My understanding:
Before: Need $50k in bank, register business, sponsor yourself for a visa
Result - lots of people just abusing the system for a visa
After: Need $300k, must hire at least one local, must show a profit of $200k within 2 years. Must be reviewed by the government multiple times a year to show your business is serious
I can see some issues. If you want to start a company that requires a year or more of R&D before you can ship you're S.O.L.
The problem I see with the new rules are it just stops entrepreneurs and rewards rich money launders. The visa applications should considered based on merit and not just about capital.
If it has merit then you should have no trouble getting some investors lined up...
Why should Japan allow $30k? Doesn't make sense.
I had a friend who was looking to move to Japan and abuse this visa. The business was only there to get the visa with no intention of operating it.
I'm not Japanese and I don't live in Japan but even I think this new law makes more sense than previous.
Or is folks from poorer and more distressed countries looking to come to Japan.
It has recently been changed so that you now require 10 years of residency.
Lots of Chinese academics, engineers, investment bankers, and others shifted to Tokyo in the past few years. Even the kinds of salons and meetups you used to see at Tsinghua or Peking have almost entirely transplanted in Jimbocho based on my friends account.
If you’ve got ten years (or until recently, five) of residence and can pass the interview process, the acceptance rate for Japanese citizenship is something like 95%+.
On the other hand the process of getting American citizenship can run up to twenty years or more, it’s very expensive, and throughout the process the immigrant has few rights and can be deported for basically no reason, up to the moments before the naturalization ceremony.
If I were a freshman at Fudan thinking about my exit strategy, I know which one I would pick.
And so many of them immediately moved on to the US.
Helping launder this dirty Chinese money is a huge business here in BC (Canada) and across the world.
Western governments also look the other way since these people are defrauding China (our rival) and bringing money to the west.
Rich money launderers who will enter at higher price point and plan to run shell businesses.
So this invalidates what ? I know many foreign people Who moved to Japan, work harder than many Japanese I know and run great businesses but it was only possible due to the low initial outlay for the visa.
If your friend came here he still had to pay taxes, present income statements and pay pension , if he didn’t his visa would be revoked. The new rule is to appease the xenophobes at voting time. It’s as simple as that. What will happen ? Rich people who will actually come here an abuse the system will be the ones they get to stay… this is country with a rapidly depreciating population and currency valuation remember…
A smarter solution is to evaluate the visa application. based on the intentions of the person wanting to start she business. Not locking out large swathes of people.
So why doesn’t the US do it? Why doesn’t every country give you a visa for $30k business investment?
Japanese people are saying they no longer want mass low quality immigrants. They want fewer, higher quality ones. Nothing wrong with that. All their recent immigration policies point to toward this theme. It’s their country. Let them do what they want without calling them xenophobes.
What is a "low quality immigrant" and why do you think immigrants with money are "high quality immigrants? Because the most damage I've seen done to Japan and the culture is rich people from Singapore, China and Taiwan buying up large swathes of property and then keeping them vacant while driving up property prices and locking out locals. The high price of a business visa will ensure this trend accelerates as more and more actual well intentioned foreigners are locked out of opportunities. Basically if you're a hedge fund, you have the ability to setup shell companies and rape the place.
Anyway, there is still mass migration happening, and it will continue to happen as the population ages they need more workers, it's everywhere now, airports, combinis etc, that has nothing to do with the "business visa". Most actual poor people were never planning to come here to start a business anyway, they were coming here to do slightly less shitty jobs than they were doing in their home countries.
I’m talking hospitality, bar owners , cafe, therapists, even people who have setup manufacturing businesses building anything from prefabbed affordable housing and to handmade skis. These are business that need a lot of materiel and help the economy keep moving here. Many of these businesses exist because it was cheap to get started. Young people who came here for various reasons , had visions and executed. Many being the kind of people that make the world a better place.
Would you prefer Japan just imports south East Asian slaves and boots them at will, stifles any competition and just falls apart ?
I honestly found your comment really short sighted / uninformed.
So what if their population is in decline? It'll just pick back up when there is plenty of space. Just because their population is in decline now doesn't mean they should import from other countries who most certainly do not share the local culture an is a disruption to their way of life.
Once again, I'm not Japanese and do not live there. What happens in Japan doesn't affect me. As a neutral bystander, the new rules make far more sense for Japan even if it hurts a few good honest foreigners.
The good news is that once America becomes more liberal again, Japan will do, it's just a global outrage against "foreigners" going on right now which the herd follows.
So given the insane number of abandoned houses, villages and towns, how do you explain the continued decline is there is "plenty of space"?
https://www.bakermckenzie.com/en/insight/publications/2026/0...
The result seems to be that a lot of smaller restaurants and other foreign-owned businesses can’t really function and will close.