The Immigration Services Agency published its annual statistics in late March. The headline figure: 4,125,395 foreign residents in Japan at the end of 2025, up 356,418 on the year before — a rise of 9.5% and the first time the total has passed four million.
Who is here
By nationality, the order is unchanged and the gaps are widening. China leads with 930,428, followed by Vietnam at 681,100, South Korea at 407,341, the Philippines at 356,579 and Nepal at 300,992.
Nepal is the number worth watching. It has moved up the table faster than any other nationality over the past few years, driven mainly by students and by the Specified Skilled Worker programme.
What they hold
The breakdown by status of residence is more revealing than the nationality table.
Permanent Resident remains the largest single status at 947,125. Engineer/Specialist in Humanities/International Services follows at 475,790, then Student at 464,784, Technical Intern Training at 456,618, and Specified Skilled Worker at 390,296 — a record for that programme.
Two things follow from those numbers. The first is that Specified Skilled Worker is closing on Technical Intern Training, which is what the transition to the Employment for Skill Development programme in April 2027 is designed to complete. The second is that Engineer/Specialist in Humanities is now the largest work status by a wide margin, which explains why it has attracted the screening changes announced this spring.
The rest of the release
The same publication date carried the figures on people staying without status, statuses of residence revoked during the year, landing refusals, refugee recognitions and immigration law violations. Those are the numbers that get quoted in enforcement debates, and they are published together deliberately.
What it means for applicants
Statistics do not change criteria. Nothing in this release alters what any application has to show.
What it does affect is context. A resident population growing at 9.5% a year is the backdrop to every tightening measure announced this year — the permanent residence guideline revision, the naturalisation change, the fee increases. Read the policy news against this number and the direction makes more sense.
One practical note: growth of this size also means volume at immigration offices. Our processing times page covers what to expect and how to plan a renewal around it.
Source: Immigration Services Agency