Work & Money

How to Read a Japanese Payslip (Kyuyo Meisai)

Why is the number at the top of your Japanese payslip so much bigger than the one that actually reaches your bank account? Your first kyuyo meisai (給与明細) rarely explains itself: it arrives as a dense grid of kanji, with a gross figure up top, a smaller take-home figure at the bottom, and a stack of deductions in between doing all the quiet subtracting. Read section by section, though, it resolves into a short, repeatable pattern — three blocks, a handful of deductions, and a few kanji terms worth learning to recognize on sight. Turning that grid into something you can read at a glance is what the rest of this page is for.

The three sections of every payslip

Payslip formats vary by company and payroll vendor — some are printed on paper, many are now a PDF or a company-portal page — but almost all of them are organized into the same three blocks:

• Kintai (勤怠) — Attendance. A record of your month: days worked, absences, lateness, overtime hours. This section reports time, not money.
• Shikyu (支給) — Earnings. Everything paid to you before anything is taken out: base salary plus any allowances. The total of this section is your gross pay for the month.
• Kojo (控除) — Deductions. Everything subtracted from that gross pay: social insurance premiums and taxes. The total of this section, subtracted from shikyu, produces your net pay.

If you remember nothing else, remember this three-part shape — it is the skeleton every other line item hangs off of, regardless of which payroll system your employer uses.

Attendance (kintai 勤怠): the record of your month

This block is informational rather than financial, but it explains where some of the numbers in the earnings section come from — overtime pay, for instance, is calculated directly from the overtime hours logged here. Common lines include:

• Shukkin nissu (出勤日数) — days worked
• Yukyu kyuka (有給休暇) — paid leave, often shown as days taken and days remaining
• Zangyo jikan (残業時間) — overtime hours
• Kekkin (欠勤) — unpaid absence
• Chikoku / sotai (遅刻・早退) — late arrival / early departure

Earnings (shikyu 支給): where your gross pay comes from

This is the "before deductions" half of the slip. The base salary is usually the largest line, with various allowances (teate 手当) added on top depending on your role and company:

• Kihonkyu (基本給) — base salary, before any allowances or deductions
• Zangyo teate / jikangai teate (残業手当・時間外手当) — overtime pay, calculated from the hours logged in the attendance section
• Tsukin teate (通勤手当) — commuting allowance, reimbursing your train or bus pass. For commuting by public transportation, the National Tax Agency treats this allowance as non-taxable up to the cost of the most economical, reasonable commuting route, capped at ¥150,000 per month — so for most commuters it does not add to your taxable income at all.
• Jutaku teate (住宅手当) — housing allowance, where offered
• Yakushoku teate (役職手当) — position or management allowance
• Kazoku teate / fuyo teate (家族手当・扶養手当) — family or dependent allowance, where offered
• Shikyu gokei (支給合計) — total earnings: the sum of everything above, and your gross pay for the month

Deductions (kojo 控除): the four lines that shrink your paycheck

This is the section most people actually want explained, because it is where the gap between gross and net pay comes from. For a typical company employee, four items make up the bulk of it, plus a fifth that only appears from your second year onward.

• Kenko hoken-ryo (健康保険料) — health insurance premium. Most company employees are enrolled in employee health insurance through Zenkoku Kenko Hoken Kyokai (全国健康保険協会, commonly "Kyokai Kenpo"), or a company-specific health insurance society for larger employers. The total premium is split evenly between you and your employer and is set as a percentage of your standardized monthly remuneration; the exact percentage varies by prefecture, since Kyokai Kenpo sets a separate rate for each one. In Tokyo, the combined rate for Reiwa 8 (fiscal year 2026) is around 9.85% of standardized remuneration, so your own share is roughly half of that. If you are between 40 and 64, an additional long-term care insurance premium (kaigo hoken-ryo 介護保険料) is collected alongside health insurance — a further employee share of roughly 0.8% of remuneration. Also collected together with health insurance from the April 2026 premium onward (first visible in May 2026 payroll) is a new, small line: the child-rearing support contribution (kodomo kosodate shienkin 子ども・子育て支援金), which funds expanded childcare programs. For fiscal year 2026 the rate is 0.23% of standardized monthly remuneration, split evenly with your employer — so the employee share is about 0.115%. Depending on your payroll system it may appear as its own line or be folded into the health insurance figure.
• Kosei nenkin hoken-ryo (厚生年金保険料) — employees' pension insurance premium. The combined employer-employee rate has been fixed at 18.3% of standardized remuneration since September 2017, split 50/50, so your share works out to about 9.15%. This is the largest single deduction on most payslips. If you eventually leave Japan for good, a portion of what you have paid in may be returned to you as a one-time payment — see our guide to the pension lump-sum withdrawal payment for how that works.
• Koyo hoken-ryo (雇用保険料) — employment insurance premium. This funds unemployment benefits and related programs. It is a small percentage of gross pay, not standardized remuneration, and — unlike health insurance and pension — the employer pays a noticeably larger share than the employee. For fiscal year 2026 (April 2026 through March 2027), the employee share for a general business is 0.5% of gross pay.
• Shotoku-zei (所得税) — income tax. Your employer withholds an estimate of your national income tax from every paycheck (gensen choshu 源泉徴収), using National Tax Agency withholding tables based on your pay after social insurance deductions and the number of dependents you have declared. On top of the income tax itself, a reconstruction surtax of 2.1% is added, a fixed levy that has applied since 2013 to help fund disaster-recovery spending. Because withholding is only an estimate made month by month, most companies run a year-end adjustment (nenmatsu chosei 年末調整) every December that reconciles what was actually withheld against what you truly owed for the year, refunding or collecting the difference in your December or January pay. Some employees — those with income above a certain threshold, more than one employer, or certain types of side income — file an individual final tax return (kakutei shinkoku 確定申告) instead.
• Juminzei (住民税) — residence tax. This is billed on last year's income, not the current year's, which is why it usually does not appear on your payslip at all during your first calendar year in Japan — there is no "last year" of Japan-sourced income yet to bill against. It typically starts appearing from June of your second year, calculated as roughly 10% of last year's income (split between a prefectural and a municipal portion) plus a small flat per-resident amount, usually a few thousand yen a year. Because this is the deduction that surprises the most people, we cover it in full — including exactly why it is delayed and what happens if you leave Japan before it is settled — in our dedicated guide to Japanese residence tax (juminzei).
• Kojo gokei (控除合計) and sashihiki shikyu-gaku (差引支給額). Kojo gokei is the total of everything above. Sashihiki shikyu-gaku — sometimes just labeled tedori (手取り) — is your net pay: shikyu gokei minus kojo gokei, and the number that actually arrives in your account.

A kanji-to-English glossary

A quick-reference table for the terms above, useful for scanning an actual payslip in front of you:

Why your first year and second year look different

Two things commonly change between a new arrival's first year and second year on a Japanese payslip, and neither means something went wrong:

• Residence tax appears. As covered in the deductions section above, juminzei runs on a one-year delay, so it typically shows up as a new line around June of year two — often mistaken for a payroll error, but entirely normal. Full explanation: Japanese residence tax (juminzei).
• Social insurance amounts get revised once a year. Your standardized monthly remuneration — the figure health insurance and pension premiums are calculated from — is reviewed every September (teiji kettei 定時決定) based on your average pay over the preceding few months, so a raise, a bonus-heavy period, or a change in overtime can shift your deduction amounts later that year, separate from any tax change.

If you are enrolled in your company's health insurance and pension through Kyokai Kenpo, you also become part of a system you may need again later: your My Number (個人番号), which your employer uses to set up these enrollments and your tax withholding in the first place. If you have not yet applied for your My Number Card, our My Number Card guide covers who is eligible and how the application works.

If something on your payslip looks wrong

Payroll mistakes happen — a missed allowance, a wrong number of overtime hours, a dependent that was not correctly registered. The first and usually fastest step is to ask your company's HR or payroll department directly; they can see your actual enrollment records and pay calculation, which this guide cannot. If a workplace dispute over unpaid wages or overtime does not get resolved internally, your regional Labour Standards Inspection Office (労働基準監督署) is the public body that handles labor complaints. For questions specific to your income tax withholding, the National Tax Agency and your local tax office are the right point of contact; for social insurance enrollment questions, that is your nearest Japan Pension Service (日本年金機構) office or Kyokai Kenpo branch. None of this is a substitute for reviewing your specific case with them — this guide only explains what the standard lines on a standard payslip generally mean.

Related reading

• Japanese residence tax (juminzei): why it is zero your first year
• Health insurance after quitting your job in Japan
• Claiming your pension lump-sum withdrawal payment when you leave Japan
• Getting your My Number Card as a foreign resident

Sources

Rates and thresholds confirmed 2026-07-15. Social insurance rates are reviewed periodically and can change; treat exact percentages as illustrative (Tokyo, general business) rather than universal.

• Zenkoku Kenko Hoken Kyokai (Kyokai Kenpo) — Tokyo health insurance and long-term care insurance premium rate table, Reiwa 8 (FY2026): kyoukaikenpo.or.jp/assets/R8_13tokyo.pdf (index: kyoukaikenpo.or.jp/g7/cat330/sb3150/)
• Japan Pension Service — employees' pension insurance premium rate (18.3%, fixed since September 2017): nenkin.go.jp/service/kounen/hokenryo/ryogaku/ryogakuhyo/index.html
• Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare — employment insurance premium rates, fiscal year 2026 (Reiwa 8): mhlw.go.jp/stf/seisakunitsuite/bunya/0000108634.html
• National Tax Agency — outline of the reconstruction special income tax (2.1% surtax, 2013–2037): nta.go.jp/publication/pamph/shotoku/fukko_tokubetsu/index.htm
• National Tax Agency — non-taxable commuting allowance limit for public-transportation commuters (¥150,000/month cap, a long-standing limit; NTA page current as of April 1, 2026): nta.go.jp/taxes/shiraberu/taxanswer/gensen/2582.htm
• Children and Families Agency (こども家庭庁) — child-rearing support contribution system (collected with health insurance premiums from April 2026; FY2026 uniform rate 0.23%, half borne by the employee): cfa.go.jp/policies/kodomokosodateshienkinseido
• Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (Soumu) — individual residence tax system overview (10% income-based rate, per-capita flat portion): soumu.go.jp/main_sosiki/jichi_zeisei/czaisei/czaisei_seido/150790_06.html