Working as a nurse in Japan
What official sources say about working as a nurse in Japan: how foreign qualifications are recognised.
Nurse is a regulated profession in Japan. Foreign qualifications go through: The applicant submits documents for individual review against Japanese nursing education criteria. If recognised, the applicant may sit the Japanese nurse national exam; the foreign licence itself is not converted directly into a Japanese licence.
- Regulation
- Regulated
- Recognition route
- The applicant submits documents for individual review against Japanese nursing education criteria. If recognised, the applicant may sit the Japanese nurse national exam; the foreign licence itself is not converted directly into a Japanese licence.
Regulation and recognition
Nurse is a regulated profession in Japan.
- Recognition route
- The applicant submits documents for individual review against Japanese nursing education criteria. If recognised, the applicant may sit the Japanese nurse national exam; the foreign licence itself is not converted directly into a Japanese licence.
- Recognition authority
- MHLW handles exam-eligibility recognition for foreign-trained or foreign-licensed registered nurses.
- Language requirement
- For foreign nurse-school graduates/licence holders who did not graduate from Japanese junior and senior high schools, the exam-eligibility criteria require JLPT N1.
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APA citation
ImmigrationDB. (2026, October 16). Nurse in Japan: recognition [ImmigrationDB compilation; version e1d12c97fbcc3a2a71bdee2b66ded964]. ImmigrationDB. https://immigrationdb.com/move-as/nurse/japan/ Retrieved 2026-10-16. Compilation license: CC BY 4.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/BibTeX citation
@misc{immigrationdb_immigrationdb_nurse-in-japan-recognition_148d4c22cc6c,
author = {ImmigrationDB},
title = {Nurse in Japan: recognition},
publisher = {ImmigrationDB},
year = {2026},
date = {2026-10-16},
version = {e1d12c97fbcc3a2a71bdee2b66ded964},
url = {https://immigrationdb.com/move-as/nurse/japan/},
note = {Retrieved 2026-10-16. ImmigrationDB compilation. Compilation license: CC BY 4.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/},
}Markdown citation
[Nurse in Japan: recognition](https://immigrationdb.com/move-as/nurse/japan/) — ImmigrationDB; ImmigrationDB; version e1d12c97fbcc3a2a71bdee2b66ded964; retrieved 2026-10-16; built 2026-10-16.This citation identifies the ImmigrationDB compilation/page. Underlying source publishers and datasets retain their own terms; inspect the Sources section and cite those records separately. View the underlying source records.