The country’s Immigration Services Agency suspended new applications under the Specified Skilled Worker (SSW) program’s Type 1 visa for food service on April 13.
According to the agency, about 46,000 foreign nationals were working in Japanese restaurants under the program at the end of February, near the 50,000 cap set for the sector through March 2029. The agency had projected the limit would be reached as early as May, and announced the suspension on March 27.
Japan launched the SSW program in 2019 to bring foreign workers into industries that cannot recruit enough staff domestically, a response to its aging population and shrinking workforce. Applicants must pass skills assessments and Japanese-language tests.
Type 1 status, used widely in restaurants, lets holders work for up to five years but bars them from bringing family members. Type 2, which requires higher-level skills, allows indefinite renewal and family sponsorship. Only Type 1 holders count against the sector caps.
The food service quota of 50,000 is far smaller than the caps for comparable sectors that depend on foreign labor. The Yomiuri Shimbun has reported quotas of 133,500 for food and beverage manufacturing and 126,900 for nursing care.
Demand, meanwhile, has surged. Immigration Services Agency data shows the number of foreign workers in Japan’s food service sector has more than tripled since the end of 2023, as international tourism rebounded after the pandemic.
A sushi chef at a restaurant in Tokyo, Japan. Photo by Pexels |
The freeze has caught restaurant operators off guard. A ramen chain with around 200 outlets nationwide told NHK that roughly 75 of its workers, about a quarter of its full-time staff, held SSW visas in kitchen and serving roles. The chain rushed to hire 20 more foreign workers before the suspension took effect, as it had been planning to open new outlets this fiscal year, and had already sent job offers to international graduates it intended to hire under the same visa. With those plans upended, it is weighing a shift to higher-skilled visa categories and training such workers for management roles.
Hang, a Vietnamese employee at one of the chain’s outlets in Chiba Prefecture, told NHK she first came to Japan about a decade ago under the Technical Intern Training Program, working at a food processing plant in Aichi Prefecture. She returned in 2022 on an SSW visa for better pay, and said restaurant work draws many Vietnamese workers because it is concentrated in big cities and offers more chances to use Japanese than factory jobs.
Mos Food Services, which operates the Mos Burger chain, has been helping people in Vietnam prepare SSW applications to staff its restaurants in Japan, Kyodo News reported.
The company said the sudden policy shift raised concerns about disruption to its recruitment pipeline. Vietnamese nationals are the largest single group in the SSW program, making up 44.2% of all visa holders as of mid-2025, according to the Immigration Services Agency.
The Japan Foodservice Association, which represents around 400 companies, warned that the suspension could force restaurants to delay new openings, cut operating hours, and compete more aggressively for the foreign workers already in the country, Kyodo News reported.
The association is preparing to ask the government to raise the 50,000 cap. The Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, which oversees the food industry, has signaled it wants restaurants to do more to recruit domestic workers before any increase is considered.
Yu Korekawa, an expert on demographics and migration at Japan’s National Institute of Population and Social Security Research, told NHK that demand for restaurant labor had grown faster than expected as international tourism rebounded after the pandemic, leaving the cap out of step with reality.
He argued the government had underestimated how many workers the sector would need, and said Japan should treat the figure as an adjustable reference point rather than a hard ceiling, building a more flexible system for accepting foreign labor.
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