Narrowing of Requirements for the “Engineer/Specialist in Humanities/International Services” (Gijinkoku) Visa

As of April 15, 2026, the requirements for the Engineer/Specialist in Humanities/International Services Status — commonly known as “Gijinkoku” — have been narrowed. For details, please refer to this page. In a nutshell, the intent behind this change seems to be: “We created the Specified Skilled Worker visa for a reason — if the work is unskilled or semi-skilled, use this status, not Gijinkoku.” The reality, however, is far more complicated. That’s what I want to write about here.

The Gijinkoku Narrowing Is Meant to Push Foreign Workers Toward Specified Skilled Worker Status

The policy direction from the Ministry of Justice and the Immigration Services Agency can be summed up simply: Gijinkoku is for professionals with specialized skills equivalent to or exceeding those of Japanese workers. Frontline operational work belongs under the Specified Skilled Worker Status. So the government is narrowing Gijinkoku requirements and steering employers toward Specified Skilled Worker status for roles that don’t meet the bar.

Workers Simply Don’t Want to Make the Switch

For foreign nationals who entered Japan on a Gijinkoku visa and have been working under that status, Specified Skilled Worker feels like a demotion. The differences in maximum stay periods and the prohibition on bringing family members are significant factors, but the psychological resistance runs even deeper. One of my clients told workers they would need to transition to Specified Skilled Worker status — and the entire group quit on the spot.

Is Specified Skilled Worker Really “Unskilled”?

Take the Hotel industry, which I work with closely. A Specified Skilled Worker in the accommodation sector is expected to handle front desk operations, housekeeping, restaurant service, and sometimes even reservations management. For smaller properties, foreign staff often have to keep the whole facility running across multiple roles simultaneously. And the reason they’re hired isn’t that they’re cheaper — it’s that the guests are foreign tourists who need multilingual service. How is that unskilled? By any reasonable standard, this is specialist work — the kind Gijinkoku was designed for. There is a serious disconnect between the classification and the reality on the ground.

The Difficulty of Obtaining the status — and the Problem of Hitting Caps

To obtain a Specified Skilled Worker (Type 1) status, applicants must pass both a Japanese language test and a sector-specific skills evaluation exam — unless they are former Technical Intern Trainees. For foreign nationals looking to come to Japan from abroad, Gijinkoku has always been the far lower hurdle. A university graduate with a relevant major can apply without taking any exams, and a short work history is generally acceptable (though the recent changes now require proof of Japanese language ability for roles involving direct communication with others — something that was not previously required).

But the bigger problem, in my view, is the cap system. Specified Skilled Worker is premised on the idea of “temporarily filling roles that Japanese workers cannot fill” — and once the quota for a given sector is reached, new applications are simply rejected. In fact, the food service sector hit its cap recently and was shut down. The food and beverage industry cannot survive without foreign workers, and I was genuinely surprised that the government would actually enforce the cap. There are concerns that automotive maintenance and hospitality may approach their limits before long. Companies that were pushed from Gijinkoku toward Specified Skilled Worker — only to find that sector closed — are left with nowhere to turn. Specified Skilled Worker Type 2 exists as an option, but it requires going through Type 1 or Technical Intern Training first, so it’s not an immediate solution.

What’s Happening in Practice

I can only speak to the clients my office works with directly, but here is what I’m seeing.

In hotels and ryokan, most foreign staff have been working on Gijinkoku visas, handling front desk operations, guest-facing services for inbound tourists, marketing to overseas visitors, and general hotel maintenance and restaurant duties on top of that. Going forward, every one of these roles will face the question: is this genuinely specialized work under Gijinkoku, or is it basic customer service or food and beverage work? Employers may need to conduct a thorough audit of job duties and prepare documentation that objectively demonstrates the proportion of specialized work involved.

In the used goods export business — particularly used cars and electronics — Japan’s reputation for quality and careful handling drives strong overseas demand for secondhand Japanese products. But businesses that refurbish, disassemble, or recondition used goods for export are in a difficult position. Automotive work technically falls under Specified Skilled Worker (Automotive Maintenance), and there is pressure to redirect workers there. Yet in practice, the same person doing the hands-on maintenance is also handling negotiations with overseas buyers, customer support, sales, and documentation. Treating that as Specified Skilled Worker territory doesn’t make sense.

It’s worth noting that the three categories of the current Gijinkoku visa — Engineering, Humanities, and International Services — were originally separate visas that were consolidated precisely because roles like IT work in an HR department didn’t fit neatly into either bucket. The same logic applies here. Drawing a clean line between Specified Skilled Worker and Gijinkoku across complex, multi-function roles is genuinely difficult, and I would like to see the framework itself revisited.

Where the System Fails Entirely

This issue is somewhat separate from the Specified Skilled Worker vs. Gijinkoku debate, but I want to put it on the record — including because I personally raised a complaint with the immigration bureau about it.

Clean energy installation and maintenance projects often bring in foreign technicians who have specific certifications, hands-on training, and language skills that allow them to function within international project teams. Japanese workers often can’t fill these roles due to language barriers. These are rare, highly specialized professionals.

And yet, Gijinkoku requires either a university degree with a relevant major, or — for those with vocational school or high school backgrounds — more than ten years of work experience. In practice, most of these technicians are high school or special skill school graduates with fewer than ten years of experience. They don’t meet the requirements. As a result, they enter Japan on short-stay (only fit for sight-seeing or business meeting) and work on one- or two-month projects — or the paperwork is written to make them look like desk-based engineers or project managers so that a Gijinkoku status can be obtained.

With the planned introduction of JESTA (Japan’s version of ESTA, requiring pre-entry declaration of purpose), entering as a tourist and then working will constitute a false declaration. But if these technicians can’t enter Japan legitimately, what happens to the projects? The government is actively promoting green energy as national policy, while the very technicians needed to build that infrastructure cannot obtain a proper work visa. That is simply incoherent.

In Sum

On a personal note, Japan is a country that expects a remarkably high level of service — the kind of meticulous hospitality that few other countries demand — yet does not necessarily offer wages to match. Foreign workers who choose to come here despite that deserve far better than to be shuffled around by a system that can’t quite figure out what to do with them.

For the employer side, this is the time for companies employing foreign workers on Gijinkoku status to take a fresh look at whether their employees’ roles and residence statuses are properly aligned. Is Gijinkoku still the right fit? Would a transition to Specified Skilled Worker status be required? Our office is available to consult on these questions. Please reach out via the contact form or by phone.