Automated gates at the airport

There are five sets queues in the international airports in Japan: one for crew and diplomats/officials, one for non-Japanese, one for Japanese, one for non-Japanese with re-entry permits, and an automated gate for registered non-Japanese and Japanese. When lines are long, they may direct excess people in the Japanese line and the non-Japanese line into the less used Re-Entry line and Crew/Diplomat line. There is one line, however, that is rarely used and is the fastest: the automated gate.

Both non-Japanese and Japanese can pre-register their biometric identification to allow for faster processing at airport immigration. Unlike similar systems in the United States, the process is free and even available to non-permanent residents. This registration can be done at many Immigration bureaus, which is convenient for non-Japanese renewing the reentry or residency status stamps in their passport, or at the airport itself right before immigration check exiting the country. Registration is fast and involves filling out a simple form. Non-Japanese have a similar form with more information about their passport and residency status. Both of these forms are archived in the Docs page of this site.

Unlike many European e-Passports, modern Japanese e-Passports (that contain a RFID symbol and a chip in the middle of the passport with a digitally secure version of the main printed passport page) do not contain fingerprint biometric data; they only contain a digitized version of the photo on your passport.

The biometric data (photos & fingerprints etc.) for both foreign residents of Japan and Japanese are stored in the same database (which is a completely separate database from the alien registration database or other databases, and they cannot merge or share this data with other systems by law), so if you were previously registered for the Automated Gates as a foreign resident in Japan, you will need to unregister your previous record as a foreigner and re-register as a Japanese. You do this by bringing both passports upon applying for registration, at which time they'll scan your fingerprints and old passport, cancel the old registration digitally and physically — by stamping "CANCELLED" over the 日本国自動化ゲート利用希望者登録済 {nihonkoku jidōka gēto riyōsha tōrokuzumi} (Completed Registration for Desired Use of Automated Gates in Japan) stamp in the non-Japanese passport — then putting the same stamp in the back of your Japanese passport.

There are three differences between the use of non-automated gates between Japanese and non-Japanese: Japanese automated gate stamps expire at the end of the expiration of the passport (usually ten years), whereas the automated gate permit for foreigners expires at the end of the expiration of their status of residency or reentry permit. Secondly, foreigners do have to go through a secondary cursory passport handling after using the automated systems in order to process and collect the reentry card stapled in their passport and receive an entry or departure stamp (the entry and departure is always recorded digitally), which is stamped on the actual re-entry card (this is a new procedure for the Residency Card (在留カード {zairyū kādo}) system, and different from the old ARC (外国人登録証明書 {gaikokujin tōroku shōmeisho}) system where the stamp was directly on the passport's visa pages and was also optional. For Japanese, which have no embarkation or departure or reentry card, the entire process is unmanned, barring any technical difficulty. Thirdly, with some systems (for example, the automated gates in Terminal 2 of Narita International Airport), non-Japanese may have to scan the QR code on their reentry stamp or status of residence, and possibly the bar code on their reentry card as a technical backup if the QR code scan fails.

Going through the automated gate involved scanning the main page of your passport, followed by fingerprint verification, followed by a digital photograph being taken. It takes a maximum of 15 seconds. Non-Japanese need an additional 10 to 15 seconds to remove the reentry card from their passport by an official.