as the company's certificate of registered matters (登記事項証明書).
How Keisho Scout helps
Before we open, leave your email at the end of this page and someone from Keisho will reach out to answer your questions about buying a business in Japan. We don't give immigration advice, so take visa questions to a professional.
Step 7: The employee may already be there
Nothing in the rule says you have to have hired the person yourself, or hired them recently. It asks who they are, not when they arrived.
Immigration Services Agency: guidance on the revision
- When
- While you look at the business
Step 8: The plan has a trading history behind it
What gets checked is whether the plan is specific, reasonable and achievable. Nothing in that excludes a plan built on a business that is already trading.
Immigration Services Agency: guidance on the revision
- When
- When the plan is written
Step 9: You have to actually run it
Contract the work out so that there is no real evidence of you managing anything, and it is treated as not being 経営・管理 activity at all.
Immigration Services Agency: guidance on the revision
- When
- From the day you take over
Watch out
Examples the agency gives: contracting out most of the work so that you are not managing day to day, or not knowing the business's operations and finances the way its manager should.
Step 10: Not ready yet? The startup visaA separate scheme gives you up to two years in Japan, on a designated-activities status, to prepare a business before you hold this visa at all.
Immigration Services Agency: the startup visa scheme
- When
- If you don't meet the bar yet
- Who's involved
- A local government or support body certified by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry.
The exact rule
Under the Foreign Entrepreneur Activity Promotion Project (外国人起業活動促進事業), a local government or private organisation certified by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry examines a startup preparation plan and, if it is appropriate, issues a certificate confirming it. Which version of the 経営・管理 standard you then face depends on when that certificate was issued: before the amending notice took effect, the previous standard applies to your change of status; on or after it, the revised one does.
Source: 出入国在留管理庁 —「経営・管理」の許可基準の改正等について（令和7年10月16日施行） — read on 2026-10-01
Scout's tip
That preparation time counts toward the three years of management experience the new bar asks for. For a buyer with no management history behind them, this is the way in.
Watch out
Where the holder is not carrying out the activity the status was granted for, the status of residence may be revoked.
Get ready to apply
Roughly the order things happen in, starting from outside Japan. Registering the company itself is a separate process at the Legal Affairs Bureau (法務局), and it comes before most of this.
Step 11: Have the plan checked by a professionalYour business plan has to be checked by a qualified Japanese professional, who confirms it is specific, reasonable and achievable.
Immigration Services Agency: the 2025 revision
- When
- Before you apply
- Who's involved
- A 中小企業診断士 (management consultant), 公認会計士 (certified public accountant) or 税理士 (tax accountant).
The exact rule
Three professions qualify as at the date the change took effect: 中小企業診断士 (registered management consultant), 公認会計士 (certified public accountant) and 税理士 (certified tax accountant). Separately, the Agency notes that preparing application documents for reward, by anybody other than a lawyer or an administrative scrivener, risks contravening the Administrative Scriveners Act.
Source: 出入国在留管理庁 —「経営・管理」の許可基準の改正等について（令和7年10月16日施行） — read on 2026-10-01
Scout's tip
The signed-off plan goes in with the application, not after it. That puts engaging the professional near the front of your timeline rather than the end.
Watch out
The professional has to hold the Japanese qualification; a foreign one such as a US CPA does not count. They also cannot be an officer or employee of your own company, though an outside accountant or tax adviser can.
Step 12: Find real premises
The business needs premises suited to the scale of what it actually does.
Immigration Services Agency: guidance on the revision
- When
- Before you apply
Scout's tip
There is no set floor area. What is asked for is space that is necessary and sufficient for the business at the scale it now has to operate.
Watch out
Using your home as the business premises as well is, in principle, not accepted.
Apply
The application itself, who prepares it, and the licences the business needs to trade.
Step 13: Decide who prepares the paperwork
Preparing immigration paperwork for somebody else, as a business and for a fee, is work for a 行政書士 or a lawyer.
Immigration Services Agency: guidance on the revision
- When
- Before the documents are written
- Who's involved
- A 行政書士 (administrative scrivener) or a lawyer, for the filing itself.
Step 14: Apply for the Certificate of EligibilityFrom outside Japan, the route is an application for a Certificate of Eligibility (在留資格認定証明書). Someone already in Japan applies to change their status instead.
Immigration Services Agency: the 経営・管理 status
- When
- Once the company, plan and premises are in place
- Who's involved
- The Immigration Services Agency (出入国在留管理庁), through the bureau covering where the business sits.
The exact rule
Three procedures exist for this status: an application for a Certificate of Eligibility, an application to change status, and an application to renew. The documents asked for differ across four categories, and those categories are set by the size and withholding-tax position of the organisation rather than by the applicant.
Source: 出入国在留管理庁 — 在留資格「経営・管理」 — read on 2026-10-01
Scout's tip
Certificates issued in Japan have to be dated within three months, and documents in another language need a Japanese translation attached.
Watch out
An application with documents missing can be delayed significantly, or decided against you.
Step 15: Licences the business itself needs
If the business needs a licence to operate, you show you have it. Where it genuinely cannot be obtained until you hold the visa, it is asked for at your first renewal.
Immigration Services Agency: guidance on the revision
- When
- With your application
Scout's tip
If a licence can only be obtained once you hold the visa, include a document explaining the specific reason. It can be in any format.
Keep it
Getting it once is not the hard part for most people. Renewal looks at how the business has behaved, including two things that have nothing to do with how well it trades.
Step 16: Renew on timeOne to five years at a time, then you renew. A first grant of one year is common and is not a warning sign.
Immigration Services Agency: the 経営・管理 status
- When
- Before your period of stay ends
The exact rule
The periods of stay available under this status are 5 years, 3 years, 1 year, 6 months, 4 months and 3 months. Which one is granted is decided case by case.
Source: 出入国在留管理庁 — 在留資格「経営・管理」 — read on 2026-10-01
Watch out
Long spells outside Japan without a legitimate reason mean renewal is not granted. As a general guide, being away for more than half of your period of stay in total counts against you.
Step 17: Pay the business's dues
At renewal they check that the business has enrolled its staff in labour and social insurance, paid those premiums, and paid its taxes.
Immigration Services Agency: guidance on the revision
- When
- At every renewal
The exact rule
Labour insurance covers enrolment in employment insurance, payment of its premiums, and the position on industrial accident insurance. Social insurance covers enrolment in health insurance and employees' pension insurance and payment of those premiums. For a company the taxes are withholding income tax and special income tax for reconstruction, corporation tax, consumption tax and local consumption tax, corporate inhabitant tax and enterprise tax.
Source: 出入国在留管理庁 —「経営・管理」の許可基準の改正等について（令和7年10月16日施行） — read on 2026-10-01
Watch out
Renewal also looks at labour law, such as the Labour Standards Act and the minimum wage, and at licences. Problems there have led to refusals even where the business and its taxes were in order.
Step 18: Permanent residence
If you are not meeting the new bar, permanent residence is not granted from this status, nor from the Highly Skilled Professional categories that rest on it.
Immigration Services Agency: guidance on the revision
- When
- If you plan to stay for good
Step 19: If you already hold this visa
You have until 16 October 2028. A renewal before then is not refused purely for failing the new bar; they weigh how the business is doing and whether you are likely to meet it.
Immigration Services Agency: guidance on the revision
- When
- If you hold it today
Watch out
A renewal applied for after 16 October 2028 has to meet the revised standard. Trading well and having paid your corporation tax are weighed in, but the grace period itself has ended.
What this page is not
It is a map, drawn from the government's own pages on one day. It does not know your nationality, your history, or what the business does, and those are what decide the answer.
Nobody at Keisho Scout is an immigration professional and we do not give immigration advice. What we can do is put these questions in front of you at the start of a conversation rather than three months into one.
Not sure buying is your route?
Keisho, the advisory firm behind Keisho Scout, also helps people enter Japan without buying a business. These are Keisho's own services, quoted and agreed with Keisho directly. They are not plans on this site.
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