Taking Your Family to Japan: The Dependent Visa, the Money, and the Age Clock Nobody Tells Indian Parents About (2026)

General information, not legal, immigration, tax or financial advice — see the note at the end.

Here is a number that changes how you should think about this whole question.

At the end of 2025, 13,367 Indian nationals were living in Japan on Dependent (家族滞在) status — out of 58,999 Indians in the country in total (Immigration Services Agency, end-2025 residence statistics, Table 2). Computed by Komichi: that is 22.7% — roughly one in every four and a half Indians in Japan is there as somebody's spouse or child. Dependent status is the second-largest status of residence for Indians in Japan, behind only the Engineer/Specialist work visa.

What does that tell you? Indians do not move to Japan the way the internet assumes — as a lone worker sending money home. Indians move to Japan as families. And yet almost everything written in English for this audience stops at "can they come?" and never gets to the questions that actually decide whether the move works: what your spouse is allowed to earn, what arrives free with a resident card, which school your child can walk into, and — the one nobody covers — how your child's age on the day they land quietly sets the ceiling on their adult life in Japan.

This guide covers all of it in one place. By the end you'll know exactly where your visa route stands, what the paperwork really costs and how long it really takes, how much your spouse can earn before three separate thresholds bite, what money the Japanese state hands a resident family, and the single most important date on your child's calendar.

Key takeaway: Family accompaniment is decided by your status of residence, not your salary or employer. Engineer/Specialist, Highly Skilled Professional and SSW-2 holders can bring a spouse and children; SSW-1 and the incoming Ikusei Shuro cannot. There is no published income threshold to sponsor a dependent — immigration assesses your capacity to support from your municipal tax certificate. And if you have children, the decision that matters most is when you bring them: a child who enters Japan under 18 and completes Japanese elementary and junior high school unlocks a status pathway — and a pot of school funding — that a child arriving at 16 simply cannot reach.

---

Part 1: Can they come at all? The route-by-route decoder

Japan's family route is the Dependent (家族滞在, "Family Stay") status of residence. The Immigration Services Agency does not leave this to interpretation: its Dependent page lists the sponsor statuses that permit a dependent to accompany. If your status is not on that list, there is no application to make.

Here are the routes Indians actually use:

ISA's full list also includes Professor, Artist, Religious Activities, Journalist, Legal/Accounting Services, Medical Services, Researcher, Instructor, Entertainer, and Cultural Activities. Source: ISA — Status of Residence "Dependent".

Note the two rows people miss. If you're a chef on a Skilled Labour (技能) visa — the route many Indian restaurant cooks come on — or running a business on 経営・管理, your family can join you from the start. Neither is a "blue-collar visa with no family rights," and both are regularly misdescribed that way online.

Why this matters much less to Indian readers than you'd think

Most India→Japan content treats SSW-1's family ban as the headline. For Indian readers specifically, it is close to a footnote — and the numbers say so.

Of those 58,999 Indians in Japan at end-2025, 14,567 were on Engineer/Specialist status and just 758 on SSW (1 and 2 combined) (ISA, Table 2). The India→Japan channel today is overwhelmingly the white-collar route — the one that carries full family rights from day one. If you're on a typical IT or engineering offer, your family question is a logistics question, not an eligibility one.

If you are on SSW-1, Technical Intern Training, or the incoming Ikusei Shuro, the honest answer is: not yet, but not never. SSW-2 is the door. It now covers 11 of the specified industry fields, and it is the fastest-growing status in Japan — 7,955 holders at end-2025, up from 832 a year earlier (ISA, Table 3). Every one of those people newly acquired the right to bring a spouse and children, and unlimited renewals. That is the whole argument of our three years or forever piece, and it applies with double force if you have a family waiting.

For the route-by-route detail, see SSW from India, Ikusei Shuro 2027 and the HSP visa.

---

Part 2: What "Dependent" actually covers — and one trap

Two rules surprise almost every family.

It's your spouse and your children. That's the whole list. The ISA's statutory wording covers activities performed "as the spouse or child receiving support from" the sponsor. Parents, siblings, and in-laws have no route under a standard work visa. There is no exception for an elderly parent who needs care and no exception for a dependent sibling. If bringing your parents matters to you, that is a Permanent Residency conversation years down the line, not a Dependent visa one.

You are the sponsor, so you must prove you can support them. More on exactly what that means in Part 4 — because it is not what most people expect.

The trap: three government systems, two different answers on marriage

Here is something you will not find spelled out anywhere else, and it catches couples every year.

• Immigration: the ISA's document list asks for a family register extract, a marriage registration acceptance certificate, a marriage certificate, or a birth certificate. It is built around a legally documented marriage.
• Tax: the National Tax Agency is blunt — the spouse deduction requires a spouse "under the provisions of the Civil Code," and states explicitly that people in a common-law relationship do not qualify (NTA No.1191).
• Health insurance and pension: the Japan Pension Service goes the other way, accepting as a dependent a "spouse (including an unregistered de facto marital relationship)" (JPS, dependent requirements).

Two of the three systems require a registered marriage; one doesn't. For Indian couples this is rarely the issue it is for others — but if your marriage is customary and unregistered, register it in India and get the certificate before you start any Japanese application. Immigration is the system you cannot work around.

---

Part 3: The paperwork, the real clock, and one myth to kill

The process runs in one direction: you, in Japan, apply for their Certificate of Eligibility. Then they take it to VFS in India for the visa.

What the Certificate of Eligibility actually involves

Source: ISA — Certificate of Eligibility procedure.

The number nobody publishes: your family's COE takes longer than yours did

The ISA publishes actual monthly processing times, and almost nobody reads them. In its June 2026 release, the average processing time was:

• Dependent (家族滞在) COE: 68.7 days
• Engineer/Specialist (技人国) COE: 51.4 days

(ISA, monthly processing statistics, June 2026 file.)

Computed by Komichi: your family's application takes on average 17.3 days longer than your own work COE did — about 34% longer. And it has been improving: the same series showed 95.1 days in January 2025, so the wait has come down by roughly a month in eighteen months. But plan on a little over two months, not the optimistic end of ISA's own 1–3 month band — and remember that clock only starts once your documents are complete and filed.

Practical consequence: if you want your family in Japan for the April school year start, the COE filing needs to happen around December or early January, not February.

The e-COE — use it

Since March 2023 you can receive the Certificate of Eligibility as an email rather than a paper document (ISA e-COE FAQ). You forward the email to your family in India; they can present it on a phone screen for both the visa application and at the airport on landing. That removes an international courier leg — often a week — from a process that is already long. There is no downside beyond one detail: the electronic version does not display the photo.

Myth-bust: "Japanese immigration requires an MEA apostille on my marriage certificate"

This one is repeated everywhere, including by agents who charge for it. It is not what the ISA's own document list says.

The ISA asks for a marriage certificate or birth certificate — a copy is acceptable — plus one hard requirement most people miss: "if the submitted documents are written in a foreign language, please attach a Japanese translation." No apostille is specified anywhere on the page. ISA does not name a sworn or certified translator either.

So what's the truth? An MEA apostille is prudent, cheap and often genuinely needed elsewhere — for registering your marriage with a Japanese municipality, for some employers, for school admissions. India and Japan are both parties to the Hague Apostille Convention, MEA charges ₹50 per document for the apostille sticker, and the outsourced collection agency charges around ₹22 for a personal document such as a marriage or birth certificate (plus a small postal fee if you don't collect in person). At that price, get it. Just don't let anyone tell you it's an immigration requirement you must pay a package fee to handle, and don't panic if it isn't back in time — the translation is the thing ISA actually asks for. (For how to think about agent pricing generally, read verifying a Japan job offer from India.)

One quiet 2026 change: your baby now needs a passport photo

Buried in ISA's Dependent page is a change affecting families more than anyone: for residence cards issued on or after 14 June 2026, a photograph is required for anyone aged 1 and over. The old exemption ran to under-16s. If you're bringing a toddler, add "photo that meets Japanese specifications" to the list — it is a small thing that has caught people out at the counter.

---

Part 4: The income requirement that doesn't exist

Search "income required for Japan dependent visa" and you'll find confident numbers — ¥3 million, ¥4 million, "¥2 million per dependent." Treat all of them as folklore.

The ISA publishes no numeric income threshold for sponsoring a dependent. None. What it publishes is a document list, and the test is 扶養能力 — capacity to support — assessed case by case.

Here is exactly what ISA asks for, in its own words:

If you earn income from work or a business:

1. 在職証明書 (certificate of employment) or a copy of your business permit — something showing your occupation
2. 住民税の課税証明書 and 納税証明書 — your municipal tax certificate showing your total income for the year, and your tax payment certificate. ISA notes that if one certificate shows both, one is enough.

If you're not in that category (a student sponsor, for example): a bank balance certificate in your name, or a scholarship certificate stating amount and period.

Two practical notes ISA adds itself. First, the tax certificate is issued by the municipality where you lived as of 1 January — so if you moved wards, you may be going back to the old office. Second, if you arrived too recently for any municipality to have issued one, contact your nearest regional immigration bureau rather than filing without it. ISA warns that incomplete filings can lead to "substantial delay in examination, or an adverse disposition."

What this means for you: don't chase a mythical salary number. Make sure your residence tax is registered and paid, and that your income on the certificate is a full, ordinary year's income. A sponsor earning ¥4.5 million with an unpaid residence tax balance is in a worse position than one earning ¥3.8 million with a clean certificate. If you want to sanity-check what your gross offer becomes after tax and social insurance — the number the certificate will eventually show — run it through the Japan salary calculator and the tax calculator.

---

Part 5: What your spouse can actually earn — three lines, and they're closing in

This is the section most families get wrong, because there isn't one limit. There are three, they come from three different ministries, and in October 2026 they nearly collide.

Line 1: The 28-hour immigration cap — and the airport gap nobody warns you about

A Dependent cannot legally work at all until they hold 資格外活動許可 (permission to engage in activity outside their status). The standard comprehensive permission allows up to 28 hours per week, the application is free, and the paperwork is minimal — the form, plus their passport and residence card at the counter.

Now the part that is widely mis-stated online. ISA lists the statuses that can obtain this permission at the airport on arrival: Student, Instructor, Engineer/Specialist, and Skilled Labour. Dependent is not on that list.

Your spouse must apply at a regional immigration bureau after arriving and registering an address — and ISA's published standard processing period for that application is two weeks to two months (ISA — permission for activity outside status).

Plan for it. There is a real gap — potentially two months on top of the ward-office registration and the wait for a residence card — between your spouse landing and your spouse legally earning a single yen. Families who budget for "she'll pick up part-time work straight away" get an unpleasant surprise. Factor it into your move budget.

One more thing worth knowing: the cap is written as "within 28 hours per week." ISA does not publish a definition of where the week starts, and employers apply the rule conservatively. Don't try to average.

Line 2: The ¥1.3 million dependency line

To stay your dependent for health insurance and pension, your spouse's annual income must be under ¥1,300,000 (roughly ₹7.8 lakh) — and, in the same household, less than half your income (Japan Pension Service, updated July 2026). The monthly proxy is ¥108,333.

Two updates matter here. From 1 April 2026, dependency can be judged from the terms of the employment contract rather than back-calculated from past earnings — good news if your spouse's contract is clear and for a fixed term of a year or more. And the threshold rises to ¥1,500,000 for dependants aged 19 to 22 (excluding the spouse), which becomes relevant when children start working part-time.

Line 3: The ¥1.23 million tax line

Separately, for you to claim the ¥380,000 spouse deduction on your own income tax, your spouse's income must be at or below ¥580,000 — which for salary-only income means salary at or below ¥1,230,000 (NTA No.1191).

One condition to note if you're well paid: the full ¥380,000 applies only where your own total income is ¥9 million or less. It tapers to ¥260,000 (¥9–9.5m) and ¥130,000 (¥9.5–10m), and disappears entirely above ¥10 million. For a senior IT salary, optimising your spouse's hours around this deduction may be worth nothing at all — check your own band first.

⚠️ Correct a widely-repeated error here. Japan's 2025 tax reform raised several thresholds and the internet has merged them all into "the wall moved from ¥1.03 million to ¥1.6 million." That's sloppy. ¥1.6 million is where the earner themselves starts paying income tax (basic deduction ¥950,000 + minimum employment-income deduction ¥650,000, NTA). The spouse deduction line moved from ¥1.03 million to ¥1.23 million, not ¥1.6 million. Above that, the spouse special deduction tapers out to spouse income of ¥1.33 million.

The October 2026 squeeze — worked example

Japan's 2025 pension reform is set to abolish the ¥1.06 million wage requirement for enrolment in employees' health insurance and pension. MHLW's own page words it as a plan, not a done deal: "the '¥1.06 million wall' is scheduled to be abolished in October 2026 in light of the minimum wage situation" (MHLW, "Responding to the income walls"). If it lands as scheduled, what remains as the enrolment test is 20 or more working hours per week, at an employer with 51+ employees (falling to 36+ in 2027, and stepping down further through 2035).

Now put the three lines together. Japan's FY2026 minimum-wage guideline, if applied as recommended, produces a national weighted average of ¥1,176/hour (MHLW, 28 July 2026) — prefectural councils set the final rates and they take effect from October, so treat this as illustration, not your prefecture's number. See Japan's 2026 minimum wage.

Computed by Komichi, illustration only:

• Working the full 28-hour immigration cap at ¥1,176/hour: 28 × 52 × ¥1,176 = ¥1,712,256 a year (≈ ₹10.3 lakh). That is well above the ¥1.3 million dependency line — so at minimum wage, a spouse working their legal maximum is no longer your dependent for insurance purposes.
• To stay under ¥1.3 million at that same rate: ¥1,300,000 ÷ ¥1,176 ≈ 1,105 hours a year ≈ 21.3 hours a week.

Look at what that means. The window between "enough hours to matter" and "still a dependent" has narrowed to roughly 20 to 21 hours a week — and if the October 2026 change lands as scheduled, 20 hours a week at a mid-size or larger employer would trigger enrolment in employees' insurance in its own right, regardless of pay.

The honest conclusion: the classic arrangement — spouse works part-time, stays your dependent, pays nothing — is being squeezed toward extinction at the lower end of the wage scale. It still works at a small employer, or on genuinely low hours.

But here's the reframe, and it's the one we'd offer any family: being squeezed out of dependent status is not the disaster it sounds like. A spouse enrolled in employees' pension in their own right is building their own pension record, gets their own maternity and sickness benefits, and — if you ever leave Japan — has their own lump-sum withdrawal claim. Run both scenarios properly before optimising for a threshold: our pension calculator and tax calculator will show you the actual difference rather than the feared one.

---

Part 6: What arrives free with a resident card

Once your family is registered as residents, most of Japan's family support applies to them on the same terms as Japanese nationals. This is real money, and Indian families routinely under-claim it because nobody tells them it exists.

Health insurance: the single biggest number in this article

Under employees' health insurance (your company's 健保 or 協会けんぽ), dependants cost nothing extra. Your premium is calculated on your own standard remuneration. Adding a spouse and three children changes it by ¥0.

Under National Health Insurance (国民健康保険 — the route for the self-employed and some contract workers), there is no concept of a dependant. Every single person is levied, infants included. In most of Tokyo's 23 wards in FY2026 the per-person component runs ¥47,600 (medical) + ¥17,600 (elderly support) + ¥1,800 (the new child-support levy) = ¥67,000 per person per year, before any income-based component — with a few wards set slightly differently, including Nakano and, worth noting given Part 10, Edogawa (Tokyo Metropolitan Government, FY2026 rates). Adults aged 40–64 also carry a separate long-term-care levy of about ¥17,800 each.

Computed by Komichi, on those typical ward rates: for a family of four, the per-person floor alone is around ¥268,000 a year (≈ ₹1.61 lakh) before a single yen of income-based premium. A published worked example from Katsushika ward shows a 41-year-old with ¥2.28 million taxable income, a non-earning spouse and one child paying ¥529,080 a year under NHI (Katsushika City).

If you are choosing between a permanent employee offer and a contract that leaves you on National Health Insurance, and you have a family — this is the comparison to run first. It is frequently larger than the salary difference. More in our health insurance cost guide.

Child Allowance (児童手当) — and the rule that catches Indian families

Since the October 2024 expansion:

Paid until 31 March following the child's 18th birthday, six times a year. Crucially, the income cap was abolished — previously households over ¥12 million got nothing (Children and Families Agency). Foreign residents on the resident register receive it on the same terms as Japanese nationals, per the operative MHLW notice.

For two children, one under 3, that's ¥25,000 a month — ¥300,000 a year, about ₹1.8 lakh, arriving whatever you earn.

⚠️ The rule that catches Indian families: the child must be living in Japan. The Children and Families Agency is explicit — "as a general rule, child allowance is not paid for a child living overseas" (CFA Q&A). The only exception is a child studying abroad who lived continuously in Japan for over three years immediately beforehand — which a child who has never lived in Japan cannot meet. If your children stay in India with grandparents while you settle in, you get nothing for them, and if a child leaves Japan and their resident record is deleted, entitlement ends on that date.

Two systems, opposite directions — the table nobody draws

This is worth internalising, because the two main "money for your children" systems in Japan point opposite ways on the same question:

(The under-16 exclusion from 扶養控除 applies wherever the child lives — under-16s get the child allowance instead, and that one needs them in Japan.)

The non-resident rule: a relative living abroad qualifies for the ¥380,000 deduction if aged 16–29, or 70+, or aged 30–69 and either studying abroad, disabled, or receiving ¥380,000 or more from you that year for living or education expenses. You must hold both relationship documents and remittance records — with Japanese translations (NTA guidance on non-resident relatives; amounts at NTA No.1180).

Practical action: if you support parents or a sibling in India, send money through your bank, not through friends or cash, and keep every record. That ¥380,000 remittance line is the difference between a deduction and nothing for a relative aged 30–69. Our guide to sending money from Japan to India covers the routes; the point here is that the paper trail is the asset.

The rest of the list, briefly

• Childbirth lump sum (出産育児一時金): ¥500,000 per child (≈ ₹3 lakh), paid by your health insurer, usually direct to the hospital (MHLW). Watch this one: a law passed on 29 May 2026 will replace this design with direct insurer-to-facility payment of standard childbirth costs — the commencement date is not yet fixed, so ¥500,000 is what applies today.
• Free early-childhood education, ages 3–5, at kindergarten, nursery and certified centres — for all children, with kindergarten capped at ¥25,700/month. Meals, bus and event fees are still charged. Ages 0–2 are free only for resident-tax-exempt households (CFA).
• Children's medical expense subsidy — municipal, and the variation is large. Minato ward in Tokyo covers insured medical costs to the end of high-school age with no co-pay and no income cap; Machida city, in the same prefecture, still charges ¥200 per outpatient visit and only removed its income cap in April 2025; Yokohama only extended to age 18 in June 2026. Check the specific city before you sign a lease — this is a genuine reason to compare wards, alongside the ones in where to live in Tokyo.
• Non-working dependent spouse pays no pension premium. A spouse aged 20–59 who is your dependent becomes a Category 3 insured person and pays nothing, while still building their own basic pension entitlement (Japan Pension Service).

---

Part 7: The age clock — the most important thing in this article

Now the part that no Indian-market guide covers, and the reason we'd tell you to read this section twice.

If your child stops studying at the end of high school, their age on the day they entered Japan shapes what they can do next. Not their grades. Not their Japanese. Their entry age, and what they did between then and 18.

Here's why. A child on Dependent status who grows up in Japan and stops at a Japanese high school does not meet the academic requirements for the Engineer/Specialist work visa — that route generally wants a relevant degree or long experience. The ISA acknowledges this directly and provides a separate pathway: such a child may change to 定住者 (Long-Term Resident) or 特定活動 (Designated Activities).

One important caveat before the conditions: none of this binds a child who goes on to a Japanese university, 高専, or vocational college. A degree restores the ordinary Engineer/Specialist route, whatever age they arrived. The pathway below matters most for the child who wants to start working at 18.

The conditions are published, and they are strict (ISA guideline on status change for Dependent children):

To 定住者 — the better outcome — all six must hold:

1. Completed Japanese compulsory education — both elementary and junior high school in Japan
2. Graduated, or about to graduate, from a Japanese high school
3. Continuously resident in Japan on Dependent status since entry
4. Was under 18 at the time of entry into Japan
5. Employment decided, including a job offer — this route is for work that goes beyond the 28-hour activity-permission cap
6. Public obligations (address registration and so on) fulfilled

To 特定活動 — the narrower outcome: the same, except Japanese elementary and junior high are not required — but the parent must remain in Japan as guarantor, and if the child transferred into a Japanese high school mid-stream rather than entering at the start, they additionally need JLPT N2 or above (or BJT 400+).

Two details are widely mis-stated in Indian-market content, so hold onto them: the age test is under 18 at entry, not 17, and the difference between the two outcomes turns on whether the child did Japanese elementary and junior high — not on how well they did in high school.

The tuition gate — a 2026 change almost nobody has reported in English

It gets sharper. From 1 April 2026, Japan abolished the income cap on high-school tuition support (高等学校等就学支援金) and raised the private-school cap from ¥396,000 to ¥457,200 a year (MEXT, April 2026 briefing). Headlines called it "free high school."

But the new scheme is gated by status of residence. Eligibility runs to Japanese nationals, special permanent residents, Permanent Residents, spouses of Japanese nationals or PRs, Long-Term Residents judged to intend to settle — and, for 家族滞在, only where the child graduated Japanese elementary school and junior high school and is judged to intend to work and settle in Japan.

So the same test appears twice. A Dependent-status child who arrives at 14 and enters a Japanese high school at 15 does not qualify for the new uncapped scheme. MEXT funds a separate, smaller budget programme for such students that replicates the old means-tested system: ¥396,000 for households under roughly ¥5.9 million, ¥118,800 in the ¥5.9–9.1 million band, and nothing above ¥9.1 million. For a well-paid IT parent with a child in a private high school, that is a difference of up to ¥457,200 a year — about ₹2.7 lakh per child per year — turning on when the child arrived.

One relief worth knowing: students already enrolled before April 2026 keep their old-system support under transitional arrangements, so this bites on new entrants rather than children already partway through.

What this looks like in practice

(Right-hand column assumes the child stops at high school; a university route changes the picture, as above.)

We are not telling you to uproot a settled 15-year-old. For many families that is exactly the wrong call, and a teenager who's thriving in an Indian school with board exams ahead has a strong case for staying. But you should make that decision knowing what it costs, rather than discovering at 19 that a pathway closed.

And if your child is young, the message is the opposite and quite clear: bringing them earlier is worth more than most families realise — and none of that value shows up in a salary comparison.

---

Part 8: The school question — and the trap hiding inside Japan's PR rules

We have a full guide to schools in Japan for Indian kids — CBSE options, real fees in ¥ and ₹, and the public-school route. Rather than repeat it, here are the three things a parent needs before reading it.

1. Japanese school is free for your child — but not compulsory

This is the structural fact everything else rests on, and it is genuinely strange until you see it stated.

Japan's compulsory education duty under Article 17 of the School Education Act is interpreted as applying to Japanese nationals. MEXT says so in its own administrative Q&A: "in Japan there is no compulsory-schooling obligation on the guardians of foreign children, but where they wish to attend public compulsory-education schools, in light of international human rights covenants, the child is accepted free of charge on the same basis as Japanese children" (MEXT, school administration Q&A No.13).

Free admission, free textbooks, and access to financial assistance on the same terms — but no legal compulsion. That combination is exactly why MEXT's most recent survey found 1,097 foreign school-age children confirmed not enrolled anywhere, and enrolment unconfirmable for another 7,322 — MEXT's headline "possibly not in school" figure is 8,432, out of 163,358 school-age foreign children on the resident register (MEXT, survey published 2 October 2025).

2. Will your child get Japanese-language support? Usually — but the gap is widening

MEXT's latest survey (survey date 1 May 2025, published 25 May 2026) found 84,759 children in public schools needing Japanese-language instruction — a record, and a jump of 22.6% in two years (which, reading MEXT's published series back to 2008, appears to be the steepest rise it has recorded) (MEXT).

The number that matters to you: 88.6% receive some form of special-consideration Japanese instruction. 11.4% — 9,699 children — receive nothing at all, and that share has risen from 10.2%. Support exists, is real, and is stretched.

Then there's a detail worth sitting with. Of foreign-national children needing support, the language breakdown runs Chinese 24.3%, Portuguese 16.3%, Filipino 13.2%, Vietnamese 8.2%, Nepali 7.0% — newly given its own category this round — English 5.5%, Spanish 4.7%. MEXT's "other" bucket (16.7%) names Urdu, Sinhala, Bengali and others as examples. Hindi is not a category, and is not even named among the examples.

Read that honestly rather than angrily. It is not a slight; it is a measure of scale. Nepali speakers earned their own line because Nepali families arrived in numbers first — the same story our Nepal versus India students piece tells. Indian families are early enough in this corridor that mother-tongue support in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu or Marathi is unlikely to exist at your local school. Plan for the school to support your child in Japanese, and for you to support them in your language at home.

One genuinely encouraging note: the formal "special curriculum" (特別の教育課程) for Japanese-language instruction now covers 76.4% of supported children at the compulsory stage, and the staffing formula funding it — one teacher per 18 such children — completes its ten-year phase-in in FY2026.

3. The trap: not compulsory, but it may cost you permanent residency

Now put two facts side by side.

Fact one: Japan does not legally require you to enrol your foreign child in school.

Fact two: in the draft permanent residence guidelines the ISA published on 4 August 2026 — open for public comment until the end of 3 September 2026 — failing to enrol your child in school during compulsory-education age is listed as a negative factor in the national-interest assessment (ISA, PR guideline consultation).

There is no legal duty, and skipping it may count against the single most valuable status in Japan.

The same draft would require Japanese ability at CEFR B1, income continuously above the average for a Japanese household of the same size — with dependants counted in household size — and a projected pension equivalent to 30 years of employees' pension contributions. It is a draft, not law: the comment period is still open, and the ISA indicates the income-related elements would take effect from October 2026 with the rest from April 2027. Do not plan around the specifics until they are finalised. But the direction is unmistakable, and it changes the calculus for a family: from here on, how you raise your children in Japan is part of your own immigration record.

Check where you currently stand with our PR rules checker, and read permanent residency for Indians for the current rules. We will update both when the final text lands.

---

Part 9: Childcare — the headline number is not the real number

If both of you plan to work, this is your bottleneck.

Japan's official waiting-list figure looks like a solved problem: 2,254 children on nursery waiting lists as of 1 April 2025, down for the eighth straight year from a peak of 26,081 in 2017, with 87.9% of municipalities reporting zero (Children and Families Agency, published 28 August 2025).

Read the same report's fine print and a different picture appears. The count is defined as applicants, minus children actually using a nursery, minus four excluded categories — and the government prints those four in its own table: children whose parent extended parental leave (15,043), those who applied only to specific nurseries (39,469), those who paused job-hunting (5,531), and those using a local-government-only scheme (4,446). The report's own subtotal for the four: 64,489 children. A further 20,075 are listed in a separate column as using a "special or temporary" arrangement.

Computed by Komichi: the four excluded categories alone come to roughly 29 times the headline figure (64,489 ÷ 2,254 ≈ 28.6). Add the special-arrangement column and 84,564 children applied and did not get an ordinary licensed place — against an official waiting list of 2,254.

None of this is hidden, exactly — it is in the ministry's published table, and the definition was deliberately widened in 2017 to make municipalities count more consistently. But the headline number answers a narrower question than the one you're asking. The question you care about is "will we get a place?", and 2,254 is not the answer to it. The pressure is also concentrated exactly where Indian families live: Tokyo alone accounts for 339 of the official figure, and 63.0% of waiting children are in the major urban prefectures.

The points system quietly works against a Dependent spouse

Nursery places in competitive wards are allocated by a points score (利用調整). Take Setagaya ward's published FY2026 rules: each parent gets a base index up to 50 points, set by work pattern — 50 points for 5+ days and 40+ hours a week, 45 for 5 days and 37+ hours, dropping to 15 for 48 hours a month. Job-hunting scores 10. Adjustment points follow: single parent +20, sibling already enrolled +5 or +6, already paying for unlicensed care of 96+ hours a month +6, living outside the ward −10 (Setagaya City, FY2026 guide).

Do the arithmetic. A dual-full-time household scores near 100. A working parent plus a Dependent spouse who isn't yet employed — which is precisely the situation of a family that just arrived — scores around 60. In a ward where places clear at 90-plus, that is not a near miss.

This is a real chicken-and-egg problem and worth naming plainly: your spouse needs a nursery place to work, and needs work to score for a nursery place. Ways families break it: secure the job offer or contract first (an employment offer letter usually scores), use certified unlicensed care for a few months (which itself adds points and is partly subsidised up to ¥37,000–42,000/month), or choose a ward with slack. Nationally, capacity utilisation is 88.4% and falling — the pressure is local, not universal.

After-school clubs and the fourth-grade wall

For school-age children, 放課後児童クラブ (after-school clubs) held a record 1,570,645 registered children as of 1 May 2025, with 16,330 children unable to get a place (CFA, published 22 December 2025).

The interesting bit is who misses out. By grade: Grade 1 — 1,966. Grade 2 — 1,805. Grade 3 — 3,305. Grade 4 — 5,589, or 34.2%, the single largest group. Grade 5 — 2,644. Grade 6 — 1,021.

That's the "fourth-grade wall": clubs prioritise the youngest, so families sail through the early years and hit a cliff exactly when they've stopped planning for one. And the geography is unhelpful — Tokyo 3,360, Saitama 1,681, Hyogo 1,464, Chiba 1,106, Kanagawa 1,067 make up roughly half the national waiting list, which is a near-perfect map of where Indian IT families live.

---

Part 10: Where Indian families actually land

You do not have to reinvent this. There is an established Indian family ecosystem in Japan, and it has a postcode.

Edogawa ward in Tokyo has 54,314 foreign residents — which the ward describes as the largest of any Tokyo ward — of whom 8,493 are Indian, 15.6% of the total and second only to Chinese residents. Zoom in further: the Nishi-Kasai station area alone holds 4,596 Indian residents (Edogawa City, data as of 30 April 2026) — computed by Komichi: about 54% of the ward's entire Indian population in one station's catchment. That is the hard number behind "Little India," and the ward's own status breakdown shows 8,635 residents on Dependent status, so this is a families neighbourhood, not a bachelor one.

What that buys you: CBSE schooling within reach, vegetarian groceries that don't require an expedition, other parents who have already solved the ward-office paperwork, and a school system that has seen Indian children before. What it costs you: less choice on rent and commute, and — a real trade-off — less pressure on your family to learn Japanese, which Part 7 should have convinced you matters.

Compare it properly against the alternatives in where to live in Tokyo for Indians and renting an apartment in Japan.

---

Myth-busts, quickly

"SSW means my family can never come." No — it means not yet. SSW-1 has no dependent route, but SSW-2 does, and SSW-2 grew from 832 to 7,955 holders in a single year. The path is skills tests and time, not a closed door.

"I need to earn ¥4 million to sponsor my wife." There is no published income threshold. There is a document test built on your municipal tax certificate. Pay your residence tax.

"Japanese immigration requires an apostille." ISA's document list requires a Japanese translation. The apostille is worth ₹50 and useful elsewhere — but it isn't what the page asks for.

"My wife can start working as soon as she lands." She cannot work at all until permission is granted, Dependent status can't get that permission at the airport, and ISA's standard period for the application is two weeks to two months.

"International school or nothing." Japanese public school is free to your child, includes free textbooks, and — per Part 7 — is the only route that opens the 定住者 pathway and the new tuition scheme. It is a serious option, not a compromise. Weigh it properly in our schools guide.