Employer-Change Notification to Immigration

Every employer change sends a 14-day filing directly to the Immigration Services Agency, and the duty sits on the resident, not the company.¹² The ward office never sees this paperwork, and the physical residence card never changes: the database behind it does.¹³

Confirm current details with official sources

Procedures, fees, and requirements can change. Confirm current details at the Immigration Services Agency site. This article is general information, not legal or immigration advice; for your specific case, consult a licensed gyoseishoshi or immigration lawyer.

Overview

This article is for holders of employer-tied work statuses who leave a job, start a new one, or both.¹ It covers the ISA-direct routing, the leaving and joining filings, the three filing routes, and what a missed filing costs at renewal.¹³⁴

The deep treatment of in-group edge cases (mergers, secondments, dual contracts) lives in the work-employment lane's dedicated notification article. This companion stays on routing, the record-vs-card split, and renewal stakes.⁴

What you file, and where it goes

Article 19-16 of the Immigration Control Act places the notification duty on the resident.² Reportable events are changes to the contracting organization's name or address, its dissolution, the end of a contract, and the conclusion of a new contract.¹

The filing goes directly to ISA (as of 2026-09).¹ It is never filed at the ward office, and no municipal counter participates.³ Mailed filings travel to a single receiving desk: the Tokyo Regional Immigration Services Bureau notification desk, with a copy of the residence card in an envelope marked "届出書在中" or "NOTIFICATION ENCLOSED" (as of 2026-09).¹³

Covered statuses include Highly Skilled Professional 1 and 2, Researcher, Engineer/Specialist in Humanities/International Services, Nursing Care, contracted Entertainer, Skilled Labor, and Specified Skilled Worker.¹

Leaving counts as one filing, joining as another

Ending a contract and concluding a new one each start their own 14-day clock on the event date.³ A resident who resigns with no next job lined up still files the leaving notification within 14 days; the joining filing follows only when a new contract is actually concluded.³

Future events cannot be reported in advance.³ Where timing allows both events to be reported together, a combined leaving-plus-joining reference form exists.¹

The card does not change; the record does

No new residence card is issued on an employer change.¹³ The card number keys the filing, the ISA database absorbs it, and the plastic in the wallet stays exactly as it was.¹ Residents expecting a reissue or a back-side stamp (as with address changes) should reset that expectation: this procedure is invisible on the card by design.³

The three filing routes

ISA offers three routes, with the online path the most convenient (as of 2026-09; confirm current details with the Immigration Services Agency).¹ The Foreign Resident Information System accepts electronic filings around the clock and keeps a filing history that proves most useful at extension time.¹⁴ No supporting documents are required for electronic filing, and the paper reference forms are not needed there.¹

Counter filing at the competent regional bureau presents the residence card plus the notification form; reception hours vary by office (as of 2026-09).¹ Mail filing encloses the form plus a card copy, sent traceably since no receipt confirmation is returned.¹

Route	What to submit	Notes
Online portal	Electronic notification, card number	24-hour filing, history lookup (as of 2026-09)1
Regional bureau counter	Residence card plus notification form	Hours vary by office (as of 2026-09)1
Mail to Tokyo desk	Form plus card copy, red-marked envelope	Use traceable sending (as of 2026-09)1

The 所属（契約）機関に関する届出 (shozoku (keiyaku) kikan ni kansuru todokede, "notification concerning the affiliated (contracting) organization") is the formal name on the forms.¹

Keep the filing proof with the renewal folder

The online completion record, a copy of the filed form, or the postal dispatch record becomes renewal evidence later (as of 2026-09).⁴ Filing takes minutes; proving it years later without the record takes much longer.⁴

What a missed filing costs at renewal

ISA prescribes penalties for failure to notify or false notification, and later residence applications may be disadvantaged where the record shows gaps.³ At the next extension, officers may review employment history against notification-record consistency.⁴

The classic failure pattern is assumption: the resident believes the employer's onboarding covered immigration, while the employer filed only its own separate Hello Work report.⁴ Responsibility for the ISA filing rests on the resident in every case.³⁴

Good to know

Your employer's Hello Work report does not cover you

The employer-side foreign-employment report to Hello Work and the resident-side affiliation notification are separate duties on separate parties.⁴ Confirm the employer's procedure with HR while retaining the immigration filing record separately.⁴

File late rather than not at all, and never backdate

ISA instructs late filers to report promptly with the true facts and dates.³ Silence compounds the breach, and a false date adds a false-notification problem to the late one.³

A same-company transfer with unchanged contracting party needs no filing

Branch-office moves and pure contract-term changes leave the contracting party unchanged, so no notification is owed.³ Mergers, secondments, and dual contracts follow finer succession logic, covered in the work-employment lane's deep article.⁴

See also

• Notifying Immigration of the Employer Change
• Tenshoku Procedure: The Job-Change Sequence
• Engineer/Humanities/International Services Visa
• Resignation in Japan: The Employee-Side Notice and the Hold-Up Patterns
• Japan Job Offer Letter and Work Rules (Shugyo Kisoku)
• Residence Card Renewal

References

Footnotes

1. Immigration Services Agency. "Notification concerning a contracting organization" procedure page (Japanese). https://www.moj.go.jp/isa/applications/procedures/nyuukokukanri10_00015.html ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³ ↩¹⁴ ↩¹⁵ ↩¹⁶ ↩¹⁷ ↩¹⁸ ↩¹⁹ ↩²⁰

2. Japanese Law Translation (Ministry of Justice). "Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Act," Art 19-16 (Notification Relating to the Organization of Affiliation). https://www.japaneselawtranslation.go.jp/en/laws/view/3624/en ↩ ↩²

3. Immigration Services Agency. "Q&A on notifications regarding affiliated organizations" (Japanese). https://www.moj.go.jp/isa/applications/procedures/shozokunikansuru_00001.html ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³ ↩¹⁴

4. Yixin International Legal Affairs Gyoseishoshi Office. "Changed or Left a Job in Japan? The 14-Day Immigration Notification." Reviewed 2026-08-27. https://yx-law.com/en/column/job-change-immigration-notification ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹