A survey of foreign business owners in Japan published at the end of April found substantial numbers unable to meet the Business Manager visa criteria that took effect in October 2025.
What changed last October
The Business Manager status — keiei kanri — previously required ¥5 million in capital or two full-time employees resident in Japan. That figure had been unchanged for decades and, by the 2020s, was low enough that a small consultancy or a single restaurant could clear it.
The October revision raised the capital requirement to ¥30 million and added requirements around staffing, the applicant's own background, and the substance of the business plan. A sixfold increase is not a tightening at the margin; it changes which businesses qualify at all.
Why renewal is where it bites
A new applicant knows the rules before committing. Someone who set up a business in 2022 under the old criteria did not, and meets the new ones at renewal or not at all.
That is the group the survey found under pressure: established owners running functioning businesses, employing people, paying tax, who cannot produce ¥30 million in capital on demand. Recapitalising a small company at that scale is not a paperwork exercise.
The practical options are narrow. Raise the capital, restructure so the business qualifies on the staffing route, change to a different status of residence if one fits, or leave.
The wider pattern
The survey sits alongside other reporting through the spring on foreign entrepreneurs winding up operations in Japan, and it belongs to a pattern visible across this year's changes: measures aimed at applicants who have not yet come, landing on residents who are already here.
The Business Manager change is the sharpest example because the threshold is a single number and the number moved so far.
If you hold this status
Work backwards from your renewal date. The assessment happens then, not now, and there is more you can do about it eighteen months out than three months out.
Get advice specific to your company before assuming you fail. The capital requirement is one route to qualification, not the only one, and how capital is counted is more technical than the headline number suggests.
Our Business Manager visa page sets out the current criteria, and the extension and renewal page covers what a renewal application has to show.
Sources: The Japan Times, Immigration Services Agency