Do Japanese companies forbid salary employees to do outside work?

11 comments

1. This is a copy of your post for archive/search purposes.

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   **Do Japanese companies forbid salary employees to do outside work?**

   I’ve been seriously considering applying to some jobs in Tokyo (software dev) so that we can be closer to my wife’s family who is in Asia. We’ve been to Japan several times and would likely enjoy living there and I’ve noticed some companies will sponsor your visa. I currently do some consulting on the side and wonder if Japanese companies would have an issue if I continued to do consulting work on occasion for my existing clients? Only on weekends and/or outside of normal work hours. Curious if this is a common scenario.

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2. My friend (expat with PR working at a Japanese company) told me he had to get special permission from his work to get a part time job at a bar on Saturdays (he was doing it just for fun / friends working there). So I wouldn’t take it for granted you can do a consulting job that’s actually somewhat related to your main work – even my us company doesn’t allow doing that in some cases.

3. If there is a conflict of interest it will be a breach of contract but that is the same anywhere. Most times it will be fine as long as your honest and it doesn’t affect your work performance.

4. My contract explicitly forbids me from working a second job. But there are internal processes to apply for exception. I guess it is because they don’t really care if I work at a combini in the weekend, but will care if I become a consultant for one of their competitors. You can check if your company has something similar.

5. It isn’t the company you need to worry about so much from what I understand. As long as it doesn’t breach your contract, you should be fine. However, if you are doing related work, there may be fine print expressing you cannot do that in your work contract. It may be considered to be “competition” against your company.

   Also, you need to consider your visa as well. If it’s sponsored by the company, they may require you not undertake other forms of work.

   I’d look into companies you want to work with and their policies. 🙂

6. I have a friend who works at a major Japanese game company. His salary was low so he wanted to do side jobs, but he was forbidden, so he just did them anyway in secret without the company knowing. So as long as the company doesn’t find out i guess you can do whatever lol

7. Generally speaking from what I’ve seen, if you’re a full time, salaried employee you’re often explicitly forbidden from engaging in any paid work outside of your main job. *This rule is pretty common in most companies out there in Japan*.

   Full time employees often have a guaranteed job for life (as long as they managed to stay in business), but in return they require your undivided attention to the job and loyalty. It’s culturally taboo to be working another job, even on your off time.

   In addition, full time employees have the perk of having the company do your taxes for you, which means if you were to work on the side, you would also need to report that as income tax.

   In practice, it is *possible* but do note that if they were to find out you were doing another job, you could get fired – which is something that Japanese companies have a hard time doing because the laws protect the employee to a large extent.

   For example, a company really wanted to make me a full time employee but I refused because they said they do not allow full time workers to be working freelance or having side jobs – there was no exception this. To compromise, I ended up working part time and doing freelance on the side.

8. it probably varies by industry but fwiw i’ve seen multiple software developers — both expats and native japanese — doing what you describe. idk how they were handling their taxes though. that said, you’re probably talking about keeping your existing clients who presumably are not japanese companies. So you’d be getting foreign income that you have to report ultimately at tax time, but that’s all opaque to your day job employer, doesn’t sound like a real issue.

9. >Do Japanese companies forbid salary employees to do outside work?

   #Yep.

   Outside work is generally forbidden by mainline Japanese corporations. My *Seishain*/正社員 contract with MHI specially forbids it as does many traditional Japanese companies like Hitachi, Toshiba, et al.

   However, many ^{most?} will ignore your working for a non-competitor on a very occasional **cash** basis.

   Bottom Line: Check your employment contract.

   > would have an issue if I continued to do consulting work on occasion for my existing clients

   You would have a tax issue since all work performed in Japan is subject to Japanese taxation and your existing {foreign?} clients would have to take Japanese tax measures^† which most would not be willing to do.

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   ^† Even if your foreign client only paid you for your consulting work into a foreign bank account, Japanese taxes will need to be paid. The workaround is a [EOR](https://www.reddit.com/r/movingtojapan/comments/wet82u/to_eor_or_leave_japan/) but that is very expensive and annoying.

10. It depends on the company. Some (or maybe most) companies have a clause forbidding all side jobs, or sometimes just forbidding having a second employer (but freelance/sole proprietorships are fair game), while some don’t have any restrictions as long as it doesn’t conflict with your main employment.

11. Depends on your contract really