Agricultural work is paid at or just above the prefecture minimum wage, and the prefectures that grow Japan's food hold the lowest floors in the country. A full-time month at those floors is roughly ¥177,000–197,000 gross before overtime. The fact that changes how you should read a farm contract is legal, not arithmetic — agriculture is one of the few sectors excluded from the Labour Standards Act's rules on working hours, breaks and rest days, so there is no statutory overtime premium for a long harvest day.
Key facts
- Lowest farm-prefecture floor
- ¥1,023/hour (Miyazaki)
- Highest on this list
- ¥1,140/hour (Chiba)
- Full-time month at the floor
- ~¥177,000–197,000 gross
- Statutory overtime premium
- Does not apply — agriculture is exempt
- Night premium (22:00–05:00)
- +25% — this one does apply
- Housing
- Farm dorms often ¥10,000–20,000/month
The legal floor, prefecture by prefecture
Japan sets its minimum wage per prefecture, not nationally. This is the lowest an employer may legally pay you for an hour of work — whatever the job, whatever your visa.
| Prefecture | FY2024 | FY2025 | Rise | In force from | Full-time month |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Miyazaki 宮崎 | ¥952 | ¥1,023 | +71 | 2025-11-16 | ¥177,000 |
| Kagoshima 鹿児島 | ¥953 | ¥1,026 | +73 | 2025-11-01 | ¥177,000 |
| Aomori 青森 | ¥953 | ¥1,029 | +76 | 2025-11-21 | ¥178,000 |
| Iwate 岩手 | ¥952 | ¥1,031 | +79 | 2025-12-01 | ¥178,000 |
| Akita 秋田 | ¥951 | ¥1,031 | +80 | 2026-03-31 | ¥178,000 |
| Kumamoto 熊本 | ¥952 | ¥1,034 | +82 | 2026-01-01 | ¥179,000 |
| Nagano 長野 | ¥998 | ¥1,061 | +63 | 2025-10-03 | ¥184,000 |
| Ibaraki 茨城 | ¥1,005 | ¥1,074 | +69 | 2025-10-12 | ¥186,000 |
| Hokkaido 北海道 | ¥1,010 | ¥1,075 | +65 | 2025-10-04 | ¥186,000 |
| Chiba 千葉 | ¥1,076 | ¥1,140 | +64 | 2025-10-03 | ¥197,000 |
Monthly figures are the floor rate x 173 hours, before tax and insurance. They are the legal minimum for those hours, not a typical offer.
Highlighted dates are prefectures where the new rate did not take effect until December or later — in Akita, not until 31 March 2026. Until that date the old, lower rate was still the legal floor, and an employer paying it was not breaking the law.
The national weighted average rose from ¥1,055 to ¥1,121, the largest increase on record, and every one of the 47 prefectures is now above 1,000 yen for the first time. The next revision takes effect October 2026.
Official rates · FY2025 (令和7年度) · 厚生労働省 ↗
From gross to take-home — a sample payslip
| Line | Amount (monthly) |
|---|---|
| Gross pay (typical mid for this job) | ¥180,000 |
| Health insurance (≈5%) | −¥9,000 |
| Employee pension (9.15%) | −¥16,500 |
| Employment insurance (≈0.55%) | −¥1,000 |
| Withheld income tax (≈2–4%) | −¥4,500 |
| Resident tax (from year 2, ≈6%) | −¥10,800 |
| Take-home, year 1 (approx.) | ¥149,000 |
| Take-home, from year 2 (approx.) | ¥138,200 |
Path2Japan estimate from the typical mid salary above — rates shift slightly with income, dependents and municipality. Year 1 has no resident tax, so pay "shrinking" in year 2 is normal, not an error.
In this sector, the floor is the wage
Most guides give farm pay as a range and leave you guessing where the range came from. It comes from one place: the minimum wage in the prefecture where the farm sits. General field work rarely pays much above it, so the legal floor is not a worst case — it is the planning number.
That matters because the prefectures that grow Japan’s food hold the lowest floors in the country. Miyazaki is at ¥1,023 an hour, Kagoshima ¥1,026, Aomori ¥1,029 — against ¥1,226 in Tokyo. A full-time month at ¥1,023 is roughly ¥177,000 gross; at Chiba’s ¥1,140, about ¥197,000. The ¥203-an-hour gap between Miyazaki and Tokyo is worth about ¥35,000 a month, which is real money and also less than the difference in what you pay for a place to sleep.
There is a genuinely good piece of news in the table above. The FY2025 revision raised the poorest prefectures the most: Kumamoto by ¥82, Oita ¥81, Akita ¥80, against ¥63 in Tokyo and Kanagawa. The gap between farm country and the capital is closing, not widening. The catch is timing — those same prefectures were last to switch. Kumamoto’s new rate began on 1 January 2026 and Akita’s on 31 March 2026, nearly six months after Tokyo’s.
The law nobody translates: agriculture has no legal overtime
This is the single most important thing on this page, and most guides in any language get it wrong.
Article 41, item 1 of the Labour Standards Act excludes agriculture, livestock and fisheries from the entire chapter governing working hours, breaks and rest days. There is no statutory eight-hour day in this sector, no statutory weekly rest day, and no legal overtime premium. A fourteen-hour day in harvest season is usually paid at fourteen times the plain hourly rate, and that is lawful.
The exemption exists because farm work follows weather and biology rather than a clock — you cannot tell a cow or a typhoon to wait for the shift to end. That is a real reason. It is also a real cost, borne by you.
What the exemption does not touch is just as important:
- The minimum wage still applies in full. It comes from a separate statute, and being paid below your prefecture’s floor is illegal in agriculture exactly as it is in a convenience store — including after any deduction for housing or meals.
- The night premium still applies. Hours between 22:00 and 05:00 must be paid at 1.25×. You can see this in the structure of the law itself: when the legislature wants to remove the night premium too, it says so explicitly, as Article 41-2 does for a different category of worker. Article 41 does not.
- Paid annual leave still applies.
So the practical rule is: in agriculture, hours are a contract term, not a legal right. Many good employers do contract on an eight-hour day and do pay a premium beyond it. Ask, and get the answer in writing, before you sign — because unlike in other sectors, nothing in the law will supply the term for you.
The seasonal shape of the money
Farm income breathes with the calendar. Harvest months stack hours and can push monthly pay well above base; deep winter on a single-crop farm can drop to bare base or thin hours. Two structural answers exist.
Multi-crop and livestock operations — dairy especially — flatten the curve year-round, because animals need feeding in February. And agriculture’s unique SSW feature is that dispatch employment is legal here, letting a haken employer move you from strawberry season to vegetable season across regions and smoothing the dips a single farm cannot.
Two questions to ask any employer before signing: which model do you run, and what does a January payslip look like? A grower who cannot answer the second question concretely is telling you something.
Checking your own payslip
Three checks, all doable against the table above.
Divide base pay by hours worked. If the result is under your prefecture’s rate for that month, that is a violation regardless of the Article 41 exemption. Note the phrase “for that month” — use the effective date column, because in FY2025 the switch dates ranged from October to the following March.
Look at deductions. Charges for dormitory, utilities and meals are lawful only within limits and only if agreed in writing; they cannot be used to drag your effective hourly rate below the floor.
Check the night hours. Anything between 22:00 and 05:00 is 1.25×, exemption or no exemption.
The labour standards office (労働基準監督署) takes these reports, several offer multilingual support, and your visa status does not weaken the claim.
From seasonal hands to a settled life
The ladder is real but has rungs. Technical interns earn the least with no mobility; switching to SSW-1 after the programme is the single biggest upgrade available, bringing job-change rights and market wages. Agriculture’s inclusion in SSW-2 then removes the ceiling: indefinite renewals, family sponsorship, and a runway toward permanent residency.
With farm owners aging faster than in any other sector, workers who add Japanese, a driver’s licence and machine skills are being promoted into field-leader and management roles years earlier than the same person would be in a factory. The isolation cost is real too — many farms sit far from towns, classes and your own community — and a workplace with other speakers of your language and a car-accessible town nearby is worth choosing over a slightly higher wage.
All the floors above revise again in October 2026.
Japanese you will use on this page (tap ▶)
| 収穫を始めます。 Shūkaku o hajimemasu. We are starting the harvest. | |
| この列をお願いします。 Kono retsu o onegai shimasu. Please take this row. | |
| 休憩にしましょう。 Kyūkei ni shimashō. Let us take a break. | |
| すみません、もう一度お願いします。 Sumimasen, mō ichido onegai shimasu. Sorry, could you say that once more? | |
| 体調が悪いので、今日は休ませてください。 Taichō ga warui node, kyō wa yasumasete kudasai. I am not feeling well; please let me take today off. |
Audio synthesized with VOICEVOX:Meimei Himari at standard pace for shadowing; real conversations run faster and carry accents.
Common mistakes & warnings
- Agriculture is excluded from the Labour Standards Act's provisions on working hours, breaks and rest days (Article 41, item 1). There is no legal 8-hour day, no legal weekly rest day and no statutory overtime premium in this sector. Long harvest days are usually paid at the plain hourly rate unless your contract says otherwise — which makes what the contract says unusually important here.
- What the exemption does NOT remove: the minimum wage, which comes from a separate law and applies in full; the 25% night premium for hours between 22:00 and 05:00; and paid annual leave. Being paid below your prefecture's floor is illegal in agriculture exactly as it is anywhere else, even with housing deducted.
- The FY2025 raise reached farm prefectures last. Kumamoto's new rate began on 1 January 2026 and Akita's on 31 March 2026, months after Tokyo. Check your prefecture's effective date before concluding you were underpaid — and check it again afterwards.
Frequently asked questions
What does farm work pay in Japan?
It tracks the prefecture minimum wage, which in the main farming prefectures runs ¥1,023–1,140 an hour for FY2025. A full-time month at those rates is roughly ¥177,000 to ¥197,000 gross before deductions. Employers rarely pay much above the floor for general field work, so the floor in your prefecture is the number to plan on.
Does agriculture get overtime pay in Japan?
Not by law. Article 41 of the Labour Standards Act excludes agriculture, livestock and fisheries from the chapter governing working hours, breaks and rest days, so the statutory 25% overtime premium does not apply. Many employers pay one anyway, or contract on an eight-hour day — but it is a term you negotiate, not a right you hold. Get it in writing.
Does the night premium apply to farm work?
Yes. Article 41 removes only the working-hours, break and rest-day rules. When the law wants to remove the night premium as well it says so explicitly, as it does in Article 41-2 for a different category of worker. Hours worked between 22:00 and 05:00 must still be paid at 1.25 times.
What does an SSW agriculture worker earn in Japan?
The same band as anyone else doing the job — Specified Skilled Worker status is a visa, not a pay grade. Japanese law requires equal or better pay than a Japanese national in the same role, so the status protects the rate rather than raising it. What SSW changes is mobility: you can change employer within the field, and agriculture is the one field where dispatch employment is permitted.
Why does dispatch matter in agriculture?
Farming is seasonal, so agriculture is the SSW field where dispatch companies may employ you and send you where the work is — following harvests from region to region legally. It smooths the winter income dip that direct hire on a single-crop farm cannot.
Can I build a long-term life on farm work?
Structurally, yes. Since agriculture entered SSW-2 you can pass the higher exam and hold an indefinitely renewable status with family sponsorship and a path that counts toward permanent residency. The realistic ladder runs worker to field leader to farm manager, and Japan's aging farm owners increasingly need exactly that.
Official sources
What this salary saves in each city: TokyoYokohamaOsakaNagoyaSaitamaChibaKyotoKobeFukuokaSapporo
This page provides general information only and is not legal advice. Immigration rules change; always confirm details with the official sources listed above before making decisions.