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Scheduling laws in Japan

The statutory day is eight hours and the week is forty, and almost every real roster exceeds both lawfully. What limits it is an agreement on file, three separate ceilings measured on two different bases, and one ceiling that can be breached by work nobody has scheduled yet.

13 binding rules3 official guidanceSources last read 6 August 2026

How the layers work here

The Labor Standards Act applies nationally, and the figures that matter are in the Act itself rather than in prefectural rules. What varies is not the place but the agreement: a labour-management agreement under Article 36 changes how much overtime is lawful at a given workplace.

Enforcement: Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (ๅŽš็”ŸๅŠดๅƒ็œ), Labour Standards Bureau, enforced locally by Prefectural Labour Bureaus and Labour Standards Inspection Offices (ๅŠดๅƒๅŸบๆบ–็›ฃ็ฃ็ฝฒ)

What this jurisdiction regulates

Japan sets a hard statutory baseline of 8 hours a day and 40 hours a week under the Labour Standards Act, but almost every real schedule exceeds it lawfully through a filed labour-management agreement under Article 36 (the saburoku agreement). Since the 2019 work-style reform those agreements are themselves capped, and a second layer of absolute statutory ceilings applies no matter what the agreement says. Breaks, weekly rest days, night premiums and a near-total ban on minors working at night are fixed by statute and cannot be traded away by agreement.

Three ceilings, two counting bases, one of them retroactive

In most countries the overtime ceiling is a single number to hold a timesheet against. In Japan the baseline is eight hours a day and forty a week, and a filed labour-management agreement under Article 36 is what makes anything beyond it lawful. That agreement is itself capped at forty-five hours a month and three hundred and sixty a year, and a special clause raises the ceiling further without removing it. The figure that binds a given workplace is therefore a property of the document on file, not of the country.

Above the agreement sit absolute statutory backstops, and this is where a scheduler built elsewhere breaks. The under-one-hundred-hour monthly ceiling and the eighty-hour rolling average both count overtime and statutory-holiday work together. The seven-hundred-and-twenty-hour annual ceiling counts overtime alone and excludes holiday work entirely. One counter cannot serve both, so a system holding a single overtime total will either over-report against the year or silently breach the month, and it will do one of those on every roster it publishes.

The rolling average is the harder problem, and it has no analogue anywhere else in this engine. The eighty-hour average has to hold across every trailing window of two, three, four, five and six consecutive months at once. A month that was fully compliant on the day it was published can be pushed into breach by a busy period months later, the breach is criminal, and it attaches to the earlier window. Compliance in Japan is not a question a roster answers at publish time. It is a rolling obligation that has to be re-evaluated every time work is added to any of the next five months.

Against all that, the rest rules are refreshingly fixed. Forty-five minutes of break once working hours pass six and sixty minutes once they pass eight, given during the working hours rather than bolted onto either end, in principle simultaneously for everyone and freely usable. One rest day a week, or four across any four weeks. A twenty-five percent premium on anything worked between 22:00 and 05:00, additive to overtime, and surviving even the Article 41 exemption that removes hours, breaks and rest days for supervisory staff.

The visible gap is turnaround. Japan sets no statutory minimum interval between shifts, only a duty to endeavour to set one, and outside truck driving there is no figure at all. Naming an hours number as a Japanese requirement would mean inventing it, so this reference states the effort duty and stops.

The heat rule is the newest entry here and the only one whose criminal edge attaches to a process rather than to hours. Since June 2025 an employer running qualifying heat work must have a reporting system and a response procedure in place before work starts, and must have told the workers what they are. It constrains preparation rather than shift length, which makes it easy to file under health and safety and never look at again.

Before the rules, the labels

Every rule below carries one of three labels, and they are not interchangeable. Blurring binding law into official guidance would push a reader either into over-complying with something advisory or into dismissing the whole page once they discovered the difference. A checked absence is the third answer, and on several of these pages it is the one people came for.

Rest and meal breaks

2 rules in Japan

Rest and meal breaks

Breaks: 45 minutes over 6 hours, 60 minutes over 8 hours

Binding law

Where working hours exceed 6 hours the employer must give at least 45 minutes of break, and where they exceed 8 hours at least 1 hour of break. The break must be given during the working hours, not at the start or end of the shift.

Who this covers

All workers covered by the Labour Standards Act. Article 41 exempt workers (managers/supervisors, agriculture and fishery, permitted monitoring/intermittent work) are excluded, as the Article 41 exemption expressly covers break provisions. The trigger is working time strictly exceeding 6 hours, not reaching 6 hours.

How to encode this in a schedule

Hard constraint: every assignment block whose working time exceeds 6 hours must contain at least 45 minutes of non-working interval strictly between the start and end times, rising to 60 minutes once working time exceeds 8 hours. The break may be split into multiple intervals as long as the total is met; MHLW states expressly that a break need not be given continuously. Any period of tebiki machi jikan (on-call standby) or actual work such as serving a customer must be subtracted before testing the 45 or 60 minute total.

Break minutes
45
After hours
6
Break minutes tier 2
60
After hours tier 2
8

The mistake employers make

The thresholds are 'exceeds', not 'reaches'. A shift of exactly 6 hours needs no break at all, and a shift of exactly 8 hours needs only 45 minutes; 8 hours and one minute needs a full 60. Rostering an 8-hour shift with a 45-minute break is lawful until a single minute of overtime is worked, at which point the employer is retroactively 15 minutes short and in breach.

Why this figure does not travel

afterHours 6 means working time STRICTLY EXCEEDING 6 hours, and the break may be split into several intervals. The UK's 20-after-6 also triggers above 6 hours but must be one unbroken block. Singapore's 45 minutes is not a break entitlement at all, it is the price of an 8-hour continuous-work block and is counted INSIDE that block.

Citation: Labour Standards Act Article 34(1); penalties under Article 119(i) (up to 6 months confinement or a fine up to 300,000 yen)

e-Gov Law Search, Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (official consolidated statute text)last read 6 August 2026

Rest and meal breaks

Breaks must be simultaneous and freely usable

Binding law

Breaks must in principle be given to all workers at the same time, unless there is a written agreement with the majority union or a representative of the majority of workers. Separately, and with no exception, the employer must let workers use the break freely, meaning the worker is released from all duty and is not merely on standby.

Who this covers

All workers entitled to a break under Article 34(1). The simultaneity requirement is waivable by written labour-management agreement; the free-use requirement is not waivable and has noโ€ฆRead the full scope

All workers entitled to a break under Article 34(1). The simultaneity requirement is waivable by written labour-management agreement; the free-use requirement is not waivable and has no industry exemption. Ordinance for Enforcement Article 31 disapplies Article 34(2) entirely for Appended Table 1 items 4 (passenger or freight transport by road, rail, tramway, ropeway, ship or aircraft), 8 (sale, distribution, storage or rental of goods, and barbering), 9 (finance, insurance, brokerage, collection, guiding and advertising), 10 (film production or projection, theatre and other entertainment), 11 (postal, correspondence delivery and telecommunications), 13 (health and hygiene) and 14 (inns, restaurants, eating and drinking establishments, hospitality and amusement venues), plus public offices not otherwise listed in that table. Verified against the ordinance text.

How to encode this in a schedule

Two constraints. First, staggered break rotations that keep a desk or line covered are only permissible where a written labour-management agreement (or an industry exemption) exists, so the scheduler must gate staggered-break templates on that flag. Second, a break interval can never be modelled as on-call or coverage time; a worker on standby during a nominal break is working, and the break has not been given.

The mistake employers make

The most common failure is not the length of the break but its quality. Leaving a lone worker to eat at the counter while answering the phone is a break that legally never happened, so the shift is treated as continuous working time and the Article 34(1) obligation is unmet. Second trap, in the reading of the statute itself: issseini in Article 34(2) means simultaneously across workers, not all in one unbroken block. Japan has no rule that a break must be taken in a single stretch, and MHLW states expressly that it need not be. A scheduler that reads 'in principle all at once' as forbidding a split break invents a constraint the law does not impose.

Citation: Labour Standards Act Article 34(2) and Article 34(3); industry exemption from Article 34(2) under Ordinance for Enforcement of the Labour Standards Act Article 31; penalties under Article 119(i)

e-Gov Law Search, Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (official consolidated statute text)last read 6 August 2026

Hours and overtime limits

5 rules in Japan

Hours and overtime limits

Article 41 exemption from hours, breaks and rest days

Binding law

The Labour Standards Act provisions on working hours, breaks and rest days do not apply to these workers. The exemption does not extend to the night-work premium, which continues to apply.

Who this covers

Covers workers in agriculture (excluding forestry) and livestock/fishery businesses; those in a supervisory or managerial position or handling confidential administrative matters; and monitoring or intermittent workers where the employer has obtained permission from the Labour Standards Inspection Office.

How to encode this in a schedule

For flagged Article 41 workers the scheduler must suppress the 8/40 hour limits, the Article 34 break requirements and the Article 35 rest-day requirement, while still applying the 22:00 to 05:00 night premium and still recording actual hours for occupational health purposes.

The mistake employers make

Article 41 by its own words disapplies only the rules on working hours, breaks and rest days, and only those found in Chapter 4, Chapter 6 and Chapter 6-2. The night-work premium in Article 37(4) is none of those, so a manager rostered from 22:00 to 05:00 still accrues the 25 percent night premium; MHLW's own prefectural bureau guidance says exactly this, that for Article 41(ii) workers no premium wage question arises except in the case of night work. Annual paid leave under Article 39 is likewise unaffected. Treating an exempt manager as exempt from everything is the classic 'name-only manager' payroll failure, and the exemption depends on genuine authority and treatment, not on job title.

Citation: Labour Standards Act Article 41; night premium continues under Article 37(4)

Hyogo Labour Bureau (MHLW), Warimashi chingin (premium wages) page, stating that for Article 41(ii) managers and confidential-matter handlers no premium wage question arises except in the case of night worklast read 6 August 2026

Hours and overtime limits

Driving occupations: 960-hour annual overtime cap, no monthly backstop

Binding law

For driving occupations the special-clause annual ceiling is 960 hours of overtime rather than 720. In exchange, the under-100-hour monthly ceiling, the 80-hour rolling average and the six-month limit on months exceeding 45 hours in Article 36(5) and 36(6)(ii)-(iii) do not apply to these workers.

Who this covers

Article 140 names the business of general passenger vehicle transport (taxi and hire, per Road Transportation Act Article 3(i)(c)) and freight vehicle transport (per Freight Vehicleโ€ฆRead the full scope

Article 140 names the business of general passenger vehicle transport (taxi and hire, per Road Transportation Act Article 3(i)(c)) and freight vehicle transport (per Freight Vehicle Transport Business Act Article 2(1)), plus other vehicle-driving work specified by MHLW ordinance, which is what brings bus drivers in. Applies 'for the time being' (tobun no aida) under the supplementary provisions of the Labour Standards Act, so it is a standing carve-out with no expiry date but no permanence either.

How to encode this in a schedule

For drivers the scheduler must swap the entire Article 36 backstop model: raise the annual overtime cap to 960 hours and disable the 100-hour monthly, 80-hour rolling-average and six-month tests, while applying the separate driver-specific binding-hours and rest-period standards instead.

Annual overtime ceiling hours
960
Monthly ceiling applies
no
Rolling average applies
no

The mistake employers make

The higher 960-hour figure is widely read as drivers being more tightly regulated from April 2024, when the statute actually gives them a looser annual cap and switches off the monthly and rolling-average ceilings. The real constraint on driver rosters is not Article 36 at all but the separate ministerial standard on binding hours and rest periods.

Citation: Labour Standards Act Supplementary Provisions Article 140 (as applied after the transitional period ended 31 March 2024)

e-Gov Law Search, Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (official consolidated statute text)last read 6 August 2026

In force from 1 April 2024

Hours and overtime limits

Article 36 agreement overtime limit: 45 hours a month, 360 a year

Binding law

Overtime permitted by an Article 36 agreement must not exceed a limit of 45 hours per month and 360 hours per year. Where the employer uses the one-year variable working hours scheme with a target period longer than three months, the limit drops to 42 hours per month and 320 hours per year.

Who this covers

Applies wherever an employer wishes to schedule work beyond 8 hours a day or 40 hours a week, or on a statutory rest day. Requires a written agreement with the majority union or majorityโ€ฆRead the full scope

Applies wherever an employer wishes to schedule work beyond 8 hours a day or 40 hours a week, or on a statutory rest day. Requires a written agreement with the majority union or majority representative, filed with the Labour Standards Inspection Office. Does not apply to under-18s, who are excluded from Article 36 entirely.

How to encode this in a schedule

Hard constraint: cumulative overtime hours per worker per calendar month must stay at or under 45 (42 under a long variable-hours scheme) and per agreement year at or under 360 (320), unless the employer's filed agreement contains a special clause, in which case the special-clause backstops govern instead.

Overtime hours per month
45
Overtime hours per year
360
Variable scheme hours per month
42
Variable scheme hours per year
320

The mistake employers make

Adopting a one-year variable working hours scheme to smooth seasonal demand quietly lowers the overtime ceiling from 45/360 to 42/320. Employers routinely adopt the scheme for the flexibility and keep validating against the higher number.

Why this figure does not travel

These are caps on OVERTIME hours, not on total hours, and they sit on top of the 8/40 baseline. No other jurisdiction in this set caps overtime by the month and the year in this way; Singapore's 72-hour monthly overtime cap is the nearest analogue but covers only Part 4 employees.

Citation: Labour Standards Act Article 36(1), 36(3) and 36(4)

e-Gov Law Search, Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (official consolidated statute text)last read 6 August 2026

Hours and overtime limits

Special clause and absolute statutory ceilings on overtime

Binding law

Under a special clause, monthly overtime plus statutory-holiday work must stay below 100 hours, annual overtime must not exceed 720 hours, and the number of months exceeding 45 hours (42 under a long variable-hours scheme) is capped at 6 per year. Independently of any agreement, Article 36(6) forbids more than 2 hours of daily overtime in underground and specified hazardous work, requires monthly overtime plus holiday work to stay below 100 hours, and requires the average of overtime plus holiday work to stay at or below 80 hours a month across every trailing window of 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 consecutive months.

Who this covers

The special clause is available only for temporary spikes from unforeseeable large increases in workload and must be written into the filed agreement. The Article 36(6) ceilings bind everyโ€ฆRead the full scope

The special clause is available only for temporary spikes from unforeseeable large increases in workload and must be written into the filed agreement. The Article 36(6) ceilings bind every employer regardless of what any agreement says. Article 36(3) to 36(5) and 36(6)(ii)-(iii) do not apply to work on research and development of new technologies, products or services; separate transitional regimes apply to driving occupations, construction disaster-recovery work and physicians.

How to encode this in a schedule

The scheduler must keep two separate counters per worker: overtime alone, for the 720-hour annual test, and overtime plus statutory-holiday work, for the 100-hour monthly and 80-hour rolling-average tests. Every time work is added to any month, all five trailing windows ending in that month and the five windows that will contain it must be re-evaluated, because adding hours in a later month can retroactively breach an average that includes an already-closed month.

Single month ceiling hours
100
Single month ceiling is exclusive
yes
Annual overtime ceiling hours
720
Rolling average hours per month
80
Rolling window months
2, 3, 4, 5, 6
Max months over 45
6
Hazardous daily overtime hours
2

The mistake employers make

Two bases, one word. The 720-hour annual cap counts only overtime and expressly excludes statutory-holiday work, while the 100-hour and 80-hour tests count overtime and holiday work together. An employer can therefore be comfortably inside 720 hours for the year and still commit a criminal violation of the 100-hour monthly ceiling on holiday work alone. Note also that the monthly ceiling is 'less than 100 hours', so exactly 100 is already a breach.

Citation: Labour Standards Act Article 36(5), Article 36(6) and Article 36(11); penalties for breach of Article 36(6) under Article 119(i)

e-Gov Law Search, Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (official consolidated statute text)last read 6 August 2026

In force from 1 April 2019

Hours and overtime limits

Statutory working hours: 8 hours a day, 40 hours a week

Binding law

An employer must not have a worker work more than 40 hours in a week, or more than 8 hours in a day, in each case excluding break time. Exceeding either limit is lawful only under a filed Article 36 agreement or one of the variable/flexible working hour schemes in Articles 32-2 to 32-5.

Who this covers

All workers covered by the Labour Standards Act, excluding those exempted by Article 41 (managers/supervisors, agriculture and fishery, permitted monitoring/intermittent work) and under-18sโ€ฆRead the full scope

All workers covered by the Labour Standards Act, excluding those exempted by Article 41 (managers/supervisors, agriculture and fishery, permitted monitoring/intermittent work) and under-18s who have their own stricter regime. A 44-hour week (the 8-hour day is unchanged) is available under Article 40 only to a workplace regularly employing fewer than 10 workers in one of four Appended Table 1 categories: item 8 (sale, distribution, storage or rental of goods, and barbering), item 10 excluding film production (film projection, theatre and other entertainment), item 13 (treatment and nursing of the sick or infirm and other health and hygiene businesses) and item 14 (inns, restaurants, eating and drinking establishments, hospitality and amusement venues). Verified against Ordinance for Enforcement Article 25-2(1).

How to encode this in a schedule

Hard constraint: paid working time in any assignment block must not exceed 8 hours, and the sum across a defined week must not exceed 40 hours, unless the employer has a filed Article 36 agreement or an approved variable-hours scheme, in which case the Article 36 caps become the binding limit instead.

Max daily hours
8
Max weekly hours
40

The mistake employers make

Break time is excluded from the 8 hours, so a shift with a 60-minute break occupies 9 hours of clock time while remaining compliant. Schedulers that cap the span from start to end rather than the paid working time inside it will reject lawful shifts.

Why this figure does not travel

maxDailyHours 8 / maxWeeklyHours 40 are real ceilings, but almost every Japanese schedule exceeds them lawfully under a filed Article 36 agreement, so the operative limit is usually japan-hours-limits-saburoku-limit. Presenting 8/40 as Japan's effective maximum overstates the constraint as badly as presenting the US 40 as a cap understates it.

Citation: Labour Standards Act (Act No. 49 of 1947) Article 32; 44-hour special measure under Article 40 and Ordinance for Enforcement of the Labour Standards Act Article 25-2(1); penalties under Article 119(i) (up to 6 months confinement or a fine up to 300,000 yen)

e-Gov Law Search, Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (official consolidated statute text)last read 6 August 2026

Rest between shifts

3 rules in Japan

Rest between shifts

Weekly rest day: one per week or four per four weeks

Binding law

The employer must give at least one rest day per week. Alternatively the employer may give at least four rest days over any four-week period, in which case the weekly requirement does not apply. A rest day means in principle a full calendar day from 00:00 to 24:00.

Who this covers

All workers covered by the Labour Standards Act except those exempted by Article 41. The four-day-per-four-week alternative requires the start date of the four-week period to be fixed in the work rules.

How to encode this in a schedule

Hard constraint: in each defined week the worker must have at least one calendar day with zero assigned working time, or under the alternative scheme at least four such days in each fixed four-week block. For a night shift ending at 06:00, the calendar day it ends on is not a rest day, so the scheduler must reserve the following whole calendar day.

Rest days per week
1
Alternative rest days
4
Alternative period weeks
4
Rest day hours
24

The mistake employers make

A rest day must be a calendar day, so 24 hours off spanning midnight does not count. There is one exception, and it rewards regularity: under a shift-rotation system (banpo hensei ni yoru kotaisei, such as 8-hour three-shift working) a continuous 24 hours suffices, but only if the rotation is set out in the work rules and operated as a system, and each changeover is regularly defined rather than set ad hoc by a roster each time. Build the rotation from a fixed repeating pattern and the exception applies; build it freehand each month and it does not, and every rest day must be a full calendar day.

Why this figure does not travel

restDayHours 24 is a CALENDAR day (00:00 to 24:00), not any 24 consecutive hours. It is deliberately NOT keyed as minWeeklyRestHours, because the UK's minWeeklyRestHours 24 and Singapore's 30-hour shift-worker substitute are rolling blocks that may straddle midnight, and Japan's may not except under a work-rules-defined rotation.

Also touchesHours and overtime limits

Citation: Labour Standards Act Article 35; Ordinance for Enforcement of the Labour Standards Act Article 12-2(2); administrative interpretation Kihatsu No. 150 of 14 March 1988; penalties under Article 119(i)

Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, Labour Standards Bureau, model work rules commentary (Chapter 4, working hours, breaks and rest days)last read 6 August 2026

Rest between shifts

Truck drivers: continuous rest period not below 9 hours

Official guidance

After finishing work a truck driver must be given a continuous rest period, with 11 continuous hours as the basis the employer is to endeavour to provide and 9 continuous hours as the floor that must not be undercut. Daily binding hours (from report to release, including waiting) are capped at 13 hours as standard and 15 hours maximum. Driving time must not exceed 9 hours a day averaged over 2 days, or 44 hours a week averaged over 2 weeks, and continuous driving must not exceed 4 hours. Monthly binding hours are capped at 284 hours, extendable by labour-management agreement to 310 hours for at most 6 months a year, provided months over 284 do not run more than 3 consecutively and the annual total stays within 3,300 hours (3,400 under such an agreement).

Who this covers

The numeric values in this rule are the TRUCK standard only, covering drivers in freight vehicle transport and, per MHLW, any driver whose main duty is driving a vehicle carrying goodsโ€ฆRead the full scope

The numeric values in this rule are the TRUCK standard only, covering drivers in freight vehicle transport and, per MHLW, any driver whose main duty is driving a vehicle carrying goods rather than people, including a delivery driver employed by a manufacturer. The kaizen kijun kokuji sets separate and different figures for the other two categories, and they must not be read across: BUSES take the same 3,300/3,400 annual binding hours but 281 monthly (294 by agreement for at most 6 months, no more than 4 consecutive months) and cap continuous driving at roughly 2 hours on expressway sections for chartered and highway services; TAXI AND HIRE take 288 monthly binding hours on a day-shift pattern, and on the alternate-day (kakkin) pattern 262 monthly (270 by agreement for at most 6 months) with a rest period target of 24 continuous hours and a floor of 22 continuous hours, not 11 and 9. The long-haul relaxation below is a freight-only provision. The 9-hour floor stated here is therefore NOT a universal Japanese driver rule.

How to encode this in a schedule

For truck rosters, target an 11-hour gap between the end of one duty and the start of the next and treat 9 hours as the floor, cap the report-to-release span at 13 hours (15 by exception), keep driving to 9 hours a day averaged over 2 days and 44 hours a week averaged over 2 weeks, break driving stints at 4 hours, and track binding hours against the monthly and annual budgets. Bus and taxi rosters need their own parameter sets. These are the operative constraints for drivers in place of the Article 36 monthly and rolling-average tests, which do not apply to them.

Min rest hours
9
Target rest hours
11
Min rest hours long haul
8
Long haul trip km
450
Long haul rest per week max
2
Min rest hours after long haul trip
12
Daily binding hours standard
13
Daily binding hours max
15
Long haul daily binding hours max
16
Continuous driving hours max
4
Driving hours per day avg over 2 days
9
Driving hours per week avg over 2 weeks
44
Monthly binding hours
284
Monthly binding hours extended
310
Extended months per year max
6
Consecutive months over 284 max
3
Annual binding hours
3,300
Annual binding hours extended
3,400

The mistake employers make

Classified as guidance because the kaizen kijun kokuji is a ministerial public notice rather than a penal provision of the Labour Standards Act, so breach is not itself a criminal offence and no LSA fine or confinement attaches. Enforcement runs through advice and corrective guidance from labour standards inspectors, and separately through transport regulators who tie operating sanctions to it under the road transport statutes, so it functions as a binding operational constraint while sitting outside the criminal provisions. Three number traps. First, 11 hours is an endeavour target and 9 hours is the floor; treating 11 as the requirement over-constrains the roster, treating 9 as optional under-constrains it. Second, the 450km long-haul relaxation is measured per trip, not per week: it needs EVERY trip in the week to be a long-haul freight run of 450km or more AND the rest period within the trip to be taken away from the driver's home area, and only then may the rest drop to 8 continuous hours twice in the week (and the daily binding hours rise to 16), with a continuous 12-hour rest owed after the trip ends whenever any rest in it fell below 9 hours. Reading 450km as a weekly distance makes almost every regional operation look eligible when almost none is. Third, the 9-hour floor itself is not absolute: where a continuous 9 hours is genuinely impracticable the rest may be split, for at most half the shifts in a period of about a month, into chunks of 3 or more continuous hours totalling at least 10 hours over two splits or 12 hours over three. A scheduler that hard-blocks every sub-9-hour gap will reject lawful splits.

Why this figure does not travel

minRestHours 9 is the TRUCK figure only; buses and taxis take different numbers (see scopeNote). Not comparable with the UK's general minRestHours 11, which covers every adult worker, nor with Florida's CMV minRestHours 10, which is a state statute rather than a ministerial notice.

Also touchesHours and overtime limits

Citation: Standards for Improvement of Working Hours etc. of Motor Vehicle Drivers (MHLW Public Notice, kaizen kijun kokuji), as revised and applied from 1 April 2024

Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, portal on improving long working hours of motor vehicle drivers, truck driver standards pagelast read 6 August 2026

In force from 1 April 2024

Rest between shifts

Work interval between shifts: effort duty only, no statutory number

Official guidance

Employers must endeavour to set the interval between the end of one day's work and the start of the next at a length necessary to secure workers' health and welfare. The law prescribes no minimum number of hours and imposes no penalty; adopting a defined interval is voluntary and government-subsidised.

Who this covers

All employers, as an effort obligation. Applies generally except where a sector-specific binding standard exists, such as the driver standards.

How to encode this in a schedule

No enforceable minimum rest gap exists in Japanese general law, so a scheduler must not hard-block a quick turnaround on statutory grounds. The correct treatment is a configurable soft constraint whose value the employer sets, defaulting to off, with a warning rather than a rejection.

The mistake employers make

Japan is frequently described as having introduced a work-interval system in 2019. It introduced an effort obligation with no number attached, not an entitlement. Vendors that ship an 11-hour EU-style rest rule as a Japanese statutory default are asserting a constraint the law does not impose.

Why this figure does not travel

minRestHours null with constraintType 'guidance' is a statutory EFFORT duty with no number, which is a different thing from the United States' and Singapore's true absence of any duty. Three jurisdictions render as 'no number'; only Japan has an obligation to try.

Citation: Act on Special Measures for Improvement of Working Hours Arrangements (Act No. 90 of 1992) Article 2(1)

e-Gov Law Search, Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (official consolidated statute text)last read 6 August 2026

In force from 1 April 2019

Night work

1 rule in Japan

Night work

Night work premium between 22:00 and 05:00

Binding law

Work performed between 22:00 and 05:00 must be paid at a premium of at least 25 percent over the normal hourly wage. This premium is additive to any overtime premium, so overtime worked at night attracts both.

Who this covers

All workers, including those exempted from working-hour rules by Article 41. The Minister may designate a region or period for which the window shifts to 23:00 to 06:00.

How to encode this in a schedule

Cost constraint rather than a feasibility constraint: the scheduler must compute the overlap in minutes between each assignment block and the 22:00 to 05:00 window and apply a 25 percent uplift to that portion, stacking it on top of any overtime uplift for the same minutes.

Night window start time
22:00
Night window end time
05:00
Premium percent
25

The mistake employers make

Night premium and overtime premium are separate entitlements for the same minute, not alternatives. An hour worked at 23:00 that is also the ninth hour of the day carries 25 percent for overtime plus 25 percent for night work, and where monthly overtime has passed 60 hours the overtime component rises to 50 percent, giving 75 percent in total.

Why this figure does not travel

Japan is the only jurisdiction in this set with a statutory night PREMIUM. The UK's night rule is an hours limit with no premium, Singapore has neither, and the U.S. jurisdictions have neither for adults. A 'night work' comparison row therefore compares four different kinds of rule.

Citation: Labour Standards Act Article 37(4); penalties under Article 119(i)

e-Gov Law Search, Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (official consolidated statute text)last read 6 August 2026

Heat and outdoor work

1 rule in Japan

Heat and outdoor work

Mandatory heatstroke reporting system and response procedure

Binding law

Before starting such work the employer must put in place, and inform the workers of, a system for reporting when a worker has heatstroke symptoms or when someone finds a colleague suspected of having heatstroke. The employer must also determine in advance, for each workplace, the content and implementation procedure for measures to stop symptoms worsening, covering removal from the work, cooling of the body and obtaining medical examination or treatment as needed, and must inform the workers of that content and procedure.

Who this covers

Applies to work at a 'hot place', meaning WBGT of 28C or above OR air temperature of 31C or above, where the work is expected to run continuously for 1 hour or more OR for more than 4 hoursโ€ฆRead the full scope

Applies to work at a 'hot place', meaning WBGT of 28C or above OR air temperature of 31C or above, where the work is expected to run continuously for 1 hour or more OR for more than 4 hours in the day. Both pairs are disjunctions, not conjunctions: WBGT 29 with air temperature 29 triggers the duty, and so does a day made of four separate 90-minute stints. Not limited to outdoor work: it covers indoor workplaces, work at customer or travel sites, work across multiple locations and travel between them, and the temperature is measured in principle at the place the work is actually done. The duty covers all persons doing the work at the site, including non-employees, and on mixed sites it falls on the principal contractor and every subcontractor independently.

When it triggers: (wbgtAtLeastC OR airTempAtLeastC) AND (continuousHoursAtLeast OR dailyHoursOver)

How to encode this in a schedule

Rosters a role, not a rest break. Whenever a block meets the temperature and duration trigger, the scheduler must ensure a named recipient of heatstroke reports is on duty and contactable for the entire block, and must not schedule such work at a site whose response procedure has not been recorded and communicated. Because the trigger is 'continuously 1 hour or more OR more than 4 hours a day', splitting the work into short stints does not avoid it once the daily total passes 4 hours.

WBGT celsius
28
Heat trigger C
31
Continuous hours at least
1
Daily hours over
4
Penalty months imprisonment
6
Penalty max fine yen
500,000
Heat trigger basis:
WBGT 28C OR dry-bulb air temperature 31C, whichever is met first, measured in principle where the work is actually done

The mistake employers make

The numbers are not in the ordinance. Article 612-2 says only 'work carried out continuously in a hot place and other work liable to cause heatstroke'; the WBGT 28C, 31C, 1-hour and 4-hour figures come from the ministry's interpretive circular, which is what inspectors apply. Two further misreadings are common: this is not an outdoor-only rule, and it does not require a rest break or a work-stoppage temperature. What it mandates is that someone is designated to receive reports and that a written response procedure exists and has been communicated before the work starts. Breach carries up to 6 months confinement or a fine up to 500,000 yen.

Why this figure does not travel

wbgtCelsius 28 triggers a PREPAREDNESS duty (a named recipient for heatstroke reports and a written response procedure). Singapore's wbgtCelsius 32 triggers a paid shaded REST BREAK. These are not points on the same scale and must never be rendered as 'Japan is stricter than Singapore'.

Why this label and not another

Kept as 'hard': Article 612-2 of the Ordinance on Industrial Safety and Health is a specific, criminally enforceable duty. Only the THRESHOLDS (WBGT 28C, 31C air, 1 hour, 4 hours) come from the ministry's interpretive circular rather than the ordinance text. That is why this rule is 'hard' while the Singapore heat framework, whose entire content including the duty itself sits in an administrative document under a general duty clause, is 'guidance'.

Citation: Ordinance on Industrial Safety and Health (Ministry of Labour Ordinance No. 32 of 1972) Article 612-2, added by MHLW Ordinance No. 57 of 2025; based on Industrial Safety and Health Act Article 22; penalties under Industrial Safety and Health Act Article 119(i)

Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, Labour Standards Bureau Circular Kihatsu 0520 No. 6 of 20 May 2025 (official interpretive circular on the amending ordinance)last read 6 August 2026

In force from 1 June 2025

Workers under 18

2 rules in Japan

Workers under 18

Under-18s may not work between 22:00 and 05:00

Binding law

An employer must not employ a person under 18 between 22:00 and 05:00. Males aged 16 or over working under a shift-rotation system are exempt from this ban. Where the Minister designates a region or period the hours become 23:00 and 06:00.

Who this covers

All workers under 18. Exceptions: males aged 16 and over employed on a shift-rotation system; businesses operating on a shift system may with prior permission work minors until 22:30 orโ€ฆRead the full scope

All workers under 18. Exceptions: males aged 16 and over employed on a shift-rotation system; businesses operating on a shift system may with prior permission work minors until 22:30 or from 05:30; the ban does not apply to Article 33(1) emergency work, nor to Appended Table 1 item 6 (agriculture and forestry, with no forestry carve-out here, unlike Article 41), item 7 (livestock, sericulture and fishery), item 13 (health and hygiene), or to telephone switchboard work. For children employed under Article 56(2) the window is stricter at 20:00 to 05:00, becoming 21:00 to 06:00 where the Minister has designated a region or period.

How to encode this in a schedule

Hard constraint: no assignment block for a worker under 18 may overlap 22:00 to 05:00, with a per-worker override for males aged 16 or over on a shift-rotation system, and a per-site override to 22:30/05:30 where the workplace holds the permission. The scheduler must therefore store date of birth, sex and the site's permission status, not merely an 'is a minor' flag.

Under age
18
Night window start time
22:00
Night window end time
05:00
Shift system permitted until time
22:30
Shift system permitted from time
05:30
Child night window start time
20:00

The mistake employers make

The shift-rotation exception is written for males aged 16 and over only, so a 17-year-old woman on the same rotation as her male colleagues cannot lawfully be rostered past 22:00 even though he can. Schedulers that model minors purely by age will produce an unlawful roster here.

Also touchesNight work

Citation: Labour Standards Act Article 61; penalties under Article 119(i)

e-Gov Law Search, Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (official consolidated statute text)last read 6 August 2026

Workers under 18

Under-18s are excluded from Article 36 overtime and variable-hours schemes

Binding law

Articles 32-2 to 32-5 (variable and flexible working hours), Article 36 (overtime agreements), Article 40 and Article 41-2 do not apply to persons under 18, so their 8-hour day and 40-hour week are absolute. Two narrow exceptions exist, and only for those who are 15 or over, under 18, and past the first 31 March after turning 15: shortening one day in the week to 4 hours or less allows another day to run up to 10 hours provided the week stays within the Article 32(1) 40 hours, and the variable schemes under Articles 32-2 or 32-4 may be used within a weekly figure set by ordinance not exceeding 48 hours and within 8 hours a day.

Who this covers

All workers under 18. Children employed under Article 56(2) (aged 13 and over with permission, or under 13 in film and theatre) are further limited to 7 hours a day and 40 hours a weekโ€ฆRead the full scope

All workers under 18. Children employed under Article 56(2) (aged 13 and over with permission, or under 13 in film and theatre) are further limited to 7 hours a day and 40 hours a week counting school hours. The two Article 60(3) relaxations reach only workers who are 15 or over and under 18 AND past the first 31 March following their 15th birthday, so a 15-year-old hired in, say, October is not eligible until the following 1 April.

How to encode this in a schedule

Hard constraint: for a worker under 18 the scheduler must refuse any assignment that pushes the day past 8 hours or the week past 40, with no override available from the employer's Article 36 agreement. The 10-hour day is permitted only when the scheduler can simultaneously guarantee another day in the same week is cut to 4 hours or less and the week still totals 40 or fewer.

Under age
18
Max daily hours
8
Max weekly hours
40
Exception max daily hours
10
Exception other day max daily hours
4
Exception max weekly hours
48
Child max daily hours
7

The mistake employers make

A filed Article 36 agreement covers the whole workplace, so employers assume it covers everyone in it. It does not reach under-18s at all. A 17-year-old rostered for a ninth hour is an immediate statutory breach even though the identical hour for the 18-year-old beside them is lawful.

Also touchesHours and overtime limits

Citation: Labour Standards Act Article 60(1), 60(2) and 60(3)

e-Gov Law Search, Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (official consolidated statute text)last read 6 August 2026

Predictive scheduling

2 rules in Japan

Predictive scheduling

Shift publication and change rules: agreed in advance, no statutory notice period

Official guidance

MHLW advises that employers should not set shifts unilaterally, and should agree rules with workers in advance covering: consulting workers before drawing up the roster, the deadline and method for notifying the confirmed roster, and the deadline and procedure for changing working days or hours both before and after the roster period begins. Because a confirmed roster forms part of the agreed working conditions, changing it should be done by mutual agreement.

Who this covers

Workers on shift-based contracts where working days and hours are not fixed at contract conclusion but are first determined by a roster drawn up each period (a week, a month and so on). Theโ€ฆRead the full scope

Workers on shift-based contracts where working days and hours are not fixed at contract conclusion but are first determined by a roster drawn up each period (a week, a month and so on). The document expressly excludes conventional rotating shift work, meaning arrangements where the number of working days and hours over a set period is already fixed and the worker simply works combinations of shift patterns laid down in the work rules. Verified against the guidance text, section 1 and its footnote.

How to encode this in a schedule

Japan sets no statutory advance-notice period and no predictability pay, so the scheduler should expose publication-deadline and change-cutoff settings as employer-configured policy rather than as legal constraints, and should record worker agreement to post-publication changes rather than applying a penalty calculation.

The mistake employers make

This document is titled 'points to note' and creates no new legal obligation; it restates existing law and adds recommendations. The trap runs the other way, though: the recommendation to agree change rules sits on top of Labour Contract Act Article 8, under which a confirmed roster is a working condition that cannot be varied unilaterally, so cutting a published shift without the worker's agreement can expose the employer to a wage claim for the lost hours even though no scheduling-specific penalty exists.

Citation: MHLW, Points to Note for Appropriate Employment Management of Workers Engaged under So-Called Shift Systems, 7 January 2022, as revised 19 June 2026; the change-by-agreement point rests on Labour Contract Act Article 8

Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, full text of the guidance document (dates and the shift creation and change rules read from the document itself)last read 6 August 2026

Predictive scheduling

Start and end times must be stated in writing at hiring

Binding law

At the conclusion of the employment contract the employer must give the worker written notice of the start and end times, whether work beyond contractual hours may be required, break times, rest days, leave, and where workers are split into two or more groups, the arrangements for shift changeover. Delivery must be by written document, or by electronic means such as fax or email where the worker so requests. Conclusion includes renewal of a fixed-term contract and re-engagement after retirement age.

Who this covers

Every worker, at the conclusion of the employment contract. Applies to part-time and casual shift workers on the same terms as full-time staff.

How to encode this in a schedule

Constrains the employment model rather than the weekly roster: a scheduler cannot support a pure on-demand model in which no start and end times exist anywhere. Where days are genuinely set period by period, the system must be able to emit a standard start/end pattern plus a shift table covering a defined period, and must persist the shift-changeover rules for multi-group rotations.

The mistake employers make

Writing 'as per shift' in the labour conditions notice does not satisfy Article 15. MHLW states the employer must either write the start and end times for each working day, or state the standard start and end times and hand over a shift table for a defined period at the same time as the contract. The same trap runs through the work rules: for an employer with 10 or more workers, an entry saying only 'as per shift' does not discharge the Article 89 duty either, though a basic pattern plus 'the specifics are set by shift' is acceptable. Where rest days are not yet fixed to particular weekdays, the notice must still state the principle on which they will be set, and that principle must satisfy Article 35.

Citation: Labour Standards Act Article 15(1); Ordinance for Enforcement of the Labour Standards Act Article 5(1)(ii), 5(3) and 5(4); penalties under Labour Standards Act Article 120(i)

e-Gov Law Search, Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (Ordinance for Enforcement of the Labour Standards Act, official consolidated text)last read 6 August 2026

What a scheduler encodes in Japan

Model the Article 36 agreement as data about the site, not as a constant in the code. Its monthly and annual figures, whether a special clause exists, and how many of the year six permitted over-forty-five months have already been used, are all inputs a roster must read before it can say whether one more shift is lawful.

Keep two overtime counters rather than one, because the backstops disagree about whether statutory-holiday work belongs in the total. Then keep the six trailing windows live as a check rather than as a monthly report, so that adding a shift in March shows its effect on every average ending between April and August. Drivers are a separate configuration again: a nine-hundred-and-sixty-hour annual ceiling with the monthly backstops disapplied.

The rest is ordinary constraint work. Break duration keyed to a threshold in worked hours and placed inside them, a weekly rest day with a four-week alternative, a night premium band on the clock, and an absolute prohibition on scheduling anyone under eighteen between 22:00 and 05:00, with under-eighteens also excluded from Article 36 overtime and from every variable-hours scheme.

What we looked for in Japan and did not publish

Japanese omissions are mostly cases where a real framework exists but carries no determinate trigger a schedule could be built against. Encoding an advisory WBGT reference table as a work-rest ratio would have converted guidance into a constraint, which is the one thing this engine will not do.

Predictive scheduling

Predictive scheduling

Japan has no binding predictive-scheduling law of the US 'fair workweek' type. There is no statutory advance-notice period for publishing a roster, no premium or predictability pay for late changes, no right to decline unscheduled hours, and no clopening ban. The only instruments are the hard Article 15 written-notice duty and the non-binding MHLW shift-system guidance, both captured above as rules. No numeric notice period is asserted because none exists in law.

Rest between shifts

Rest between shifts

No general statutory minimum rest period between shifts exists in Japan. Only the Article 2(1) effort duty (no number) and the sector-specific driver standard are sourceable, and both are recorded above. Any specific hour figure presented as a general Japanese requirement would be invented.

Heat and outdoor work

Heat and outdoor work

The WBGT reference values by metabolic rate class and the clothing adjustment values in the 2021 basic heatstroke prevention guideline (Kihatsu 0420 No. 3, as amended 20 May 2025) were not encoded as a rule. They are an endeavour-based framework for reducing exposure rather than a scheduling constraint with a determinate trigger, and encoding a work-rest ratio from them would misrepresent an advisory table as a schedulable rule.

Hours and overtime limits

Hours and overtime limits

The physician-specific overtime regime under Supplementary Provisions Article 141 was omitted. Its A/B/C level ceilings sit in MHLW ordinance and depend on prefectural designation of the medical institution, which could not be pinned to a single verifiable numeric trigger within this pass. The construction disaster-recovery carve-out in Supplementary Provisions Article 139 was likewise omitted as too narrow to be schedulable.

Hours and overtime limits

Hours and overtime limits

The 44-hour weekly special measure under Article 40 is not given its own rule because it only relaxes the weekly figure inside the existing statutory-hours rule rather than adding a distinct constraint. Its conditions have now been read from Ordinance for Enforcement Article 25-2(1) and are stated in full in the scopeNote of japan-hours-limits-statutory-day-week: fewer than 10 workers regularly employed, in Appended Table 1 items 8, 10 (excluding film production), 13 or 14. The 8-hour day is unchanged by it.

Rest between shifts

Rest between shifts

Bus and taxi/hire driver binding-hour and rest-period figures under the kaizen kijun kokuji are not given their own rules. They are summarised inside the scopeNote of japan-rest-between-shifts-drivers so that a consumer cannot mistake the truck figures for universal driver figures, but a roster for those categories needs its own parameter set read from the relevant MHLW portal page rather than from this file.

Scope and limits

Every figure on this page was read from the primary source linked on its rule, most recently on 6 August 2026. The methodology sets out how sources were chosen, what a checked absence means, and what happens when a rule goes stale.

Keep reading

Every jurisdiction in this reference →Heat and outdoor work across all six jurisdictions →How many people one continuously staffed post needs →Rotation patterns and the shapes that fit →

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