a country · JapanJapan
also: 日本 · Nippon · Nihon
Japan runs a Medical Stay visa and a hospital survey, and neither produces a patient count. In the trade Japan is talked about as a destination and shows up in the data as a source market.
A country with a Medical Stay visa, a national programme to receive foreign patients, and no published count of how many arrive for treatment. Japan's measurable role in cross-border care is the opposite of its reputation: in 2024 Japanese patients were the largest single group of foreign patients recorded in South Korea.
What its own health system looks like
The 5 numbers behind this chart
| Value | ||
|---|---|---|
| Current health expenditure per person | 3,638 | current US$ · 2023 |
| Physicians | 2.6 | per 1,000 people · 2022 |
| Hospital beds | 13 | per 1,000 people · 2022 |
| Out-of-pocket share of health spending | 12 | % of current health expenditure · 2023 |
| Life expectancy at birth | 84 | years · 2024 |
The story Cited · mhlw-foreign-patient-survey
The Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare runs an annual survey on the reception of foreign patients at medical institutions, covering every hospital in the country and clinics in selected prefectures. The 2023 round was published on 31 July 2024 and corrected twice after. It asks whether a facility received foreign patients and how it is equipped to do so. It does not separate a resident foreigner from a traveller who came for treatment, and it produces a picture of institutions, not of patients.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs publishes visa issuances by category each year, on a calendar year, and states on the page that its totals differ from immigration counts because some nationalities need no visa at all. A medical-stay issuance is an issuance: it is not an admission, not an operation, and not a person who arrived.
Inference — between a survey of hospitals and a count of visas there is no series that says how many people flew to Japan to be treated, and this directory carries none.
Meanwhile South Korea's health ministry recorded Japan as the leading country of origin for its 1.17 million foreign patients in 2024, with arrivals from Japan up 135.0 per cent on the year. Whatever else Japan is in this subject, it is a documented source market for the clinic next door.
How it works Trade practice
Trade practice — a foreign patient is usually routed through a hospital's international department or an accredited coordinator, who handles the visa letter, the guarantor requirement and the estimate. Language is the binding constraint: consultation, consent and discharge instructions are in Japanese unless the facility has staffed against it. Advanced radiotherapy — proton and carbon-ion beams — is the offer most often named to patients from elsewhere in Asia.
Today Cited · mhlw-foreign-patient-survey
The 2025 visa issuance tables were published on 23 June 2026 and the 2026 tables are expected around May 2027. No national inbound patient figure is carried on this page.
The particulars
| iso2 | Japan (JP) |
|---|---|
| direction | both |
| currency | JPY |
| languages | Japanese, English, Mandarin |
| draws | Proton beam therapy, CAR T-cell therapy, Executive health screening |
| region | East Asia |
| about those numbers | No count is carried. The health ministry's annual survey covers medical institutions and records whether they received foreign patients, without separating residents from travellers; the foreign ministry's visa statistics count issuances by category, not arrivals or admissions. Neither series answers how many people travelled to Japan for treatment, so this record leaves the field empty rather than fill it from a market summary. (2026-09-16) · source |
| where | 35.6895, 139.6917 (city) · OpenStreetMap · open in maps Harvested · osm |
| links | FY2023 survey on foreign patient reception — MHLW · Visa issuance statistics — MOFA |
| confidence | medium · needs verification · updated 2026-09-16 |
How far it is from the places people leave
The 7 routes on this map
| From | To | Distance |
|---|---|---|
| Tokyo, Japan | Japan | 1 km · about 0h 45m in the air |
| Shanghai, China | Japan | 1,759 km · about 2h 49m in the air |
| Manila, Philippines | Japan | 2,996 km · about 4h 16m in the air |
| Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam | Japan | 4,327 km · about 5h 50m in the air |
| Bangkok, Thailand | Japan | 4,603 km · about 6h 10m in the air |
| Yangon, Myanmar | Japan | 4,764 km · about 6h 21m in the air |
| Dhaka, Bangladesh | Japan | 4,884 km · about 6h 30m in the air |
What it connects to
Pages that point here
Sources
- Results of the FY2023 survey on the reception of foreign patients at medical institutions — Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (Japan) · link (read 2026-09-16)
- Visa issuance statistics — Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan · link (read 2026-09-16)
- Korea Attracts 1.17 Million Foreign Patients in 2024 — Ministry of Health and Welfare (Republic of Korea) · link (read 2026-09-16)
- World Bank Open Data — health and tourism indicators — The World Bank · link (read 2026-09-16)
- OpenStreetMap — OpenStreetMap contributors · link (read 2026-09-16)
Where it came from: Cited a source named here · Harvested pulled from an open dataset · Trade practice how the trade works, hedged · Inference this project's own reasoning · Field somebody stood there. This record as JSON.