Ikusei Shuro Agriculture & Fisheries 2027: Where Labour Law Stops

If a recruiter or an agency has offered you farm work or fishing work in Japan, you are looking at two of the 19 sectors covered by Ikusei Shuro, the status replacing the Technical Intern Training Programme on 1 April 2027 — and at the two where Japanese labour law behaves differently from everywhere else. That difference will not appear in the job advert.

This guide covers which legal protections do and do not reach you on a farm in Ibaraki, a dairy in Hokkaido or a boat off Hiroshima. We publish no pay figures: we have no primary wage data here, and where rules are unwritten we say so.

What the two sectors cover, and how many people Japan will accept

Both run on sector policies adopted by Cabinet decision on 23 January 2026. Agriculture is allotted up to 99,600 people across FY2024 to FY2028, of which 73,300 are Specified Skilled Worker No.1 and 26,300 are Ikusei Shuro in the two years from FY2027 (Annex 13, Cabinet decision of 23 January 2026). Fisheries is far smaller: 17,400 in total, split 14,800 and 2,600 (Annex 14, Cabinet decision of 23 January 2026). Both are ceilings to the end of FY2028 — caps, not promises of jobs. The older 78,000 and 17,000 figures come from the March 2024 policy, and the agency’s own agriculture page still showed 78,000 (ISA agriculture sector page, checked 20 July 2026).

Each sector has two official work categories: crop farming and livestock farming; fishery and aquaculture. Ikusei Shuro subdivides agriculture into six main skills — greenhouse horticulture, rice and field cropping, fruit growing, pig farming, poultry and cattle (Annex 13, 23 January 2026). You can also be asked to do related work incidentally where Japanese staff do it too; the policy names processing, transport, sales and snow clearing in winter. If that quietly becomes your main job, raise it.

The dispatch exception: only these two sectors let a third company employ you

This is the most under-explained fact about farm and fishing work in Japan. Of the 19 sectors, 17 require direct employment, aviation and railways adding only secondment; agriculture and fisheries alone permit labour dispatch (haken), and the fisheries policy expressly includes seafarer dispatch (sector-specific operation policies, 23 January 2026).

The reason is seasonality: fieldwork stops in winter and crop peaks differ even inside one region, so labour must move between farms; in fisheries, busy periods vary by species and method and operators are mostly small, on peninsulas and remote islands (sector-specific operation policies, 23 January 2026). What that means for you:

• Your employer is the dispatch company, not the farm. Contract, wages, insurance enrolment and dismissal are its responsibility.
• The site directs your daily work and answers for safety and conditions there.
• You can be moved between sites, though the work must stay inside your work category.
• Complaints have two addresses. Pay and contract go to the dispatch company; treatment, hours and dangerous tasks go to the site too. In agriculture you may only be sent within a day’s round trip of the dispatch company’s responsible person, so complaints can be handled (agriculture operational guidelines).

Dispatch is a possibility, not the norm: dispatch and subcontracting establishments accounted for 1,346 of 58,373 foreign workers in agriculture and forestry, or 2.31% (MHLW employer notifications, as of 31 October 2024). Check whose name is on your contract as employer.

Who may be your dispatch company, under the Specified Skilled Worker rules (tokutei ginou no baai): a business in agriculture or agriculture-related work, including cooperatives that collect, process, sell or advise on farm products; a company majority-funded by a local government or such a business; a company in whose management such a body is substantively involved; or a designated body under Article 16-5(1) of the National Strategic Special Zones Act (agriculture operational guidelines). Fisheries is narrower: three categories, no special-zone route, and dispatch only where a local government, fishery cooperative or association, or other fishery business is involved (fisheries operational guidelines).

An honest limit: those four categories are the Specified Skilled Worker rule. Dispatch will exist under Ikusei Shuro too, but the detailed eligibility rules sit in subordinate ministerial rules we could not confirm as of July 2026.

Working-hour rules are partly switched off: what Article 41 really does

Article 41(1) disapplies the rules on working hours, breaks and days off for the businesses in Appended Table 1 item 6 — cultivating land, planting, growing and harvesting, excluding forestry — and item 7, rearing animals and catching or farming aquatic life (Labour Standards Act, Article 41(1) and Appended Table 1).

Exactly three things are switched off: Article 32 (the 8-hour day and 40-hour week), Article 34 (breaks of 45 minutes over 6 hours, 1 hour over 8) and Article 35 (one day off a week, or four in four weeks). With no statutory working time or holiday to exceed, the Article 37(1) overtime and holiday premium does not arise either.

What is not switched off is your protection — this is the position of workers under the Labour Standards Act; crew on a fishing vessel are seafarers, outside that Act entirely, and the boat section below applies to them instead:

• Night premium pay. The agriculture guidelines state expressly that only hours, breaks and days off are excluded and that night premium is not — Article 37(4), at least 25% extra between 22:00 and 05:00. The fisheries guidelines are near-identical (agriculture operational guidelines).
• Minimum wage, at the rate of the prefecture where you work.
• Wage payment rules, annual paid leave, dismissal rules, accident compensation, work-injury insurance (rosai), health insurance and pension.
• Written work rules. Hours, breaks and days off stay mandatory items under Article 89 even in an excluded industry, so your hours must be written down. Ask to see them.

Forestry keeps full working-hour regulation; crop farming, livestock and fisheries do not. A Cabinet-approved answer confirms farm workers fall under Article 41(1) because agriculture depends on weather, and that ministries issue guidelines so hours follow the Act as far as possible (Cabinet answer No. 96, 26 March 2019); a March 2000 agriculture ministry notice says the same to technical-intern employers (MAFF notice, March 2000). Both are guidance, not a legal cap.

So: no statutory ceiling on your hours means your contract and the work rules are the ceiling. Get the daily start and finish, the busy-season pattern, how rest days are set and how extra hours are paid, in writing, before you sign — and you can ask someone already doing this work on LO-PAL first. Read wages, deductions and equal pay under Ikusei Shuro and how to read a Japanese employment contract too.

From April 2027 the two sectors stop being symmetric

Under the 2026 policy, agriculture carries an explicit condition on Ikusei Shuro employers: treatment relating to working hours, days off, breaks and overtime premium pay must conform to the Labour Standards Act (Annex 13, 23 January 2026). That condition does not appear for the Specified Skilled Worker route, where compliance rests on ministry guidance. Fisheries is built differently: its conditions require the supervising and support organisation to implement, for hours, days off, breaks and other treatment, the measures agreed in the sector council (Annex 14, 23 January 2026) — the duty sits with the intermediary, and the council sets the content.

Agriculture also requires the post-entry course to include instruction by a qualified farm-work safety instructor. The same policy puts agriculture’s injury rate per thousand workers at 5.6 in 2022, 5.8 in 2023 and 5.6 in 2024 (Annex 13, 23 January 2026) — an all-worker figure with no nationality breakdown.

Two caveats: the implementing notice numbers were not available to us, and lower-level rules are still being finalised. The start date itself is fixed at 1 April 2027 (Cabinet Order No. 340, promulgated 1 October 2025); confirm final wording with official sources.

On a fishing boat, the Labour Standards Act does not apply to you at all

If you will work on a boat, read this twice. Seafarers are excluded from almost the whole Labour Standards Act and covered by the Mariners Act instead (Labour Standards Act, Article 116), which defines a seafarer as the master, crew or reserve crew of a Japanese vessel and excludes vessels under 5 gross tons, vessels navigating only lakes, rivers or ports, fishing vessels under 30 gross tons as specified by cabinet order, and certain small sport craft (Mariners Act 1947, Article 1).

So there are two worlds: land-based aquaculture, inland work and the smallest boats leave you a worker under the Labour Standards Act, with hours excluded by Article 41(1); crew on a qualifying vessel become seafarers, and that Act mostly stops applying.

The Mariners Act does not fill the gap: Articles 60 to 69 do not apply to fishing vessels (Mariners Act, Article 71). Those articles hold the 8-hour day and 40-hour average week (60), the weekly day off (61), compensating holidays and their allowance (62 and 63), the overtime allowance (66), the record book of hours, rest, holidays and leave (67), and minimum manning (69). Paid leave from Article 74 onwards and the duty to carry enough crew for proper watches do survive.

Large vessels return through a 1968 ordinance on designated fishing vessels: licensed fisheries such as offshore, west-of-130-degrees and distant-water trawling, large and medium purse seining, whaling, skipjack and tuna fishing, medium salmon and trout drift-netting, North Pacific saury fishing and larger squid jigging. Even there, the 8-hour day and 40-hour week apply “excluding the fishing operation period” (Ordinance No. 49 of 1968, Articles 2 and 3). Only distant-water trawlers of 1,000 gross tons or more and factory-ship whalers must get at least 10 hours of rest a day during operations, including one unbroken 6-hour block, and even that can be shortened temporarily and made up within two days (same ordinance, Article 5).

On any smaller boat there is no statutory cap on hours at sea at all. Before you sign, ask in writing how long a trip is, how much rest there is between watches, how many days ashore you get, and how extra time is paid.

On safety, the published figures cover all fishery workers with no nationality breakdown, so read them as an industry picture: the accident rate runs at roughly four times the land-based average, 63 people went overboard in 2024 and 38 died or went missing, and survival was 82% for lifejacket wearers against 47% for non-wearers (FY2024 Fisheries White Paper, 2024 calendar-year data). Wear the lifejacket. If you are hurt, our guide to claiming rosai explains what to do; rosai is unaffected by Article 41.

Tests, Japanese levels, and the paper you must not forget

The ladder is identical in both sectors (ISA Ikusei Shuro overview, revised December 2025). You need A1 Japanese, or an equivalent accredited course, before work starts, and A1 plus the elementary evaluation test within your first year. Moving employer by choice needs A2.1; finishing needs A2.2 plus the specialist test, which in fisheries is the Specified Skilled Worker No.1 test. No.2 needs B1, its own test and experience. Roughly, A1 is near JLPT N5, A2 near N4, B1 near N3. Fishery tests are run by the Japan Fisheries Association; the Ikusei Shuro tests have not started, so we do not say when or where.

Now the paper. No.2 needs experience as well as a test: in agriculture, as a work-team leader or at a farm site; in fisheries, assisting the person commanding operations on a vessel registered under the Fishing Vessel Act, or the equivalent in aquaculture. Both policies require your employer to issue written proof of that experience on request (Annex 14, 23 January 2026). Ask before you leave a job, not years later — without it, the route to permanent residence is much harder.

Who actually does this work, and where

There were 382,341 Specified Skilled Worker No.1 residents, of whom 37,952 were in agriculture (30,056 crop, 7,896 livestock) and 4,590 in fisheries (2,533 fishery, 2,057 aquaculture) (Immigration Services Agency, as of 31 December 2025). Agriculture is 18,596 by skills test against 19,356 former technical interns (51.0%); fisheries is 1,201 against 3,389 (73.8%), and inside the fishery category only 172 came by test against 2,361 former interns — 93.2% ex-interns. The status you move into next is covered in our Specified Skilled Worker guide.

Nationality is concentrated too. Agriculture: Indonesia 14,089, Vietnam 9,789, Cambodia 3,696. Fisheries: Indonesia alone is 3,879 of 4,590, or 84.5%, ahead of Vietnam at 572. If that is your country, our guide for Indonesian workers covers the sending-side steps.

For geography, use the agency’s prefecture table: agriculture concentrates in Ibaraki (5,604), Hokkaido (3,880) and Kumamoto (2,854); fisheries in Hokkaido (882), Hiroshima (644) and Nagasaki (337) (ISA Table 5, as of 31 December 2025). Employment statistics are filed by the employer’s establishment, so a dispatched worker can be counted at the agency’s address — which is why ministry data shows 892 Specified Skilled Workers in agriculture in Tokyo (MHLW employer notifications, as of 31 October 2024) while the residence table shows 98.

Where you land shapes your life more than the job title, so read the local guide first: Ibaraki, Hokkaido and Mie. Intern numbers here are falling as people move on — agriculture and forestry from 31,635 to 28,798, fisheries from 3,352 to 2,950 (ISA technical intern statistics, end-2025, against the same table for end-2024). If you are already an intern, see the transitional rules for existing interns.

Housing, seasons and getting around

Housing support is an obligation of the accepting organisation, not a favour: under the Specified Skilled Worker support rules each person’s room must be at least 7.5 m², and where people share, total floor area divided by residents must still reach 7.5 m² — though the standard does not apply if you move from technical intern training to Specified Skilled Worker and choose to stay in housing the employer has already secured (ISA support operational guidelines). Seasonality shapes the year: the fisheries policy says the government will respond flexibly on which related work can be done in villages where year-round production is unrealistic (Annex 14, 23 January 2026). Ask what you will be doing, and paid, in the slack months.

These jobs are rural. No rule makes a driving licence compulsory, though an individual job may require one, and Ibaraki averaged 1.508 cars per household against Tokyo’s 0.405 and a national 1.009 (vehicle registration data, end of March 2025). Ask how you will reach work, a shop and a clinic.

Changing employer, and where to take a problem

Both sectors use a one-year transfer restriction period under Ikusei Shuro, on the shorter side: nine sectors use one year, eight use two, and construction and manufacturing sit at two (sector-specific operation policies, 23 January 2026). To move on your own initiative you must also have passed the elementary evaluation test and reached A2.1 Japanese, and stay in the same work category. The mechanics are in our guide to changing employer.

Fisheries adds machinery for the fact that you may be unreachable at sea: the supervising and support organisation must be a fishery cooperative or a body licensed for seafarer job placement under Article 34 of the Mariners’ Employment Security Act; a communication link to your vessel must be secured; the instructor must report at least daily on sea-work days; and you must report in writing monthly. One vessel may carry six Ikusei Shuro workers, or twelve for operators meeting the superior-performance requirements, and in either case no more than the number of its other crew (Annex 14, 23 January 2026).

If something goes wrong, work out which system you are in first. As a worker under the Labour Standards Act, our guide to the labour office explains a complaint to the Labour Standards Inspection Office — remembering that hours are excluded here, while unpaid wages, night premium and minimum wage are not. As a seafarer, hours are not a Labour Standards Act matter; start with your supervising and support organisation and the sector council, membership of which is compulsory for employers taking Specified Skilled Workers in both agriculture and fisheries.

What we would check first, before you sign

We have no wage data for these sectors that meets our sourcing standard, so we will not estimate pay. These questions separate a good offer from a bad one:

• Who is my employer? The name on the contract, and whether a different company is named as the workplace.
• What are my hours, in writing? Article 41 removes the statutory limits, so ask for the daily and busy-season schedules and to see the work rules.
• How is extra time paid? Do not assume an overtime premium exists; do confirm the night premium for 22:00 to 05:00.
• For boat work, is this a designated fishing vessel? If not, no statutory hour limit applies at sea.
• What happens in the off-season? What work, at what pay, and whether you can be moved.
• The experience certificate. Confirm the employer will issue written proof of your experience on request.
• Housing and safety. Room size and deductions; lifejackets at sea, machinery training on farms, rosai enrolment.

Ikusei Shuro starts on 1 April 2027, fixed by cabinet order, but several operating details are still being written — read the sector policies yourself, and treat any recruiter more certain than the government as a warning sign. When the question is about your own contract, boat or farm, ask it on LO-PAL and hear from people living the same rules.

Frequently asked questions

Can a dispatch company employ me on a farm or fishing boat in Japan?

Yes, and these are the only two sectors where that is allowed. Of the 19 Ikusei Shuro sectors, 17 require direct employment, and aviation and railways add only secondment; agriculture and fisheries also permit labour dispatch, with fisheries expressly including seafarer dispatch (sector-specific operation policies, Cabinet decision of 23 January 2026). The stated reason is seasonality: farm work has peaks that differ by crop, and fishing has busy and slack periods that differ by species and method. In practice your employer is the dispatch company, while the farm or fishing operator directs your daily work and answers for conditions on site.

Is it legal for a farm to make me work more than 8 hours a day without overtime pay?

For crop farming, livestock and fishery work, Article 41(1) of the Labour Standards Act, read with Appended Table 1 items 6 (excluding forestry) and 7, switches off the provisions on working hours, breaks and days off. Because no statutory working time or statutory holiday then exists to exceed, the overtime and holiday premium in Article 37(1) does not arise. That makes long days lawful in these sectors, so your contract and the employer’s written work rules are the only ceiling. Working hours, breaks and days off must still appear in the work rules under Article 89, so ask to see them before you sign.

Do I still get night-shift premium pay on a farm or in fisheries?

Yes, if you are a worker covered by the Labour Standards Act — which includes farms, land-based aquaculture and the smallest boats, but not crew on a fishing vessel. The exclusion covers only working hours, breaks and days off. The night premium under Article 37(4) of the Labour Standards Act, at least 25% extra for work between 22:00 and 05:00, is not excluded, and the operational guidelines for the agriculture sector say so expressly, with near-identical wording for fisheries. Minimum wage, wage payment rules, annual paid leave, dismissal rules, work-injury insurance, health insurance and pension are also unaffected. Crew on a fishing vessel are outside the Labour Standards Act altogether under its Article 116, and the Mariners Act gives fishing vessels no overtime allowance, so none of this describes work at sea.

I will work on a fishing boat. Which law sets my hours?

Probably none. Article 116 of the Labour Standards Act excludes seafarers, who are covered by the Mariners Act instead, and Article 71 of the Mariners Act states that Articles 60 to 69 do not apply to fishing vessels. Those are exactly the articles containing the 8-hour day, the weekly day off, compensating holidays, the overtime allowance, the hours record book and minimum manning. A 1968 ordinance imposes 8 hours a day and 40 hours a week on listed large designated fishing vessels, but expressly excludes the fishing operation period. Before signing, ask how long a trip is, how much rest there is between watches, how many days ashore you get, and whether the vessel is a designated fishing vessel.

When can I change employer under Ikusei Shuro in agriculture or fisheries?

Both sectors use a one-year transfer restriction period, on the shorter side of the 19 sectors, where nine use one year and eight use two. To move on your own initiative you must also have passed the elementary Ikusei Shuro evaluation test and reached A2.1 Japanese on the Reference Framework for Japanese Language Education, and the new job must be in the same work category.

How many Ikusei Shuro workers will agriculture and fisheries accept?

The sector policies of 23 January 2026 set 26,300 for agriculture and 2,600 for fisheries over the two years from FY2027, inside sector totals of 99,600 and 17,400 across FY2024 to FY2028. These are operated as ceilings to the end of FY2028, not targets. The older figures of 78,000 for agriculture and 17,000 for fisheries come from the March 2024 policy and were still displayed on the agency’s agriculture page in July 2026.

What document should I get before leaving a farm or fishing job?

A written certificate of your practical experience. Specified Skilled Worker No.2 in these sectors requires practical experience as well as a test: in agriculture, work-team leader or farm-site experience; in fisheries, experience assisting the person commanding operations on a vessel registered under the Fishing Vessel Act, directing workers and managing work processes, or the equivalent in aquaculture. Both sector policies require your employer to issue proof of that experience on request, so ask for it while you are still employed.

How dangerous is farm and fishing work in Japan?

The published figures cover all workers with no breakdown by nationality, so read them as an industry picture. The FY2024 Fisheries White Paper reports that the fishing industry’s work-accident rate runs at roughly four times the average for land-based industries, that of 63 people who went overboard in 2024, 38 died or went missing, and that survival was 82% for those wearing a lifejacket against 47% for those who were not. The agriculture sector policy records an injury rate per thousand workers of 5.6 in 2022, 5.8 in 2023 and 5.6 in 2024. Work-injury insurance applies in both sectors regardless of the Article 41 exclusion.