Flow of easing to acquire the immigration status (visa) in Japan

The conventional flow of the procedure for incorporating a company in Japan and applying for a business management visa （or an investment management visa）

Up until now, it used to generally be necessary for any alien to start a business in Japan to incorporate either a joint stock company or a limited liability company. And on such occasion, the alien is to elect one of those whose domicile is in Japan as a representative director and to assume the office as another representative director himself/herself as a co-representative and thus establish a company and as a flow thereafter, he/she is to request an administrative scrivener in Japan to apply for a business management immigration status (or an investment management immigration status) on behalf of himself/herself.

In other words, if and in case when any alien has any of his/her collaborators in Japan, he/she used to be able to come to Japan having the legal personality registration completed for the company and after having acquired the business management immigration status (or the investment management immigration status), it was virtually difficult for such an alien who has no such collaborators to implement the procedure for the registration of incorporation of a company by himself/herself. Such difficulty used to be a big hurdle for many aliens to launch businesses to Japan.

The future flow of the procedure for incorporating a company in Japan and applying for a business management visa （or an investment management visa）

Due to and in accordance with the law amendment of this time, any alien has become to be able to be given the immigration status, if he/she has or shows such documents, such as articles of incorporation, as prove that he/she is trying to launch his/her business. This time, a four month immigration status is to be newly established so as to make it easier for any alien who has entered to Japan to register his/her incorporation of a company just by verifying such fact of incorporation by the articles of incorporation and etc.

Telling the reason why the validity is four months, it is just because the procedure for acquiring the address of the representative director, which is necessary for the registration of incorporation of a company, or the procedure for the resident’s card for the alien cannot be processed without having the residency card which is to be given to such alien whose period of stay is more than 3 months.

The Government of Japan plans to allow such alien as is aiming to launch a business or incorporate a company in Japan to have a four month immigration status and to give such immigration status as having further longer effective period, if it can be verified during the process of examination of the immigration status thereafter that he/she has surely incorporated a legal entity and has been solidly performing his/her business in Japan.

Due to this arrangement, the kinds of the business management visas （or investment management visas） which are the immigration statuses of the entrepreneurs are to increase to five in total if those of the effective periods of 1 year, 3 years and 5 years are added. Since the Government of Japan is in the course of creating an environment so that it becomes more easy for the aliens to launch their businesses in Japan, which is a good news for you aliens who are launching the businesses in Japan.