Short-Term Business and Tourist Multiple-Entry Visas: the 180-Day Limit

The short-term business visa (the 3-month "business purposes" type) is intended for business trips, not for residing in Japan for more than 180 days per year; it is used heavily in practice, including in gray-area schemes to bring in "workers" disguised as business visitors — community members note increasingly frequent refusals and tightened scrutiny. The Multiple-Entry Short-Term Stay visa for Russian citizens, issued under "The Eight-Point Cooperation Plan," has been suspended; an ordinary short-term business multiple-entry visa may still be issued at other consulates (for example, Moscow), but not in Vladivostok, where only a tourist visa is available. Long-term tourist/business multiple-entry visas allow staying in Japan for up to 90 days twice a year (up to 180 days total), without residency registration or renting property — an option for running a business "outside Japan's jurisdiction" on repeated short trips. A 3-year tourist visa held by some applicants is multiple-entry but capped at 30 days per entry (a "visa run"), with a real combined annual limit of roughly 180 days. A tourist visa does not allow opening a company or a bank account, since it lacks a hanko registration, resident registration (住民票), or residence card (在留カード). Sources: https://www.mofa.go.jp/mofaj/toko/visa/tanki/multipleentry.html — Official MOFA page on short-term multiple-entry visas (unavailable at the time this was recorded).