Author: Ryu Araki

  • Beyond the Expat Era: The Quiet Rise of Japan’s Permanent Emigrants

    For decades, the familiar Japanese face overseas was a corporate expat with an expected return date. That image feels increasingly incomplete.

    In 2015, Japan recorded 457,084 nationals living abroad as permanent residents. By October 2025, the figure had reached 588,486, up approximately 29%. It increased every year across that decade.

    Meanwhile, the long-term-stay category fell from 859,994 to 709,684, down approximately 17%.

    The Ministry of Foreign Affairs counts students and other temporary residents alongside corporate expatriates and their families, so the second figure is not a direct measure of expatriate assignments. “Permanent” means residence without a fixed end date, rather than a promise never to return. What the figures do show is a sustained change in the composition of Japanese communities abroad.

    I moved my family from Tokyo to Kuala Lumpur at the end of 2019. Our reasons were fairly practical: direct 6-hour flights back to Tokyo, English widely spoken, good food, warm weather, schooling options and a long-term visa that made the move feasible.

    None of that required us to think badly of Japan. We were choosing somewhere to live, with Japan still close enough to remain a big part of our lives.

    That experience shapes how I read these numbers.

    Japan has a long history of emigration. Earlier migration to Brazil included agricultural workers and families looking for livelihoods they struggled to secure at home. Economic hardship weighed heavily on many of those decisions. Those migrants exercised agency too, often under much tighter constraints.

    The households that interest me today have a different starting point. They could afford to stay in Japan. Their income, savings or investments give them the option of leaving.

    International marriage also belongs in this discussion. Research on Japanese women in Australia shows how marriage and settlement can develop out of an initial move for study, work or a different lifestyle. The sequence is not always “marry, then emigrate”. A temporary stay can become a life.

    That research helps explain one route to settlement, but it leaves me wondering about another: Japanese households moving together, without an overseas employer or a foreign spouse determining the destination.

    My suspicion is that this group is becoming more significant, particularly among people with substantial assets or income they can earn from anywhere. The residence statistics cannot confirm it. They contain neither the wealth breakdown nor the account of motives needed to establish a wealthy exodus. And the permanent-resident total is an accumulated population, not the number who departed that year.

    Still, the financial logic is easy to recognise.

    An investor does not generally need to live where the portfolio is invested. For someone in that position, the choice of home can turn on schools, housing, language, climate and the ease of getting back to Japan. A country that would be an awkward place to earn a local salary may be a very attractive place to live on income earned elsewhere.

    This is a different calculation from accepting a company posting. The household has to choose the destination, arrange the move and decide whether it is working.

    It can also keep much of its old life. Investments, business relationships, friendships and family ties do not disappear at departure. Having another base need not involve a final break with Japan.

    I understand the reasons to stay in Japan. Safety, convenience, food, infrastructure and cultural depth make Japan an exceptionally appealing place to live. Those qualities also make it somewhere people who have left continue to visit, and may eventually return to.

    But once a family has the financial means to live elsewhere, the comparison becomes real. The question extends beyond the next job or the next school year to where they want to spend a substantial part of their lives.

    The permanent-resident figures do not tell us how many people made that calculation. I think it deserves closer attention.

    We are used to asking where Japanese companies will expand overseas. I would like to know more about where Japanese families with a choice are deciding to settle—and what persuaded them.

    Sources