The Atarashift Blog
Insights for working in Japan
Guides, interviews, and honest advice for international talent building a career in Japan.
The Atarashift Blog
Guides, interviews, and honest advice for international talent building a career in Japan.
Leaving Japan? You can claim back up to five years of pension contributions. But claiming erases your entire Japanese pension record, permanently.
If you leave Japan before qualifying for a Japanese pension, you can claim back part of what you paid in. The Lump-sum Withdrawal Payment (脱退一時金) returns up to five years of contributions, and you have two years from leaving to apply.
There is a catch nobody mentions. Taking the payment erases your entire Japanese pension record, permanently and in every case. Twenty countries have a social security agreement with Japan. If yours is one, those months could otherwise count toward your pension at home.
So is this free money? No. It is a trade, and for some people it is a bad one. Here is how to work out which you are.
The Lump-sum Withdrawal Payment is a partial refund of pension contributions for foreign nationals who leave Japan before qualifying for a Japanese pension. It exists because Japan wants ten years of cover before it pays any old-age pension. Most foreign workers leave well before that.
Employees' Pension is the scheme you paid into through payroll at a company (厚生年金). National Pension is the one you paid directly as a student, self-employed person or job-seeker (国民年金). There is a separate lump sum for each, and one difference matters a lot:
Which one do you have? Most people reading this will have the first. If you had both, you claim both.
You must meet all four conditions:
Then the deadline: you must claim within two years of the date you stopped having an address in Japan.
This one catches people who plan to come back.
Say you leave with a re-entry permit but do not file a moving-out notification (転出届) at your city office. You then stay a National Pension insured person until that permit expires. While that is true, you cannot claim.
So file the moving-out notification before you go. If you submit the claim from inside Japan, time it to reach the Pension Service on or after your stated moving-out date. You must have no address in Japan on the day they receive it.
For the Employees' Pension, the calculation is:
Average standard remuneration × supply rate
Average standard remuneration is your monthly pay plus bonuses, averaged across your insured months. Bonuses count, so it usually sits above your monthly salary. Our data on what foreigners earn in Japan gives the ranges by industry.
The supply rate depends on how many months you were insured. For anyone whose last covered month is April 2021 or later:
| Months of coverage | Supply rate |
|---|---|
| 6 to under 12 | 0.5 |
| 12 to under 18 | 1.1 |
| 18 to under 24 | 1.6 |
| 24 to under 30 | 2.2 |
| 30 to under 36 | 2.7 |
| 36 to under 42 | 3.3 |
| 42 to under 48 | 3.8 |
| 48 to under 54 | 4.4 |
| 54 to under 60 | 4.9 |
| 60 or more | 5.5 |
Notably, the rate stops rising at 60 months. Staying a sixth year adds nothing to this payment.
The Pension Service gives the formula and the rates, but no worked yen examples. So we ran the formula across three lengths of service, for someone with an average standard remuneration of ¥350,000. That is roughly a ¥4.2 million salary once bonuses are folded in.
| Time insured | Supply rate | Gross payment | After 20.42% withholding |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 year | 1.1 | ¥385,000 | ¥306,393 |
| 3 years | 3.3 | ¥1,155,000 | ¥919,150 |
| 5 years | 5.5 | ¥1,925,000 | ¥1,531,915 |
These are illustrative. Specifically, the Pension Service uses your own average standard remuneration, not your headline salary.
This is the part most English-language guides skip.
Taking the lump sum means every month of Japanese pension coverage before your claim disappears. Not reduced, not paused. Gone, in every case, permanently.
In particular, that matters in two situations.
If you might come back to Japan. Japan pays an old-age pension once you reach 120 months of qualifying coverage. If you work here for four years, leave, claim the refund, then return years later, you restart from zero. Without claiming, those four years would still be sitting there.
If your country has a social security agreement with Japan. Twenty countries did as of March 2026:
Germany, United States, Belgium, France, Canada, Australia, Netherlands, Czechia, Spain, Ireland, Brazil, Switzerland, Hungary, India, Luxembourg, Philippines, Slovakia, Finland, Sweden, Austria.
If you hold one of those passports, your Japanese months can be totalised with your home system. That can help you qualify for a pension at home, or for a Japanese one. Claim the lump sum and those months vanish, so they can no longer be totalised.
In other words, the trade is a few hundred thousand yen now against contribution months that might matter for decades. Say you are from an agreement country and expect to keep working somewhere with a long qualifying period. Taking the cash is often the worse deal.
One more thing. If your qualifying period already reaches 120 months (10 years), you cannot claim the lump sum at all. You are entitled to a Japanese old-age pension instead, payable from abroad.
The Employees' Pension lump sum is taxed at 20.42% withheld at source, because you receive it as a non-resident. The National Pension version is not withheld.
You can reclaim most of that withholding, but the process has to start before you leave Japan.
The refund works because the lump sum counts as retirement income, which carries a large deduction. Most people get a large share of the 20.42% back.
That said, if you left without appointing a representative you can still file. Submit the notification together with the refund application. It is slower and harder to manage from abroad, which is why doing it before you go is worth the hour.
The claim itself is straightforward once the paperwork is together.
The form: "Claim for the Lump-sum Withdrawal Payments" (脱退一時金請求書), available from the Japan Pension Service.
What to attach:
Send it to the Japan Pension Service after your moving-out date. Payment usually takes several months, so do not expect it quickly.
If the claimant dies after filing but before payment, a family member who shared their livelihood can receive it. That covers a spouse, child, parent, grandchild, grandparent or sibling. That only applies if the form was already submitted.
The account must be in your name. Joint accounts and a friend's account are rejected. Keep a home-country account ready that accepts yen transfers.
Your family's status ends when yours does. If dependants are leaving with you, their residence status does not survive independently. See our guide to the Dependent visa.
Closing your Japanese bank account too early causes problems. As a result, you should coordinate the timing with your claim and your tax refund.
Your pension record affects permanent residency. If you are weighing a return to Japan later, unpaid or reset contributions can count against you. Our guide to permanent residency requirements covers how payment records are assessed.
This is separate from your tax situation on leaving. Residence tax is billed a year in arrears, so you may still owe it after departure. Our guide to income tax and social insurance explains the timing.
Understand what you paid in first. Our explainer on Shakai Hoken covers how health insurance and pension deductions work while you are employed.
Up to five years of contributions, if your last covered month was April 2021 or later. The payment is your average standard remuneration multiplied by a supply rate, which reaches 5.5 at 60 months of coverage. Someone averaging ¥350,000 with five years of coverage would receive about ¥1.93 million before tax.
Two years from the date you stop having an address in Japan. There is no extension, and unclaimed money is not recoverable afterwards.
The Employees' Pension lump sum has 20.42% withheld at source. The National Pension lump sum is not withheld. You can reclaim much of the 20.42% by appointing a tax representative in Japan and filing for selective taxation on retirement income.
No. Claiming permanently erases every month of Japanese pension coverage before the claim. If you return to Japan later, your qualifying period starts again from zero.
Often not. Twenty countries have agreements letting your Japanese months count toward a pension at home. Claiming the lump sum destroys those months, so weigh the cash now against what those contribution months are worth to your home pension.
Only if you filed a moving-out notification at your city office. Without it, you remain a National Pension insured person until the permit expires, and you cannot claim during that time.
Eligibility, the two-year deadline, the rate table and the month caps come from the Japan Pension Service's Lump-sum Withdrawal Payment leaflet (English edition). So does the tax treatment. It is the agency's own guidance for foreign nationals leaving Japan.
The same leaflet's notes section carries three further points: that claiming erases prior coverage, the 120-month threshold, and the agreement country list. The agreement list is current as of March 2026. The Japan Pension Service maintains an up-to-date list of agreement countries, worth checking before you decide.
Programme rules are also set out on the Japan Pension Service's page on the Lump-sum Withdrawal Payment system.
Worked examples are illustrative. Your payment depends on your own average standard remuneration, which includes standard bonuses and is calculated by the Pension Service.
This article is general information, not tax or pension advice. The decision to claim depends on your nationality, your plans and your home country's pension rules. Data retrieved 14 September 2026.
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