Permanent residence

For the spouse of a Japanese national the guideline asks for a substantive marriage of three years or more together with at least one year of continuous residence in Japan -- in place of the ten years the general rule requires. Three years of marriage is the binding one for a couple who married in Japan and stayed.

Income and tax records for several years, pension and health-insurance payment records, the family register, evidence that the marriage has been lived rather than merely registered, and a guarantor. Substantially more than any application before it.

At the immigration bureau with jurisdiction over the address. The fee is not paid now -- ten thousand yen falls due only if permission is granted.

The published standard period is four to six months. The measured average was 289.1 days in June 2026 and 292.1 in May -- around nine and a half months, and the largest gap between published and measured of any procedure here.

Nine months is long enough for a period of stay to expire inside it. A pending permanent-residence application does not extend anything: the renewal still has to be filed, in its own window, on its own evidence.

Granted, the fee is paid in revenue stamps and a new residence card is issued with no period of stay. Refused, the existing status continues unchanged and nothing is lost but the time and the preparation. The status does not expire. The card does, on the date printed on it, and it has to be renewed between three months before that date and the date itself. There is no fee for that renewal, and no period of stay is at stake -- but a permanent resident who reads "no period of stay" and files nothing still ends up holding an expired card.

The spouse route asks for a substantive marriage of three years or more and at least one year of continuous residence in Japan. Couples who married abroad and came to Japan later reach the three years first and wait on the residence; couples who married in Japan usually start both clocks together, and the marriage is the longer wait. Neither is the ten-year general rule. And "substantive" is doing work in that sentence: it is married life that must have continued for three years, not a certificate that is three years old.

The guideline requires the applicant to hold the longest period of stay available for their status. For 日本人の配偶者等 (spouse or child of a japanese national) that is five years. A note to the guideline treats a three-year period as satisfying it -- but only until 31 March 2027, with a transitional carve-out for those holding three years on that date. A spouse still on the one-year period granted at the start does not satisfy it on any reading, however long the marriage has run.

Permanent residence normally asks for good conduct and for independent means -- assets or skills enough to make a living. The guideline disapplies both for the spouse or child of a Japanese national, a permanent resident or a special permanent resident. What remains is the third: that public obligations have been met. Couples who assume they must reach an income threshold defer applying for years against a test that does not bind them.

The widest gap in absolute days of any procedure here -- roughly nine and a half months against a published six at the outside. The figure has been stable across the months checked, so it is not a one-month anomaly.

Nine months of examination will often straddle the expiry of the current period of stay. A pending permanent-residence application extends nothing and excuses nothing. Missing the renewal while waiting for permanent residence is losing the status you have while asking for a better one.

Unlike a change or a renewal, nothing depends on this application being granted. The existing status continues on its own terms; the fee is only payable on a grant; and the reasons given are usable when applying again.