Japan's visa photo is square. The passport photo is not.
Search for a Japanese visa photo and you will be told it is 35 × 45 mm, head 70 to 80 per cent, white background. That describes the Japanese passport photo. The visa application form carries its own photo box, and it is 45 mm × 45 mm.
What the form itself says
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs visa application form, the standard VISA APPLICATION FORM TO ENTER JAPAN, contains a rectangular box in its upper right area labelled "(Paste photo here) 45mm × 45mm or 2in × 2in". The dimensions are printed on the form, next to the box the photo goes into, which makes the form itself the authoritative statement of the frame rather than a guidance note about it.
| Document | Frame | What it is for |
|---|---|---|
| Japan visa application form | 45 × 45 mm square, or 2 × 2 in | A visa application lodged at an embassy, consulate-general or accredited agency |
| Japanese passport | 35 × 45 mm | The passport photo for a Japanese passport applicant, documented on our Japan page |
| 2 × 2 in | 50.8 × 50.8 mm | The U.S. frame, which the Japanese form explicitly accepts as an alternative to 45 × 45 mm |
Why the 35 × 45 instruction is everywhere, and why it still fails
35 × 45 mm is the Japanese passport frame, and it is also the Schengen frame, and it is also the frame used by a dozen other countries. Guide sites that aggregate "visa photo sizes" collapse the two Japanese documents into one row and fill in the more familiar number. The result is a correctly-sized passport photo pasted into a visa form box that is square, which leaves either white margins or a cropped chin depending on how the applicant improvises.
The mechanical failure is simple geometry: a 35 × 45 portrait has an aspect ratio of 0.78; the visa box is 1.00. Fitting one into the other means either cropping 22 per cent of the height or leaving bands of blank paper, and a photo that has been cut down to fit usually ends up with the head too large for the remaining frame.
Making the file at 45 × 45
- Print: 45 mm square is 1.77 in square. At 300 DPI that is 531 × 531 pixels; print at 300 DPI with fit-to-page scaling off, then cut on the box edges rather than around the head.
- Head proportion: the 70 to 80 per cent head-height rule carried over from the passport guidance is the figure most often quoted; on a 45 mm square that puts chin-to-crown at roughly 32 to 36 mm. Compose to that before you crop, not after.
- Background: plain white, no shadow, no gradient, no visible wall texture.
- Recency: six months is the working assumption across Japanese applications; an old passport photo is the most common rejection.
- Quantity: the form takes one photo. Agencies sometimes ask for a second copy for their own file, which is a service-office requirement rather than a MOFA one.
What this page does not claim
Japan runs an online visa channel (JAPAN eVISA) with its own upload rules, including a file-size ceiling. We have not captured the eVISA upload page, so this page publishes no byte limit for it rather than repeating a number from a secondary source. The change log carries the same note. The same caution applies to any figure quoted for the eVISA portal by a guide site: the passport-form dimensions above are from the form itself, and the eVISA ceiling is a different document.
For the countries whose passport offices and portals publish conflicting limits, see portal upload limits; for the twenty-destination frame comparison, see the spec matrix. Corrections: hi@pixlready.com.