August 2026

A standard non-compete clause, the kind copied out of a US or UK employment template, does very little in Japan. Courts start from the assumption that restricting someone’s ability to work is the problem, not the solution. The IP ownership question has a real answer in Japan, who owns the code, the invention, the work

Code, designs, and inventions built in Japan don’t automatically belong to the company that benefits from them, and the rules for who does own them are different for copyright and patents The scenario below is a composite, illustrative example, not a specific case. The arrangement A US software company hires a Japan country manager through

What “permanent establishment” means, and how Japanese law defines when it applies Most of the conversation around hiring in Japan through an EOR focuses on employment law: who directs the worker, who’s licensed to supply labor, what happens if the relationship ends. There’s a separate question that gets far less attention and can carry a

The most difficult aspect of the EOR experience in Japan. Do your research so you know what the guard rails are and how to push back on advice you are given. This is the question that comes up in almost every conversation with an overseas company hiring in Japan for the first time. The short

Harder to stay permanently. Easier to arrive as top talent. Two government documents published months apart, from two different offices, tell a more complete story than either does alone. One is the immigration guideline revision we’ve covered before: a tighter, income- and pension-tested path to permanent residency. The other surfaced in an unlikely place —

A checklist for employers October 1, 2026 is the effective date for five separate regulatory changes, arriving from three different ministries under three different statutes, for reasons that have nothing to do with each other. That’s not unusual — Japan clusters a lot of administrative effective dates at the start of the second half of

Japan has required equal pay for dispatched workers since 2020. What changes on October 1, 2026 isn’t the underlying rule, it’s how hard that rule is enforced, and who has to actively tell the worker it exists. A revised government guideline sharpens exactly which allowances and bonuses count, and a new disclosure duty means a

How a foreign company handles Japan’s consumption tax tells you almost everything about whether it can be trusted to employ your people here. When you compare Employer of Record providers in Japan, they can look interchangeable on paper. Similar service lists, similar promises, a monthly fee per employee. The real difference rarely shows up in