Overtime, Working Hours, and the 36-Agreement

Overtime, Working Hours, and the 36-Agreement sets the legal frame every employee in Japan works inside.¹² Once you know the 8-hour and 40-hour ceiling, the agreement that permits exceptions, and the caps and premiums that constrain those exceptions, most overtime disputes become reading exercises rather than mysteries.

Confirm current details with official sources

Procedures, fees, and requirements can change. Confirm current details at the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (MHLW). This article is general information, not legal, tax, or immigration advice; for your specific case, consult a licensed bengoshi (lawyer) or shakai hoken roumushi (labor and social security attorney) for contested overtime, unpaid-wage claims, or dismissal-linked disputes.

Overview

This article is for all employees working in Japan, on any work-permitting status.³ The Labor Standards Act applies irrespective of nationality, and Article 3 bars differential treatment on wages or hours by reason of nationality.¹³

The rules below are national law, so there is no ward or municipal variance to chase.¹ What varies company to company is what your employer's own filed agreement and work rules set within the statutory ceiling.

The Statutory Ceiling: 8 Hours a Day, 40 Hours a Week

Article 32 caps ordinary working time at 40 hours per week and 8 hours per day, excluding breaks.¹ Article 34 adds the break floor: at least 45 minutes for shifts over 6 hours, and at least one hour for shifts over 8 hours.¹²

Article 35 requires at least one day off per week, or at least four days off per four-week period.¹² A small-business exception allows up to 44 hours per week in specified retail, service, and entertainment workplaces with fewer than 10 regular employees, but most readers will never meet it.²

What counts as overtime and holiday work

Overtime means work beyond the statutory limits, not merely beyond a shorter contract schedule.²⁴ If your contract sets 7 hours a day, the eighth hour matters for pay and workplace rules, but the 36-agreement question starts at the statutory line.

Holiday work means work on a statutory day off under Article 35.¹² Night work means work between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m.² The 法定労働時間 (hotei rodo jikan, "statutory working hours") label refers to the 8-hour and 40-hour figures, while 法定休日 (hotei kyujitsu, "statutory day off") refers to the Article 35 rest day.¹

The 36-Agreement: What It Is and How It Works

The 三六協定 (saburoku kyotei, "36 agreement") is the Article 36 labor-management agreement that is the legal precondition for overtime or holiday work.¹² Article 36(1) allows extended hours or work on days off only where the employer has concluded a written agreement with the majority union, or the majority worker representative where no union exists, and filed notice with the Labor Standards Inspection Office.¹

The agreement must state the covered worker scope, the one-year applicable period, the cases permitting extension, and the daily, monthly, and annual extension figures.¹ Requiring overtime beyond statutory limits without a concluded and filed agreement is unlawful.²

A valid worker representative must be democratically elected with majority support and must not be a manager or supervisor under Article 41.⁵ The election must cover all workers, including part-time, contract, and foreign staff.⁵

How to check your employer's agreement

Ask HR for the filed agreement and read its monthly and annual caps.⁵ The employer must make the agreement known to workers, including by display or ready availability.⁴⁵

Agreements are filed with the chief of the competent Labor Standards Inspection Office, and electronic filing is available.²⁵ If HR cannot produce the document, that gap is itself a compliance signal worth noting.

Ask for the caps before signing or early in month one

Companies with healthy overtime cultures can state their 36-agreement caps specifically and show the filed document.⁵ Vague answers about limits tell you something about how the workplace operates.

Overtime Caps Under the Post-2019 Rules

The Work Style Reform amendment made the caps legally binding from April 2019 for large employers and April 2020 for small and medium enterprises.²⁴ The ordinary caps have not moved since: 45 hours of overtime per month and 360 hours per year.¹²

Limit	Cap
Standard monthly cap	45 hours/month12
Standard annual cap	360 hours/year12
Absolute annual ceiling with special clause	Under 720 hours/year12
Single-month combined overtime plus holiday work	Under 100 hours12
Multi-month average over any 2 to 6 consecutive months	80 hours/month or less12
Months per year above 45 hours	Maximum 6 months12

The special-circumstances clause and its hard ceilings

A special clause may allow temporary extension beyond 45 hours per month only for an ordinarily unforeseeable, significant workload increase.¹² Even then, every hard ceiling above still applies: the under-100-hour single month, the 80-hour rolling average, the under-720-hour year, and the 6-month frequency limit.¹²

Overtime Premium Pay Rates

Article 37 requires premium wages for overtime, holiday, and night work at legally set minimum rates.¹² Company rules or a collective agreement may set higher rates, but they cannot set lower ones.²

Standard overtime within 60 hours a month carries at least a 25 percent premium.¹² Work on a statutory day off carries at least a 35 percent premium.¹² Night work between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m. carries at least a 25 percent premium.²

Overtime beyond 60 hours in a single month carries at least a 50 percent premium.²⁶ Large firms have carried this rate since 2010, and small and medium enterprises joined from April 1, 2023.⁶ Holiday work hours do not count toward the 60-hour threshold.⁶

Work type	Minimum premium
Overtime within 60 hours/month	+25%12
Overtime beyond 60 hours/month	+50%26
Statutory holiday work	+35%12
Night work, 10 p.m. to 5 a.m.	+25%2
Overtime at night, within 60h band	+50%24
Overtime at night, beyond 60h band	+75%24
Holiday work at night	+60%24

Employers may offer paid leave in place of the incremental portion above 25 percent for the over-60-hour band, but only where a labor-management agreement so provides.²⁴ The 割増賃金 (warimashi chingin, "premium wages") label refers to these Article 37 increased rates.¹²

How stacked premiums combine

Premiums stack additively rather than overlapping.²⁴ Overtime at night totals 50 percent within the 60-hour band and 75 percent beyond it, while holiday work at night totals 60 percent.²⁴

MHLW's worked example makes the arithmetic concrete: overtime at night on a 1,200 yen hourly base is paid at 1.5x, or 1,800 yen per hour.³

Contract hours below the statutory line use a different test

Work beyond your contracted hours but inside the statutory 8-hour and 40-hour frame is not statutory overtime for the 25 percent floor.⁵ The clean legal floor for the premium is work beyond the statutory limit itself.

Service Overtime and Your Working-Hour Records

The サービス残業 (sabisu zangyo, "service overtime") pattern means overtime hours worked but neither reported nor compensated, often under cultural pressure rather than explicit orders.⁷⁸ It is unreported, unpaid overtime given to the company, and guidance treats it as a violation to eliminate rather than dedication to tolerate.⁷⁸

Working time is judged by whether you are under the employer's direction, not only by what the timecard says.⁸ Post-clock-out emails, waiting under instruction, and ordered tasks can count as working time even after you have clocked out.⁸

Employers must track hours by objective means such as timecards or PC logs, and self-reporting alone requires verification measures.² Keep your own evidence alongside the company system: login and logout records, after-hours messages, a daily log of tasks and times, and transit records.⁵⁹

If the gap persists, workers can report suspected violations to the Labor Standards Inspection Office and seek free consultation or mediation at Labor Bureau consultation corners, including multilingual hotlines.⁹ Unpaid-wage claims are subject to a three-year limitation period for work after April 2020, measured from each payday, so early documentation matters.⁹⁸

Unpaid overtime has a filing clock attached

The three-year limitation runs from each monthly payday, so older months expire first.⁹⁸ Start the personal log on the first day you notice the gap rather than waiting for the dispute to ripen.

Good to know

A filed agreement does not authorize unlimited overtime

A concluded and filed 36-agreement permits overtime only within its figures and the statutory ceilings.¹² Chronic operation at special-clause levels without genuinely temporary grounds misuses the clause, even when the paperwork exists.

The single-month ceiling combines overtime and holiday work

The under-100-hour single-month test adds overtime and holiday-work hours together.¹² A heavy holiday-work month can breach the ceiling even when pure overtime looks compliant on its own.

Holiday hours do not build toward the 50 percent band

Hours on statutory holidays earn the 35 percent holiday premium but do not accumulate toward the 60-hour trigger for the 50 percent overtime rate.⁶ Readers who mix the two categories will misjudge which rate their longest months attract.

Service overtime is correctable on inspection

Sabisu zangyo is not a norm to accept once you recognize it.⁷⁸ Inspectors can order correction in service-overtime cases, and Labor Bureaus offer mediation-type procedures for some disputes, so a documented record can move from payslip fix to formal remedy.⁹⁸

See also

• Reading a Japanese Employment Contract
• Japan Job Offer Letter and Work Rules (Shugyo Kisoku)
• Paid Leave (Yukyu-Kyuka) and How It's Taken
• The Labor Bureau (Rodo-Kijun-Kantokusho)
• Compensation Components Beyond Base Salary
• Employment-Dispute Paths

References

Footnotes

1. Japanese Law Translation (Ministry of Justice). "Labor Standards Act" (労働基準法), Act No. 49 of 1947, Last Version Act No. 71 of 2018. https://www.japaneselawtranslation.go.jp/en/laws/view/3567/en ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³ ↩¹⁴ ↩¹⁵ ↩¹⁶ ↩¹⁷ ↩¹⁸ ↩¹⁹ ↩²⁰ ↩²¹ ↩²² ↩²³ ↩²⁴ ↩²⁵ ↩²⁶ ↩²⁷ ↩²⁸

2. JETRO. "4.5 Legislation on working hours, breaks and days off", Section 4 Human Resource Management, Setting Up Business in Japan. https://www.jetro.go.jp/en/invest/setting_up/section4/page5.html ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³ ↩¹⁴ ↩¹⁵ ↩¹⁶ ↩¹⁷ ↩¹⁸ ↩¹⁹ ↩²⁰ ↩²¹ ↩²² ↩²³ ↩²⁴ ↩²⁵ ↩²⁶ ↩²⁷ ↩²⁸ ↩²⁹ ↩³⁰ ↩³¹ ↩³² ↩³³ ↩³⁴ ↩³⁵ ↩³⁶ ↩³⁷ ↩³⁸ ↩³⁹ ↩⁴⁰

3. Japan Harbor. "Working hours in Japan: the 8-hour rule and overtime" (updated 2026-07-13, citing MHLW Working Conditions Handbook for Foreign Nationals). https://japanharbor.com/working/working-hours ↩ ↩² ↩³

4. TokyoDev, Rebecca Callahan. "Overtime in Japan Explained: Laws, Pay Rates, and Fixed Overtime (Minashi Zangyou)". https://www.tokyodev.com/articles/overtime-in-japan-laws-pay-rates-and-fixed-overtime ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹

5. Hello World Japan, Shih-Wen Su. "Japan 36 Agreement Overtime Law: What Foreign Workers Need to Know" (2026-04-06, updated 2026-07-20). https://helloworldjapan.com/en/articles/japan-36-agreement-overtime-engineer-guide ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸

6. HLS Global Japan. "Amendment to Overtime Premium Rates" (2023-05-29). https://hls-global.jp/en/2023/05/29/amendment-to-overtime-premium-rates/ ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵

7. Japan Intercultural Consulting, Rochelle Kopp. "Over worked and underpaid Japanese employees feel the burden of sabisu zangyo" (2020-07-15). https://japanintercultural.com/free-resources/articles/over-worked-and-underpaid-japanese-employees-feel-the-burden-of-sabisu-zangyo/ ↩ ↩² ↩³

8. Navigator Japan, Aki. "Overtime in Japan 2026: What Is Legal, What Is Not, and How to Protect Yourself" (updated 2026-04-02). https://www.navigatorjapan.com/blog-2-1/overtime-in-japan-whats-legal-whats-not-and-how-to-protect-yourself ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸

9. TreeGlobalPartners, Sakurai Yuki. "Unpaid Overtime in Japan: How Foreign Workers Can Claim What They Are Owed" (2026-04-23). https://treeglobalpartners.com/en/articles/unpaid-overtime-how-to-claim/ ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵