One important caveat before anything else: this is a draft (案), not a finalized rule.

August 4, 2026. Today the Immigration Services Agency released the draft revision to the Permanent Residency Guidelines — the one we wrote about in July. Back then everything was second-hand: newspaper reports sourced to unnamed officials, with no document anyone outside the agency had actually seen.

Now there is a text to read. That is real progress. But the document is headed “draft,” the revision date is left blank, and the wording can still change before it takes effect. So this is a clearer picture, not the final one. Please read it that way.

What the draft actually says

We can now replace the July rumours with specifics. A few of them fill in exactly the gaps we flagged last time.

Income. Your household’s annual income would need to sit — and stay — above the average for a Japanese household of your size. One practical wrinkle: income earned by a family member on a Dependent (家族滞在) status is not counted toward the household total, because that person only works part-time under a permitted-activity exception. But that same family member still counts toward your household size, which raises the bar you have to clear.

Pension. This is the detail we could only describe loosely in July. The draft sets the standard as the benefit you would receive from 30 years in the Employees’ Pension (厚生年金) at that above-average income level. If your projected benefit falls short, savings and other financial assets can make up the difference — and the savings bar is scaled to your age, so a younger applicant needs less, because they have more years ahead to build assets.

Japanese language. The draft asks for roughly a B1 level of Japanese, measured against the national “Reference Framework for Japanese Language Education.” There are exemptions — highly skilled professionals and their families, people who completed six or more years of Japanese schooling, and certain children of permanent residents born in Japan. We’d add one honest note: the framework is based on the European CEFR, and while B1 is often described as around JLPT N3, the agency has not published a fixed “this level equals this JLPT grade” conversion.

Understanding of Japanese rules, and school-age children. The draft would check your understanding of Japan’s systems and rules against the “Guidebook for Living and Working” (生活・就労ガイドブック), by a method the agency designates. And if you are raising a school-age child, that child would need to be enrolled in a Japanese elementary or junior high school.

How that differs from the rules today

Most of what is new is not a brand-new hurdle so much as a vague standard being turned into a measurable one. Here is the before-and-after, as the draft reads.

Requirement	Now	Under the draft
Income	Part of a broad “stable livelihood” judgment, with no published figure	Household income must stay above the average Japanese household for your household size
Pension	Not assessed as a separate standard	Projected benefit of 30 years in the Employees’ Pension at that income; savings may cover a shortfall
Japanese language	Not a formal factor	Around B1 on the national reference framework, with exemptions
Knowledge of Japanese rules	Not tested	Checked against the “Guidebook for Living and Working”
School-age children	Not specified	Must be enrolled in elementary or junior high school

The long-standing bones of the test are unchanged: 10 years in Japan, including 5 years on a work or residence status, holding the longest period of stay available to you, a clean tax and pension record paid on time, and no serious criminal record.

Timing — and the April question, answered

In principle, the revised guideline would apply to applications filed on or after April 1, 2027. If you apply before then, you are judged under today’s rules.

But two requirements reach back. The income requirement and the “not a public burden” requirement would also apply to applications filed within the six months before the revision date that are still under review on that date.

This is the answer to the worry we raised in July. Back then, Asahi Shimbun alone reported that the income standard might apply to applications from April 2026, and the other papers did not mention it, so we said plainly that it wasn’t clear. The draft now supplies the mechanism: those two requirements can attach to pending applications filed up to six months before the revision date.

The revision date itself is still blank, so the exact window isn’t fixed. But if the revision lands around the autumn timing reported in July, six months earlier falls right around April 2026 — which is exactly what Asahi was pointing at. So the concern was real, and it now has an actual rule behind it. One more housekeeping change: the separate “Contribution to Japan” guideline is folded into this one and abolished.

What is worth doing now

It is a draft, so the honest advice hasn’t changed much from July: don’t rebuild your life around a document that can still move. A few things are worth doing regardless.

Mind the nearer deadline first. The transitional measure that lets a 3-year period of stay count ends on March 31, 2027. That is settled, published policy, not a draft — and for anyone on a 3-year card it is the more urgent clock.

Check your pension and tax record. Paying late still counts against you under the rules as they stand, so a clean run of on-time payments is worth building now, whatever the final guideline says.

If your Japanese is below B1 and you are not in an exempt group, start early. Of everything in the draft, language is the one thing you cannot fix quickly. It is the sensible thing to begin on while the rest is still being finalized.

Our honest read

Having the draft in hand confirms the direction we described last month rather than changing it. The vague standards are becoming specific ones, and the income and pension tests are the substance of that shift.

What still isn’t settled is the part that decides real cases: exactly which “average household” figure will be used, how a couple’s income is counted, what “understanding of Japanese rules” looks like in practice at the counter, and the final revision date that fixes the six-month look-back. Those will come when the agency finalizes the text, and we will write again when they do.

Whether any of this affects you depends on your own record, your status and your timing, which a general article cannot settle. If you would like to talk it through, we take consultations and would be glad to hear from you.

Last updated: August 4, 2026. Based on the draft revision to the Permanent Residency Guidelines released by the Immigration Services Agency, which remains a draft and is not yet in force, and on our July 26, 2026 post.