This section is based on a summary of real experience living in Japan and job hunting here. It's intended for informational reference only and does not constitute legal advice, guidance on handling labor disputes, or professional advice on visas or residence status. Hiring practices, labor regulations, and administrative systems can vary over time, by industry, and by company size — for your specific situation, please rely on your employer's written statements, your employment contract, or the advice of a qualified lawyer or labor and social security attorney (sharoushi). If any content here is outdated or inaccurate, we welcome feedback and will keep it updated.
Almost every formal job application in Japan asks for two separate documents: the rirekisho (履歴書) and the shokumu keirekisho (職務経歴書). If you're new to job hunting here, your first thought is probably "isn't that just a resume — why do I need two?" Confusing the two, or letting their content overlap heavily, is one of the fastest ways HR spots someone unfamiliar with how hiring works in Japan.
The rirekisho is closer to a standardized personal information form. Its layout is fixed almost everywhere — whether it's a paper form bought at a store or a template on a job site, the fields don't change: name, date of birth, current address, contact information, a timeline of education and work history (just company names, departments, and start/end dates — no description of what you actually did), any licenses or certifications you hold, commute time, dependents, and a "desired conditions" section for salary or role preferences.
Its job is to let the employer quickly verify your basic identity and check that your history timeline is complete, with no unexplained gaps. HR and general affairs departments also pull directly from these fields for onboarding paperwork and social insurance procedures — so a clean, correctly formatted document with no missing fields matters more here than trying to make it stand out.
There's no nationally fixed format for the shokumu keirekisho — you organize the content and layout yourself. It's essentially a detailed account of your professional experience, and this is where you actually demonstrate your abilities: what specific projects you were responsible for in each role, what methods you used to solve what problems, and what measurable results came out of it (numbers, efficiency gains, team size, and so on).
During the initial document screening stage, Japanese companies often weigh the shokumu keirekisho more heavily than the rirekisho, because it answers the real question directly: can this person actually do the job? The same work history should be reorganized for each position you apply to — which experiences go first, which details get expanded, which get a single line — rather than sending the same version to every company.
The first mistake is letting the two documents overlap heavily — trying to spell out what you did in the rirekisho's work history field, then writing something similar again in the shokumu keirekisho. The correct division is: the rirekisho lists only the timeline and company/department names; the actual substance belongs in the shokumu keirekisho.
The second mistake is writing the shokumu keirekisho as a list of daily duties — "handled client communication," "managed data organization" — which tells the reader nothing that sets you apart from other candidates. What Japanese employers want to see is a logical chain: what the challenge was, what you did about it, and what happened as a result. Even a small improvement is worth spelling out clearly.
The third mistake is translating a Chinese resume directly into Japanese — the sentence structures and word choices tend to read as unnatural. The shokumu keirekisho has its own conventions (fixed expressions like 〜を担当, 〜に貢献, 〜を実現 show up constantly). It's worth studying a few real Japanese-market samples to pick up the sentence patterns and information density, rather than translating your existing resume word for word.
Key Takeaways