Hello everyone,

Japan just recorded its strongest wage growth in over 30 years.

The spring shuntō negotiations, where major companies and unions agree on annual pay increases, settled at above 5% this year. That's the kind of number that doesn't happen in Japan. And it's happening because the labour shortage is forcing companies to compete for talent in a way they haven't had to before.

If you're job hunting, renewing an offer, or wondering whether you're being paid fairly: this week's issue is about turning that into something concrete.

Let's get into it.

Most people think about visa and salary as separate conversations. They're not. In Japan, the amount you're paid directly shapes your immigration timeline, sometimes by years.

Here's the connection:

The Highly Skilled Professional (HSP) visa awards points across several categories: age, education, work experience, salary, and Japanese ability. The salary bracket you land in can be worth anywhere from 10 to 40 points on its own. More points = faster PR eligibility. At 70 points, you qualify in 3 years. At 80+, it drops to 1 year.

What this means practically: negotiating an offer from ¥5 million to ¥7 million isn't just a lifestyle upgrade, it may move your PR timeline from 3 years to 1. That's worth calculating before you accept anything.

Salary thresholds that matter on the HSP point scale:

If you're currently sitting at ¥4.8M, pushing to ¥5M in a negotiation isn't just about the ¥200,000, it's worth 5 additional immigration points. That framing changes the conversation.

Entry routes with the highest salary ceilings:

This free newsletter is for understanding how hiring and work in Japan actually function.

If you’ve started applying already, you’ve probably run into this:

Most jobs you find either require Japanese, are already filled, or you never hear back after applying. And it’s not always because you’re unqualified, a lot of those roles just aren’t meant for overseas candidates in the first place.

So I built something to make this easier.

It lets you search across company career pages directly and filter down to roles that actually fit your situation. You can focus on English-friendly positions, narrow by role or location, and set alerts so new jobs come to you instead of constantly checking.

It’s a much clearer way to see what’s actually available right now.

Check it out here.

Salary negotiation in Japan is not like in the West. The good news: it's still expected and if you approach it correctly, it will not cost you the offer. The bad news: most foreigners either don't try at all, or go about it in a way that creates friction.

Here's the framework that works.

When to bring it up: Only after you have received a written offer. Not during HR screening. Not during final interviews. The moment a written offer lands in your inbox, you are in the right window, the company has invested in you, and they want this to work. That's your leverage point.

How much to ask for: In Japan, a counter of 5–10% above the offered figure is culturally expected and normalized. Asking for 20–30% more is where relationships start to strain. If you have N2 or above, or bring specific bilingual skills the role requires, you're in the stronger end of that range.

A script that works in Japan's cultural context:

What this does right:

If they say the base is fixed: Don't push harder on base. Pivot instead:

Many Japanese companies offer ¥50,000–¥100,000/month in housing allowances that don't appear in the headline salary number. Asking here often yields more than asking for a base increase.

🇯🇵 今日の面接フレーズ (Today's Interview Phrase)

市場相場を参考に、給与について相談させていただけますか？ Shijō sōba wo sankou ni, kyūyo nitsuite sōdan sasete itadakemasu ka? "Referencing market rates, may I discuss the salary with you?"

Use this if the negotiation happens in Japanese. The phrase 市場相場を参考に (referencing market rates) frames the conversation as data-driven rather than personal, which is exactly the right register for Japan.

Common mistake: Not negotiating because you assume the offer is final. In Japan, the first offer is rarely the maximum, it's the starting point. Companies expect some discussion. Staying silent signals either that you're satisfied or that you don't know your market value. Neither is a great first impression.

Let's talk about what's actually happening in the market right now, because the headline numbers are promising but the detail matters.

The headline: Japan's 2025 spring shuntō negotiations delivered average base pay increases of 5.46%, the highest since the bubble economy of the early 1990s. That momentum is continuing into 2026, with projections sitting at 3.5–4.5% average increases across major employers.

What this actually means: Major Japanese corporations are raising wages because they have to. The labour market is tighter than it's been in a generation, unemployment sits at 2.6%, with 118 job openings for every 100 job seekers. The maths are simple: companies that don't raise wages are losing people to companies that do.

But here's where it gets uneven:

The wage growth is concentrated at larger, established companies participating in shuntō. Smaller domestic firms, regional employers, and companies outside the negotiation structure are raising wages more slowly or not at all. Meanwhile, international tech companies and global firms in Tokyo were already paying above domestic market rates and are raising further.

The result is a widening gap between:

For most readers of this newsletter, Track A is where your leverage is highest and your ceiling is highest. The ¥9.5M median for international software developers in Tokyo, versus ¥8.5M at Japanese-HQ companies, reflects a gap that only widens at senior levels.

The bilingual premium is real and measurable: If you have N2 or above Japanese ability and are working in a role that makes use of it, research consistently puts the bilingual wage premium at 15–30% above the equivalent monolingual role. If you're bilingual and not seeing that in your compensation, you have a concrete data point for your next negotiation.

One of the most practical things you can do before any salary conversation is anchor yourself to real numbers. Here's the current picture.

General benchmarks:

The national average annual salary for full-time employees in Japan is approximately ¥6.48 million in 2026. The average for foreign workers specifically sits lower, around ¥3.5–3.6 million, but this figure is dragged down significantly by lower-skilled visa categories. For professional and specialist roles, the numbers are meaningfully higher.

By sector (annual, Tokyo-based):

What the wage growth means for negotiation right now:

With 5%+ shuntō increases locked in across major employers, salary benchmarks from 12+ months ago are stale. If you're referencing numbers from 2024 salary guides, adjust them upward by at least 5% before using them as negotiation anchors. Companies know the market has moved, you should reference data that reflects it.

One thing to look beyond base salary:

Some Japanese companies, especially larger domestic firms, offer monthly housing allowances of ¥50,000–¥100,000 that don't appear in headline compensation figures. At ¥100,000/month, that's ¥1.2M/year in untaxed benefit not reflected in the advertised salary. Always ask about the full package before comparing offers.

Company: Rakuten Group, Inc.
HQ: Tokyo (Setagaya)
Category: Tech / E-commerce / Fintech / FinServ
English-Friendly: Yes — English is the mandatory corporate language since 2012 Hiring from Abroad: Yes — visa sponsorship available for qualifying roles

Rakuten is one of Japan's largest and most internationally recognised tech conglomerates, spanning e-commerce, fintech, travel, messaging (Viber), sports, and more. What makes them notable this week in particular is that they're the company that arguably started Japan's shift toward English as a corporate language: in 2012, CEO Hiroshi Mikitani mandated English as the official working language company-wide, a policy they call "Englishnization."

That decision, controversial at the time, has shaped their culture ever since. More than 80% of Rakuten's developers are foreign nationals, and internal meetings, documentation, and cross-team communication all happen in English by default.

What makes them worth watching:

Current open areas include backend and frontend engineering, data science, product management, and cybersecurity.

Application tip: Rakuten's hiring process tends to move quickly relative to traditional Japanese companies. They use structured technical interviews with coding assessments. Prepare for system design questions and be ready to discuss your approach to large-scale distributed systems, Rakuten's infrastructure operates at a scale most engineers won't have experienced before. Emphasising any experience with high-traffic platforms or marketplace architecture is a strong differentiator.

Careers page: global.rakuten.com/corp/careers