Finalized: Japan's New Permanent Residency Guideline Adds Language, Pension, and Civics Tests, Effective April 2027
Based on the Immigration Services Agency's "永住許可に関するガイドライン（令和８年１０月１日改定）" ("Guideline on Permanent Residency Permission, Revised October 1, 2026"), published on the Ministry of Justice website (source)
Japan's Immigration Services Agency has published the finalized version of its revised guideline on who qualifies for "Permanent Resident" status — the actual rulebook behind changes I first flagged in August as still "under consideration," and which Prime Minister Takaichi referenced in her September 27 Facebook post as coming October 1. Now that it's out, I have the real substance: a new pension test, a formal Japanese-language requirement, a civics check, and a school-attendance rule for applicants' children, on top of the existing income standard.
The three legal requirements, unchanged in structure
Article 22, Paragraph 2 of the Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Act still sets out the same three requirements it always has: good conduct (素行善良要件), an independent livelihood (独立生計要件), and that the person's permanent residency serves Japan's national interest (国益要件). What's changed is how much more specific and demanding the guideline now is about what satisfies the second and third of those.
Independent livelihood: the income bar, defined (if not numbered)
The guideline still doesn't give a flat yen figure. Instead, it sets the standard as: the applicant's household annual income must continuously exceed the average annual income of Japanese households of the same size, as of the time of application. Some mechanics worth knowing:
Household income means the applicant's income plus that of everyone sharing the household's finances — for a single applicant, it's just their own income.
Adult household members who are no longer financially dependent on their parents have their income excluded from the calculation of whether the parents meet the standard.
Income earned by a dependent family member residing on a non-work visa (for example, a "Dependent" status holder working under permission for activity outside their status) generally isn't counted toward household income — that income is considered exceptional and limited by nature.
Dependents the applicant supports count toward household size even if they live overseas.
Households of five or more get an upward adjustment to the income threshold to reflect higher living costs.
Independent livelihood: a brand-new pension test
This is new. The guideline now separately considers whether an applicant's projected future pension benefit — based on their age, their enrollment history (self-employed vs. salaried, years enrolled, average income during that time), and their current income — would reach the level someone would receive after 30 years of work at the income threshold described above, enrolled the whole time in employees' pension insurance (厚生年金).
If an applicant's projected pension falls short of that benchmark, they can still qualify by showing they hold enough financial assets to cover the gap. The required asset cushion scales with age: younger applicants, who have more time to build savings before retirement, face a lower asset bar than applicants closer to pension age. Like the income test, this is generally assessed on a household basis — a spouse's projected pension is added to the applicant's, measured against a combined benchmark.
National interest: a longer list of considerations
The national-interest requirement was always broad and discretionary, but the guideline now spells out specific factors the agency weighs, several of which are new or newly formalized:
Compliance with legal duties. Standard obligations like notification requirements and carrying/presenting a residence card. Both current violations and past violations count against an applicant.
Payment of taxes and public charges. Income tax, resident tax, corporate tax, fixed-asset tax, health insurance premiums, and pension premiums all need to be properly paid — current non-payment or even a past history of delinquency (such as having been subject to collection procedures) counts against the applicant. This is assessed on a household basis.
Criminal history. Past imprisonment, fines, or certain juvenile protective dispositions generally count against an applicant.
Landing eligibility. Applicants must not fall under the law's landing-refusal grounds, and must currently meet the landing permission criteria for whatever status they hold.
Long-term residence as a member of Japanese society. Generally 10 or more continuous years of residence in Japan, of which at least 5 years must be under a work-eligible or residence-eligible status, and the applicant generally needs to currently hold the longest available period of stay for their status. Extended absences count against this: a single trip abroad of 6 months or more, or cumulative absences of 2 years 6 months or more within the past 10 years, generally count negatively absent a reasonable justification.
Not becoming a public burden. Economic self-sufficiency factors into the national-interest evaluation as well, with different treatment depending on whether the applicant is exempt from the independent-livelihood requirement (as spouses/children of Japanese nationals or permanent residents are).
Japanese language ability — new. Applicants now generally need Japanese proficiency at B1 level or above, measured against the "Japanese Language Education Reference Framework" (a October 2021 report from the Agency for Cultural Affairs' Japanese Language Subdivision). There are carve-outs: this doesn't apply to "highly skilled foreign professionals" and their families, applicants who received 6+ cumulative years of elementary or secondary education in Japan, or children of permanent residents born in Japan whose parent already has B1-level ability.
Understanding of Japan's systems and rules — new. Applicants' understanding will be checked through a method the Immigration Services Agency Commissioner designates, built around the content of the "Guidebook for Daily Life and Work" (生活・就労ガイドブック).
School attendance for school-age children — new. If the applicant is a parent of a child of compulsory-education age, that child must be attending elementary or junior high school; if the applicant themselves is of that age, the same applies to them.
Other contributing factors. The guideline also folds in Japan's January 23, 2026 "Comprehensive Response Package for the Acceptance of Foreign Nationals and Orderly Coexistence," treating an applicant's contribution to that package's goals (such as uptake of the specified residence card system, or participation in Japanese-language and civics learning programs) as a positive factor.
The fast-track exceptions haven't gone away
The guideline preserves its list of exceptions to the standard 10-year residency requirement, including: spouses of Japanese nationals, permanent residents, or special permanent residents (5+ years of substantive marriage and 3+ continuous years of residence); "Long-Term Resident" status holders with 5+ years of residence; recognized refugees with 5+ years post-recognition; and "highly skilled foreign professionals" who've maintained 70+ points for 3 years or 80+ points for just 1 year under the points system. A separate track exists for people the agency recognizes as having contributed to Japan — think national honors, Nobel or Fields Prize winners, long-serving executives at Tokyo Stock Exchange Prime-listed companies, or Olympic medalists who've gone on to coach or develop their sport in Japan — who qualify under the 10-year exception after 5 years of residence and get the contribution weighed positively in their overall national-interest evaluation.
When this actually applies
The revised guideline applies to applications filed on or after April 1, 2027. There's one important carve-out: the new income standard and the "not a public burden" factor also reach back to cover applications filed from six months before the revision date (effectively, from around April 2026) that are still pending as of the October 1, 2026 revision date. The agency's prior, separate guideline on "contributions to Japan" is abolished and folded into this one.
How this connects to what I've covered
This is the follow-through on two things I've written about already: my August post on the proposed income and language changes (now confirmed, with the pension test added as a new element that wasn't yet public then), and PM Takaichi's September 27 Facebook post, where she previewed this exact October 1 revision. It's also the companion piece to the revocation guideline I covered last month — that one governs when permanent residency can be taken away from someone who already holds it; this one governs the bar for getting it in the first place. Between the two, Japan now has a considerably more detailed, and considerably higher, standard at both ends of permanent residency.
Source: Immigration Services Agency, Ministry of Justice, "永住許可に関するガイドライン（令和８年１０月１日改定）" (moj.go.jp).
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