The Financial and Mental Leverage of Five Days of Paid Leave

What Japanese law puts on the employerfive days a yearFor anyone granted 10 working days or more, managers included

This page describes the Japanese system. Where a worker in Japan is granted 10 working days or more of annual paid leave, the employer must fix the timing of five of them and see that they are taken within a year of the reference date, under article 39(7) of the Labour Standards Act.

An employer who fails to do so faces a fine of up to 300,000 yen, counted as one offence per worker affected. Across calendar 2024 the national take-up rate was 66.9 per cent, short of the 70 per cent the government had set as its target.

Check first: does the five-day duty apply to you?

You were granted 10 working days or more of annual leave this year
Permanent, fixed-term or part-time makes no difference, and managers are included
You are looking at the year from the reference date (six months after hiring, then annually)
You have counted both the days you requested yourself and any days allocated under a planned-leave agreement
You know that leave taken by the hour cannot be deducted from the five

Five out of five and your employer is under the duty to designate. The statute limits itself to workers “where the number of days is ten working days or more” and says nothing about working patterns. Someone on four days a week reaches a grant of 10 days once they pass three years and six months of service, and joins the group at that point.

A beach chair set out under a coconut palm — The five days may be taken together or one at a time. The statute says “consecutive or divided”. Photo: Derk29 / CC BY-SA 4.0 (Wikimedia Commons)

Five steps to the number of days still owed

StepWhat it involves

STEP 1Find the reference dateThe first one is the day continuous service passes 6 months from hiring; after that it is the first day of each successive one-year period. It is not your start date.

STEP 2Check this year’s grantSix months of continuous service with attendance on 80 per cent or more of working days gives 10 working days. It then rises year by year to 11, 12, 14, 16, 18 and 20 (article 39(1) and 39(2)).

STEP 3See whether pro-rata appliesPro-rata grants apply where scheduled hours are under 30 a week and scheduled days are 4 or fewer a week, or 216 or fewer a year (Enforcement Regulation 24-3). The figures are in the table below.

STEP 4Subtract what has been takenDays you requested yourself and days allocated under a planned-leave agreement both come off the five (article 39(8)). Leave taken by the hour does not.

STEP 5Place the rest inside the yearThe employer must hear the worker’s view on timing and is required to endeavour to respect it (Enforcement Regulation 24-6). The leave register is kept for 3 years for the time being.

The deduction rule is what does the work here. Take three Fridays off on your own initiative and have two more allocated by a planned-leave agreement, and the five for that year are already accounted for. Take ten mornings or afternoons as hourly leave, on the other hand, and the count has not advanced by a single day. The Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare’s own site states it plainly: annual leave taken by the hour cannot be subtracted from the five days that must be taken.

The full picture: days granted by service and by days worked per week

Category6 months1y 6m2y 6m3y 6m4y 6m5y 6m6y 6m+

Standard worker (5+ days or 30+ hours a week)10 days11 days12 days14 days16 days18 days20 days

4 days a week (169–216 a year)7 days8 days9 days10 days12 days13 days15 days

3 days a week (121–168 a year)5 days6 days6 days8 days9 days10 days11 days

2 days a week (73–120 a year)3 days4 days4 days5 days6 days6 days7 days

1 day a week (48–72 a year)1 day2 days2 days2 days3 days3 days3 days

Wherever the table first reaches 10, that is the doorway into the five-day duty. Four days a week arrives there at three years and six months, three days a week at five years and six months. Two days a week or fewer tops out at 7 and 3 days even beyond six years and six months, so the duty never attaches: the leave is granted, but no obligation to make you take it arises.

The statutory table is written as additions rather than totals. Article 39(2) requires leave to be granted by adding, to the days under the preceding paragraph, the working days in the table: one day after one year, two after two, four after three, six after four, eight after five and ten after six or more. Add those to the 10 working days in article 39(1) and you get the top row above.

Where people trip up

Leave still expires after two years, even though wage claims moved to three

Article 115 of the Labour Standards Act sets five years for wage claims and two years for other claims. The right to annual leave is not a wage; it falls under “other claims”, so it is two. You can carry forward the previous year’s balance and no further, and days from two years ago are gone.

The confusion comes from the transitional measure in supplementary article 143(3), which sets three years, for the time being, for claims to wages other than retirement allowances. It does not reach annual leave. Hearing that the limitation on wages became three years and concluding that leave can now be carried for three leaves you a year out. The ministry’s own leaflet states that the limitation on annual leave claims is two years and that leave not taken in the previous year must be granted in the following one.

Planned leave counts towards the five; hourly leave does not

Planned leave, where dates are allocated in advance under a labour-management agreement, is permitted by article 39(6) for “the part exceeding five days” of the leave entitlement. Someone holding 20 days can have up to 15 placed on a schedule, with at least five left for them to request themselves. Days given as planned leave have to be deducted from the five the employer must designate.

Some 40.8 per cent of firms operate such a scheme, and the commonest allocation is five to six days, at 71.6 per cent of those. The usual pattern is a block over the summer or the New Year. If your employer runs one, assume most of your five are already spoken for. Where only a day or two are genuinely yours to move, something self-contained and close to home — 72 hours on the Shonan coast, for instance — fits the gap better than anything requiring a flight.

Hourly leave sits outside all of this. Because it cannot be deducted from the five, stacking up half-days and odd hours leaves the employer’s obligation exactly where it was.

“Standard daily remuneration” is not a statutory term, and option three needs an agreement

Article 39(9) sets out three ways of working out the pay for a day of leave: the average wage; the ordinary wage payable for working the scheduled hours; or one thirtieth of the standard monthly remuneration defined in article 40(1) of the Health Insurance Act. The first two need only be set down in the work rules or something equivalent.

The third is built differently. Where it is agreed in writing with the trade union representing a majority of workers, or with a representative of the majority, that method “must” be used. Without the agreement it is unavailable; with it, the first two are displaced. The rounding is statutory too: under 5 yen is dropped, and 5 yen up to 10 yen is rounded up to 10.

In practice people say “standard daily remuneration”, but no such term appears in the statute. What exists is “an amount equivalent to one thirtieth of the standard monthly remuneration”. Reading a set of work rules, it is worth establishing which of the three methods that shorthand refers to.

What happens to an employer who does not, and to a worker who lets it lapse

For the employer it is a fine. Article 120(i) covers a breach of article 39(7), at up to 300,000 yen. The ministry’s leaflet goes as far as the counting rule: a breach attracting the penalty is treated as one offence per worker affected. The same passage continues that in labour-standards inspections the policy is, as a rule, to guide employers carefully towards correction rather than to prosecute. Fines do not arrive out of nowhere.

Breaches of article 39 other than paragraph 7 — refusing leave at the time the worker asked for it, for example — fall under article 119(i) and are heavier: up to six months of imprisonment or a fine of up to 300,000 yen. That is the provision where the penal code reform in force from 1 June 2025 replaced “imprisonment with labour” with a single custodial penalty, and the February 2023 edition of the ministry’s leaflet still carries the old wording. Working from an outdated copy puts that one word wrong.

For the worker the loss is an amount of money. Calculated by the third method, a day of leave pays the standard monthly remuneration divided by 30 with the rounding applied. Five days line up like this.

Standard monthly remunerationOne thirtieth (after rounding)Five days

JPY 220,000JPY 7,330JPY 36,650

JPY 260,000JPY 8,670JPY 43,350

JPY 320,000JPY 10,670JPY 53,350

JPY 410,000JPY 13,670JPY 68,350

That is the pay for days taken, not a cash value that comes back for days left unused. Days past the two-year limitation simply disappear.

The take-up figures are published. The 2025 General Survey on Working Conditions, released on 19 December 2025, sampled 6,448 private firms with 30 or more regular employees and drew 3,820 valid responses. Over calendar 2024, workers were granted an average of 18.1 days and took 12.1, a rate of 66.9 per cent — the highest on all three measures since 1984. By industry, electricity, gas, heat supply and water led at 75.2 per cent and accommodation and food services trailed at 50.7. By size, firms of 1,000 or more reached 69.0 per cent against 64.9 for those of 30 to 99, a gap of 4.1 points.

Granted 18.1 and taken 12.1 leaves an average of six days a year unused. The five-day duty is the mechanism that pushes five of those six out through the institution rather than the individual. What happens to the sixth is a question of how you plan. Holding it back until the end of the leave year is the version I would avoid: with no use decided for it, it rolls forward and then lapses.

Five days laid Monday to Friday collect the weekends on either side and become nine. Pick a week with a Monday public holiday and four days buy the same length. Going abroad puts a visa or an entry filing ahead of everything else in the sequence — India’s e-Visa closes four days before arrival, so that deadline is settled before the dates are. And if the plan runs on award tickets, seat availability decides the month before your leave does; how the earning and the issuing fit together is in what 100,000 miles actually buys.

Common questions: taking it in a block, carrying it over, part-time work

Do the five days have to be consecutive?

No. Article 39(1) requires the employer to grant “ten working days of paid leave, consecutive or divided”, so division is built in. Five single days satisfy the duty. Assembling a nine-day break is a choice about how you rest, not something the statute asks for.

How many days can be carried over?

The previous year’s only. Article 115 puts the limitation on leave claims at two years, so days from two years back expire. Someone with six years and six months of service, granted 20 days, can hold up to 40 by adding last year’s balance — and that is the ceiling; nothing accumulates beyond it.

Does the five-day duty cover a part-timer working three days a week?

It does once service passes five years and six months, because that is where the pro-rata table reaches 10 days for a three-day week (10 at five years and six months, 11 from six years and six months). A four-day week reaches 10 at three years and six months and is covered from there. Two days a week or fewer tops out at 7 and 3 days, so the duty never arises.

SOURCES

e-Gov — Labour Standards Act (articles 39, 115, 119, 120 and supplementary article 143)↗Checked on 2026-09-14
e-Gov — Labour Standards Act Enforcement Regulations (24-3, 24-5 to 24-7, supplementary 71)↗Checked on 2026-09-14
MHLW — guide to the five days of annual leave that must be taken (February 2023, PDF)↗Checked on 2026-09-14
MHLW — annual leave take-up site, pages for workers↗Checked on 2026-09-14
MHLW — General Survey on Working Conditions 2025, summary of results (PDF)↗Checked on 2026-09-14

Source: the reference block above. General explanation of the Japanese system only, not advice on an individual case / Photos: Akiyoshi Matsuoka and Derk29, CC BY-SA 4.0 (Wikimedia Commons) / Checked on 2026-09-14 / Featured image: Soramimi, CC BY-SA 4.0 (Wikimedia Commons)