The 2025 reform changed who can build a business in Japan.

For years, the visa rules for foreign founders were strict but predictable. Set up a Japanese company, put in around [VERIFY: ¥5M paid-in capital, the old Business Manager floor], rent an office, and — with a halfway-credible plan — you'd get your visa. Narrow route, but a well-worn one.

That route's gone.

Two pieces of reform redrew the map in 2025. The first, in January, took the Startup Visa national. Until then this two-year on-ramp was only available through specific municipalities — [VERIFY: Fukuoka, Tokyo's special zones, a handful of others] — each with its own paperwork and quirks. Now it's a national programme: any prefecture can sponsor a founder for a two-year window to get a business going before the standard Business Manager rules kick in.

The second, in October, pushed the Business Manager bar way up. Paid-in capital jumped to [VERIFY: ¥30M], and six new conditions came with it covering business substance, employment, and operational presence. There's a transitional period for current visa-holders, but anyone applying fresh now needs roughly six times the capital they would have a year ago.

The combination matters more than either change on its own. The Startup Visa's actually useful now as a launch pad — you can land, incorporate, sort out an address, hire a first employee, and build the paper trail you'll need before transitioning. But the runway's short and the bar at the end is high. We've seen founders treat the two years as breathing room rather than a structured path to ¥30M, and most of them end up scrambling at month 22.

There are alternatives. The Highly Skilled Professional visa, J-Skip's fast-track for high earners, intra-company transfers, the spouse visa as a backdoor, and running a Japanese branch of a foreign company rather than incorporating locally — each comes with trade-offs, and none of them work for every founder.

What follows is the practical version: what the new rules actually require, how to use the Startup Visa the way it was designed, and what to do when ¥30M isn't the right structure for your business.