Japan visa restrictions may drive out small migrant-owned businesses

TOKYO – Off the coast of Imabari City, in the Japanese prefecture of Ehime, is a chain of islands connected by bridges and popular among bike tourists. There, on Omishima Island, is a small farm with vegetables, homemade bee boxes and a renovated guesthouse. 

This is where Dani and Evan Benton have lived and built their produce business since 2021. They were interested in starting a farm somewhere with cheaper property outside the United States, their home country. 

Since their guesthouse opened, the Bentons have hosted around 700 people, exceeding their expectations. They’ve grown closer to their community by providing fresh vegetables and honey to local restaurants. Even the only pizza place on the island has plans to name a pizza after the couple, since it uses a specific pepper grown by them.

“As soon as we got here, it was just perfect,” Dani said. 

But now, five years later, new immigration rules could change that.

As of June 2025, over 44,700 foreign nationals, including the Bentons, lived in Japan on business manager visas (BMV), which grant them a path to permanent residency while they start and grow a business.

The visas were designed to encourage foreign investment and migration in a country whose population is aging. But, according to some sources, concerns have grown in recent years over fake businesses created by certain BMV holders. 

New requirements, new fears

Visa revisions have become common among some nations currently led by right-wing parties, such as the United States and Japan.

In October 2025, Japan’s Immigration Services Agency changed the requirements for BMVs. Applicants must now have ¥30 million (nearly $190,000) in capital – six times more than the previous requirement. BMV holders are also now required to hire a full-time Japanese employee and be proficient in Japanese language. 

The Immigration Services Agency of Japan did not respond to requests for comment and has not provided public data on how many BMV holders are fraudulent.

“Someone who has no intention of engaging in business activities can obtain business manager residence status as a means of immigrating to Japan,” said Ito Junji, the residency management division director for the Immigration Services Agency, in a 2025 interview with NHK World. “But that is not acceptable from our viewpoint. We made these changes because we believe the previous requirements were too loose.”

Existing BMV holders like the Bentons have a grace period of up to three years to meet the new requirements. Dani said they will likely be able to keep their visas through 2028, as long as they can prove that progress is being made toward the new requirements.

But for the Bentons, meeting these requisites seems almost impossible.

“It was a big shock, the visa change, and it’s going to have to be a dramatic shift to our business model,” Dani said.

Startups, frauds and tensions

ACROSEED is a Tokyo-based immigration law firm specializing in visa consultations. According to its spokesperson, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect his privacy, BMV requirements were initially easy because Japan wanted more startups, while giving preferential treatment to larger companies. But as the number of visa users grew, the spokesperson said, people started to post on social media about how easy it was to get a BMV to live in Japan, opening the door for fraud.

Most of these fraudulent BMV companies are real estate rentals, ACROSEED’s spokesperson said.

The spokesperson added that the government also created the new rules as a result of growing anti-immigrant sentiment, particularly against Chinese nationals as a result of current and past tensions between Japan and China.

But some consider that the measures respond to global demands.

Yume Towhida is the program lead at Venture Cafe Tokyo, an organization that helps startups and small businesses across Japan. She is also the community manager at Tokyo Innovation Base, a startup hub launched by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, and an immigrant from Bangladesh. She said that Japan needs foreign investment, and the new BMV rules ensure that the government accepts people with businesses that are already secure or businesses from other countries branching out to Japan.

“(The BMV changes) don’t mean that the government is anti-foreigner or anti-expansion,” Towhida said. “The government is heavily invested and keen on being more global than it is.”

From expansion to uncertainty

Five years ago, Victor Gram Thomsen started an AI-based online travel agency in his home country, Denmark. He expanded his startup to Japan shortly after, and has been a BMV holder in Hokkaido for over two years.

In September 2025, after hearing that the BMV requirements might be changed, Thomsen started a petition to advocate against the proposal. His petition picked up over 300 signatures from other BMV holders and residents, but had no effect on the visa changes. 

While he agreed the original requirements may have been too loose, he also said the alleged visa fraud shouldn’t have led to such restrictions. 

“If (the Japanese government) really wanted to do something about immigration, there are much much bigger visas to take a swing at, but the bigger the visa, the bigger the institutions leveraging it,” Thomsen said.

Other visas are responsible for a much greater share of Japan’s foreign resident population. According to official data, as of June 2025, BMV holders only made up about 1.1% of foreigners living there.

Thomsen, who is waiting for a decision on his current visa renewal, doesn’t think he will be able to stay in Japan by the end of 2028. 

Effects on Japan

Many BMV holders work in growing industries like food, tourism and technology.

Daniel Valencia has lived in Japan since 2017 and recently founded Kuma Cantina, a Mexican-Japanese fusion restaurant. He applied to transition to a BMV from his temporary work visa before the requirements were changed and is still waiting on a decision.

“There’s a lot of things changing with how the process works and how more challenging it is now than it used to be, but because I had a lot of experience working here, and I had a network of people that could also support how I would launch and get set up, it was much easier for me than someone else that would be coming here for the first time,” he explained.

Many immigrant business owners like himself are providing for a growing demand in international food. Valencia said he only knew of three or four Mexican restaurants in Japan when he first moved there. Now, he’s found they are almost mainstream. 

Despite potential visa challenges, Valencia is not worried about the future of his business, and he said most of the anti-immigrant sentiment he’s seen is against low-skilled laborers, not business owners.

“The biggest impact that Japan will feel is the limitation for foreign investment or people that are interested in bringing their business to Japan, especially if they’re a small enterprise,” he said.

The spokesperson from ACROSEED agreed, but pointed out that, even if it wasn’t the stated goal, catering BMVs toward “major players” might be the visa’s original intent. 

Thomsen said small businesses interested in the Japanese market may end up going to other Asian countries instead.

What’s next

Since the visa requirements were changed, many BMV holders are scrambling to meet the new requirements before their 2028 deadline.

The ACROSEED spokesperson said he has heard many concerns from current BMV holders and, as of April 2026,  has not received any new BMV applications since the updated requirements were implemented. 

One key challenge for smaller businesses is hiring a local employee. Thomsen and Dani Benton, for instance, said unemployment is low in their areas, and their businesses are not yet large enough to need another employee.

The monetary requirement is another concern. In order to grow their capital, the Bentons have invested money from their personal bank account into their business. They also plan to crowdfund, and sell or “gift” their property from their personal to a business account, which counts as a donation of capital. 

To meet the other requirements, Dani is looking to hire a local employee and learn Japanese, which her husband already speaks.

“When the business manager visa was ¥5 million (about $30,000), that was a lot more reasonable for someone like me,” she said. “But with  ¥30 million (nearly $190,000), I never even would’ve tried.”

She said that, according to her bank manager, no other Japanese businesses in their rural area have that amount of capital either.

“I’m just living it,” Dani said. “I don’t know why it’s happening, but we’re just trying to get through it.”

Related