Japanese Version

Immigration Law of Japan takes a so-called “positive list” principle. The list of status of residence acts as the positive list. In other words, the following is the first criteria to make judgement over an immigration application:

  • When an applicant matches with one of the defined statuses of residence, it will move on to the next steps in application review process.
  • Otherwise, i.e. when an applicant does not match with any of the defined statuses of residence, it will not be permitted and not move on to the next steps.

This first gate of immigration review process is often called as “matching with a residential status defined in law”.

Source: MOJ Immigration Services Agency
English Translation by Anshin Immigration & Social Security

This is the latest as of Dec 2019. Please visit MOJ site also for any recent updates: unfortunately however the linked page in MOS site shows very old information dated back to 2016 (as of July 2019).

Please see more details of the status in this PDF file, which covers definitions and periods of stay as in Immigration Law.