Japan Permanent Residency and Your Pension: What "30 Years of Kosei Nenkin" Really Means (from April 2027)

"So if I haven't been in the employees' pension for 30 years, I can forget about permanent residency?" Since Japan revised its permanent residency guidelines in October 2026, it is a question we hear more and more often in consultations.

The short answer is no. The new guidelines do not count how many years you have been enrolled in Kosei Nenkin (the employees' pension). They look at your projected future pension, estimated from your record so far and what you earn now. The "30 years" is a yardstick for measuring that projection, not a minimum you have to clear.

Below we walk through what Section 2-4(3) of the guidelines actually says, show you how to check where you stand on Nenkin Net (the Japan Pension Service's online portal), and go over the gaps that most often turn up in foreign residents' pension records. The pension criterion applies only to applications filed on or after April 1, 2027, so this is also a guide to timing.

When the pension review starts

Under Section 6 of the guidelines and the Immigration Services Agency's notice on their application, most of the revisions apply to applications filed on or after April 1, 2027. Only two items took effect early: income (Section 2-4(2)) and not being a public burden (Section 2-5(7)). The pension criterion (Section 2-4(3)) is not one of them.

Don't confuse two separate things here: the new projected-pension test, and whether you have paid your pension contributions properly. The second has always been part of the review, and applicants still submit records showing their payments for the most recent two years. Filing before April 2027 does not make your pension irrelevant. For the full timeline, see our explainer on the 2026 guideline revision.

What exactly is being compared

Section 2-4(3) asks whether the applicant's "projected benefit" reaches the "benchmark benefit level." The two terms sound alike but measure very different things.

In other words, 30 years is the length of the ruler, not a pass mark. A few points worth keeping in mind:

• Fewer than 30 years in Kosei Nenkin does not automatically mean you fall short. The earnings-related part of the employees' pension grows in proportion to your average pay and the number of months enrolled, so someone who has earned well above average can get close with fewer years. That said, the pay used in the calculation (the standard remuneration) is capped, so a higher salary can only make up so much.
• Conversely, years spent only on the National Pension (Kokumin Nenkin) do little for the projection, however many there are, because the National Pension pays only the basic pension.
• The guidelines don't say what retirement age the estimate assumes, or which statistics set the income standard.
• In its response to public comments, the Immigration Services Agency indicated it does not plan to publish the actual figures for the income standard, the benchmark benefit level or the required supplementary assets. Any "you're fine if your pension is ¥X a month" figure you see online is a guess.

Supplementary assets: covering the gap with savings

If your projection falls short, you are treated as meeting the benchmark when you hold enough financial assets at the time of application to make up the shortfall in living costs. The amount required depends on your age when you apply and is lower for younger applicants, on the reasoning that they still have years to build savings.

The guidelines do not spell out what counts as a financial asset (bank deposits, certainly, but whether stocks, investment funds or defined-contribution pensions are included is not stated). For now, the practical step is to have your bank and brokerage balances documented with clear dates.

Married couples: your spouse's record matters too

Pensions are generally assessed per household. If you are married, your projection and your spouse's are added together. That combined figure is compared with the benchmark plus the pension your spouse would receive had they been a Category 3 insured person (a dependent spouse) for the same period.

Read closely, this has practical consequences. If your spouse has been a Category 3 dependent on your employer's scheme, the yardstick grows by the same amount as your projection, so the gap barely changes. If your spouse works and pays into Kosei Nenkin, that lifts the household figure. But if your spouse was in Category 1 and has unpaid months, the yardstick grows while the projection does not, and the gap widens. Check your spouse's record along with your own.

Checking where you stand on Nenkin Net

Nobody outside the immigration bureau knows exactly how it calculates the projection. But Nenkin Net, run by the Japan Pension Service, shows quite precisely where the holes in your record are and roughly what you would receive if you carried on as you are. It is the first thing we ask clients to look at before they come in.

1. Register. If you have a My Number Card, the quickest route is to link Nenkin Net from the "Pension" (年金) section of Mynaportal. Without the card, you apply for a Nenkin Net user ID. With the access key printed on your Nenkin Teikibin (the annual pension statement) you can finish on the spot; without it, a postcard with your user ID arrives in about five business days.
2. Open your monthly record (各月の年金記録). It lists every month you lived in Japan from age 20. Look for blank months, months marked 未納 (unpaid), and months under 学生納付特例 (student deferral) or 納付猶予 (payment deferral). A one- or two-month gap between jobs is the most common thing people miss.
3. Run the projection (将来の年金額を試算する). The quick estimate (かんたん試算) assumes your current enrollment continues until age 60. The detailed estimate (詳細な条件で試算) lets you enter your future coverage, expected income, how long you plan to work and the effect of back payments.
4. Save the results. Keep the projection and your monthly record as PDFs or screenshots. Bringing them to a consultation saves a great deal of time.

You can also check your record on the Nenkin Teikibin that arrives by post each year. For people under 50, though, the amount shown reflects only what you have paid in so far, so the number looks small, especially when you are young. That is not a cause for alarm. Use the Nenkin Net projection to see where you are heading.

Nenkin Net is a self-check tool, and there is no guarantee immigration runs the same numbers. For spotting the holes in your record, however, nothing beats it.

Five situations that trip up foreign residents

When we go through clients' pension records, whatever is pulling the projection down almost always falls into one of the following.

1. You took a lump-sum withdrawal payment when you left Japan

Claiming the lump-sum withdrawal payment (dattai ichijikin) wipes out every month of Japanese pension coverage before the claim. If you came as a technical intern, student or working holidaymaker, went home, claimed the payment and later returned on a different visa, that first stretch no longer exists in your record.

There is no way to pay the money back and restore those years. What you can do is build up coverage from here and put supplementary assets in place. If permanent residency is in your plans, do not claim the payment when you leave Japan on the assumption that you will be back.

2. You never paid back your student deferral

Months covered by the student deferral (学生納付特例) count toward the 10 years needed to qualify for a pension, but they add nothing to the amount of your basic pension. People who graduated from a Japanese university or vocational school and then started work often have two to four years of these months on their record.

You can pay these premiums back within 10 years. From the third fiscal year after the year the deferral was approved, a surcharge is added to the original premium. For recent graduates, back payment is one of the few sure ways to raise the projection. Nenkin Net or your local pension office can tell you how many months you can still pay and how much it will cost.

Months when you neither applied for the student deferral nor paid are simply unpaid. Premiums can no longer be paid once two years have passed since the due date, and they cannot be paid back later either.

3. Long periods on the National Pension only (business owners, the self-employed, gaps between jobs)

Time spent as a Category 1 member of the National Pension produces only the basic pension. Without the earnings-related part of Kosei Nenkin, the same number of years yields a smaller projection than an employee would get.

If you run a company on a Business Manager visa, as the representative of a corporation you are in principle covered by Kosei Nenkin yourself. Check whether there was a gap between incorporating and enrolling in social insurance, and whether you have kept your director's pay unusually low. Pay levels also affect your taxes, so make changes with a tax accountant or a labor and social security attorney. We cover permanent residency planning for business owners in From a Business Manager visa to permanent residency.

4. You started working in Japan later in life

If you arrived or started working in your thirties or later, Kosei Nenkin coverage is hard to push to 30 years even if you keep working the same way. Here is how the years add up depending on when you start:

This is plain subtraction; immigration has not said what age its estimate runs to. The point of the table is that income can only make up so much for missing years, and the later you arrived, the more weight supplementary assets carry. The guidelines set the asset requirement by age, rising as you approach pension age, which reads as if it was designed with exactly this group in mind.

5. Pension contributions in your home country

Japan has social security agreements with a number of countries. Some, including those with the United States, Germany and Canada, let you combine coverage periods. Others, such as the agreements with the United Kingdom and China, only prevent you from paying into both systems at once and contain no provision for combining periods.

Even where periods can be combined, they are used only to decide whether you qualify for a pension. The amount Japan pays still depends solely on your coverage in Japan. Part of the time a permanent resident lived abroad can also count as a "counted period" (合算対象期間), but again only for eligibility, not for the amount. The guidelines say nothing about how a foreign pension is treated in the permanent residency review.

Should you file before the end of March 2027?

Whether it is worth filing early to avoid the pension criterion depends on whether everything else is already in place. This is how we see it:

Even if the review drags on past April 2027, the rules that apply are fixed by your filing date. On the other hand, permanent residency applications accepted from October 1, 2026 carry a government fee of, in principle, ¥200,000 on approval. A refusal costs you both time and money, so we do not recommend filing just to beat the deadline. On the income standard, see our cases of single applicants refused at ¥4.8 million; if your period of stay is 3 years, see 3-year visas and the 2027 transition.

What to do now

• Register on Nenkin Net and list every blank, unpaid or deferred month in your monthly record
• If you have student deferral or exemption months, ask your pension office how many you can pay back and what it will cost
• Check your spouse's record the same way
• Business owners: review with a professional when you joined social insurance and what you pay yourself
• Get your bank and brokerage balances documented with clear dates
• If you plan to leave Japan for a while, think through the effect on permanent residency before claiming a lump-sum withdrawal
• Check the conditions other than pension first (household income, any late payments, period of stay), then decide when to file

Frequently Asked Questions

Read your record, and the right time to apply becomes clear

Unlike income, your pension record can't be fixed overnight once someone tells you it falls short. On the other hand, the sooner you spot a problem, the more options you have, from back payments to changing how you work to organizing your assets. We review your Nenkin Net record and tax certificates and tell you plainly whether to file now or what to put in place for an application after April 2027. We work directly in English, Japanese and Chinese. See our permanent residency support, then reach us through our contact page.

Official sources checked on November 4, 2026. Our reading of the guidelines and the tables above are our office's own interpretation and summary for explanation; they do not represent immigration's calculation method or benchmark amounts, and they do not guarantee the outcome of any application.