The latest news about Japan’s immigration: entry will be fully open in October 2022

I believe everyone should know about Japan’s entry policy. After all, during this period, Japan has indeed liberalized its policies step by step in order to deepen tourism development. Just today, Japan is finally making a big move and will fully open entry to the country in October! Please see below for details.

Prime Minister Kishida plans to lift the ban on individual travel visas in October. Currently, only group tours and individual travel are limited to invitations from Japanese travel agencies. In addition, the current number of people allowed to enter the country every day is 50,000, and this restriction will also be lifted in October. Affected by the epidemic, Japan has reopened visa-free countries that had previously been canceled. Developed countries such as Europe and the United States can go to Japan directly without applying for a visa.

We checked with the relevant departments of the Japanese Embassy in China regarding travel entry. Group tours will be open on June 10th, and independent travel visas will be open on September 7th, but they are limited to Japanese travel agencies. The responsible party must go to the government to apply for a financial aid certificate, which is the same as the entry of international students. The Japanese side is required to provide guarantee and issue visa materials.

Kishida will visit the United States next week. He has stated a few days ago that among the G7 countries, only Japan is still restricting the number of people entering the country. The immigration policy will be eased in the near future to align with the G7 countries. Moreover, Japan, a country founded on tourism, has had no tourists for three years. The group visas it has opened are simply not enough. Coupled with the depreciation of the yen and rising domestic prices, Japan urgently needs the consumption of overseas tourists to boost its economy. Once such a policy came out, Japan basically returned to its pre-epidemic entry policy and completely opened its doors.

Judging from the data in this table, it is indeed a downward trend. However, since the end of September, Japan has changed its statistical method from all to counting only some severe cases, so this table should not need to be updated starting next month. Even if it is updated, the numbers will definitely be very beautiful and meaningless.