The Startup Visa, and Why It Matters More After 2025

The startup visa was always useful. After October 2025 it became, for a lot of people, the only realistic way in.

Here is the logic. The Business Manager status now demands thirty million yen in capital, a qualifying employee, relevant senior experience or a related postgraduate degree, and a business plan confirmed by a professional. You cannot satisfy most of that from abroad, before you have a company, a bank account, or a single customer in Japan. It is a chicken-and-egg problem: you need the business running to get the status, and you need the status to be here running the business.

The startup visa is the tool that breaks that loop.

What it is

Strictly, it is not a separate status of residence. It is a scheme, backed by METI and run through local governments, that gets you a period of Business Manager status for the purpose of preparing to start a business, before you have to meet the full criteria.

You apply through a participating municipality or prefecture rather than directly to immigration. The local government evaluates your business plan and, if it approves, supports your application for a preparation period. Historically this was six months. It has been extended, and in a number of areas you can now get considerably longer, which changes the calculation a lot. Check what the specific locality currently offers, because this is exactly the kind of detail that varies by place and by year.

How it actually works

1. Pick your municipality. This matters more than people expect. Tokyo, Fukuoka, Osaka, Kobe, Niigata and a growing list of others participate, and they do not all want the same things or evaluate on the same criteria. Fukuoka in particular has spent years deliberately courting foreign founders.
2. Write a Business Startup Preparation Activity Plan. This goes to the local government or to a certified support organisation, not to immigration.
3. Get it approved. The locality issues confirmation.
4. Apply for the status with that confirmation supporting it.
5. Come to Japan and actually build the thing. Incorporate, open the bank account, find the office, hire, and raise the capital.
6. Convert to full Business Manager before the preparation period ends, meeting the real requirements by then.

The honest risk

Step 6 is the whole game, and it is harder than it was.

Under the old rules, converting meant reaching five million yen of capital and having an office. That was achievable inside six months for a determined person with savings. Under the new rules you need thirty million yen and a qualifying employee. That is a fundamentally different target, and the preparation period is not long enough to get there by trading your way up. You will almost certainly need to bring the capital, or raise it.

So be honest with yourself before you start: do you have a realistic path to thirty million yen in the business within the preparation window? If the answer is no, the startup visa is not a solution, it is a delay with a plane ticket attached. It is much better to know that at the beginning.

Who it genuinely suits

Founders with capital who need time on the ground to deploy it properly. People raising from investors who need to be resident to close. Anyone whose business genuinely requires local presence to validate before committing serious money, which is most businesses, honestly.

It also suits people who want to test their own resolve. Living in Japan and building here is not the same experience as visiting, and finding out during a preparation period is cheaper than finding out after you have moved thirty million yen across a border.

A note on where you land

The municipality you choose is not just an administrative formality. You will be building your company there, and the local startup ecosystems are genuinely different in character, cost and how much English-speaking support exists around them. Tokyo has the density and the customers. Fukuoka has the deliberate policy and a lower cost base. Choose for the business, not for the visa paperwork.