Dependent Visa in Japan (家族滞在) — Family Stay Guide

The Dependent status (家族滞在, "Family Stay") is how the spouse and children of most foreign workers and students live in Japan. It is a companion status in the fullest sense: your family's right to be here is built on yours — sponsored by you, renewed alongside you, and lasting only as long as your own status does. Roughly speaking, if you hold a work or study status and can support your household, you can usually keep your immediate family with you.

This guide explains who can sponsor, exactly who counts as family, the documents that carry the application, the part-time work rule that shapes most dependent households' budgets, and the routes out of the status — because for many spouses and children, Dependent is a starting point rather than a permanent arrangement.

Who can sponsor a dependent

Not every status of residence supports family. The Immigration Services Agency lists the sponsor statuses: the professional working statuses — including Engineer / Specialist in Humanities / International Services, Highly Skilled Professional, Business Manager, Professor, Researcher, Instructor, Intra-company Transferee, Nursing Care, and Skilled Labor — along with Cultural Activities and Student.

The omissions matter as much as the list. Among the frontline work statuses, only Specified Skilled Worker (ii) appears — SSW (i), the far more common first tier, cannot sponsor dependents at all, which is one of the defining differences between the two SSW tiers. Technical Intern Training is likewise absent. And while Student sponsors are permitted on paper, a student limited to part-time work faces a steep climb proving they can support a household; in practice, student sponsors tend to be funded graduate students.

One more structural point: the dependent's period of stay is individually designated up to a maximum of 5 years, and in practice is set to move in step with the sponsor's. When your status ends — expiry, non-renewal, or departure — the dependent status loses its foundation with it.

Who counts as family

The Dependent status covers exactly two relationships, and immigration reads both strictly.

A legal spouse. The marriage must be legally valid and subsisting — a marriage certificate is part of the application. Common-law partners, fiancés, and partners in relationships not recognised as marriage under the relevant law do not qualify. A divorced or widowed spouse no longer meets the definition, which has real consequences for renewals.

Children. The status covers your children who are dependent on you for support (扶養, fuyō — being maintained by the sponsor). There is no bright-line age cutoff, but dependency is the test: young children are self-evidently dependent, while an adult child's application invites questions about why they still need support — enrolment in education helps, full-time employment contradicts the premise entirely.

Parents and siblings are outside the status, full stop. However genuinely dependent an elderly parent may be, 家族滞在 cannot cover them; the narrow exceptions that exist for parents run through other categories and are assessed case by case. It is one of the most common misunderstandings about Japan's system, and better discovered before planning a household around it.

Note also what this status is not: the spouse of a Japanese national or of a permanent resident is covered by a different, more permissive status — Spouse or Child of Japanese National / Permanent Resident — with no work restrictions. Dependent is specifically for the families of foreign residents on work and study statuses.

Applying: the sponsor carries the file

Like most long-term statuses, Dependent runs on the Certificate of Eligibility (在留資格認定証明書, COE) when the family is coming from abroad: you, the sponsor in Japan, file the COE application at your regional immigration bureau — free of charge, typically processed in one to three months — then send the certificate to your family for the visa stamp at the embassy. A family member already in Japan on another status applies instead for a change of status of residence.

The application stands on two legs, and the ISA document list maps directly onto them:

On the money question, immigration publishes no universal minimum income. The review is holistic: your salary, your tax record, your savings, and the size of the household you propose to support, read against living costs. A stable full-time income comfortably supports a spouse and child in most cases; applications from thinly financed sponsors — or student sponsors — succeed or fail on the credibility of the support plan. If you are just starting to plan the move, our bringing family guide walks the sponsorship through step by step.

Once the family lands, ordinary life needs no further permission. Children on Dependent status attend school like any other resident children — schooling is part of the daily activity the status exists for — and the whole household registers at the municipal office, joins health insurance, and lives on the same local infrastructure as everyone else. The one thing that stays gated behind an application is paid work, which is where the rule most families ask about first comes in.

Working on a Dependent visa: the 28-hour ceiling

By default the Dependent status permits no paid work at all. The route to a part-time job is the blanket permission to engage in activity other than that permitted (資格外活動許可), which caps work at 28 hours per week. The permission is free to apply for and can be requested at the immigration bureau at any point — many dependents file it together with their first landing or renewal paperwork.

The details that catch people out: the 28 hours is a combined total across all jobs; there is no holiday bonus — students get 8 hours a day during school vacations, dependents never do; and work connected to the adult entertainment industry (風俗営業) is barred outright regardless of hours. Employers' wage reporting means hour violations tend to surface at renewal time, and because the family's statuses are linked, one member's violation is a problem for everyone's next application.

From Dependent to a status of your own

Dependent status has no direct promotion track, but two well-worn exits matter.

A spouse moving into full-time work applies for a change of status to a work visa — typically the Engineer / Specialist in Humanities / International Services status — and qualifies on their own merits: a related degree or the required years of experience, matched to a genuine job offer. The change costs 6,000 yen in person or 5,500 yen online under the April 2025 fee revision. Once granted, their status stands on its own; it no longer depends on yours. The mechanics are covered in the changing status guide.

Children who grow up in Japan have dedicated paths. A child on Dependent status who graduates from a Japanese high school and wants to work full-time can, under conditions set out by the Immigration Services Agency, change to a status permitting work — a recognition that children raised and educated here should not be locked out of the labour market by a status designed around their parents.

And for the household as a whole, time on Dependent status counts as lawful residence toward the family's longer arc — many families eventually file together for permanent residency, which removes work restrictions and expiry dates for every member at once. Renewals along the way are routine: an extension of period of stay filed before expiry, usually bundled with the sponsor's own renewal, at the same 6,000 / 5,500 yen fee.

One timing habit keeps the linked statuses tidy: because the family's periods of stay are set with the sponsor's, file the renewals together, and file them early. A sponsor whose own extension is still pending when a dependent's expiry arrives creates exactly the kind of tangle that takes months to unwind; a household that renews as a unit, with a consistent set of tax and employment documents, gives immigration nothing to query.

The Dependent visa is, in the end, the quiet infrastructure behind most foreign careers in Japan: it is what lets a job offer become a family's move rather than a solo posting. Get the sponsorship documents right, respect the 28-hour line, and it runs in the background for years — right up until the day each family member steps into a status of their own.