How to Read a Japanese Payslip

The shape of the document before the numbers

Almost every Japanese payslip is built from the same three blocks, whatever software produced it. 勤怠 (kintai) counts your attendance in days and hours. 支給 (shikyū) lists everything the company pays you and totals it. 控除 (kōjo) lists everything taken out and totals that. The bottom line subtracts the second total from the first. Once you can find those three block headings, an unfamiliar layout becomes a familiar document with the columns moved around.

The header carries the period the slip covers and the date of payment, and these two are not the same thing. A slip may cover work up to a cutoff date, called the 締め日 (shimebi), and pay it on a later date, the 支給日 (shikyūbi). This gap is the single most common reason a new employee thinks hours are missing: the overtime worked at the end of the month often appears on the following month's slip.

• Find the three block headings first: 勤怠, 支給, 控除
• Read the header for the period covered and the payment date, which usually differ
• Locate the two totals, gross and net, before reading any individual line
• Keep the previous month's slip so you always have something to compare against
• Treat every figure as your employer's calculation to explain, not something you should guess at

Payslip field reference

Labels vary between payroll systems, so your slip may use a shorter form such as 健保 for health insurance or 厚年 for pension. The reading matters more than the exact characters: if you can say the word aloud, you can ask about it. Nothing on this list tells you what any figure should be, and none of it is advice about your own situation. For your own case, confirm the details with your employer's payroll or HR contact, or with a qualified professional.

Reading the attendance block

The attendance block is the one you can check yourself, because you were there. Compare the days and hours against your own record before you look at anything in the money blocks, since almost every unexpected change in pay begins with a changed number here. Overtime is the usual suspect: the hours you worked near the end of a month may sit on the next slip because of the cutoff date, so a quiet month followed by a heavy one can look reversed on paper.

Checking your paid leave balance

Paid leave usually appears twice: the days you took in this period and the balance left. The balance is the number to watch, because leave is granted on a schedule tied to your own start date rather than to the calendar year, and companies display it differently. If your own count and the slip disagree, the gap is usually a day recorded under a different category rather than a missing day, so ask which category it went into before you conclude anything.

Reading the payments block

The payments block starts with 基本給, your base pay, and then adds allowances, each ending in 手当 (teate). An allowance is money attached to a condition: a role, a commute, a qualification, a family situation, or hours worked outside the schedule. Whether your company offers any given allowance, and on what terms, is set by its own rules, so the useful question is never how much an allowance should be but which rule creates it and what changes it.

Commuting is the allowance that changes most often, because it follows your address and your route. If you move, or your route changes, the paperwork is usually yours to start. Overtime pay is the other frequent mover, and it should track the hours in the attendance block; if the hours look right and the payment line looks different from what you expected, ask how the two relate rather than assuming either is wrong.

Reading the deductions block

The deductions block usually opens with the social insurance lines, health insurance and pension and employment insurance, then the tax lines, then anything specific to your company. Each of these is calculated by its own method on its own review cycle, which is why they do not all move together and why one can change while the others stay still for months. Resident tax in particular is handled differently from income tax and is a common source of surprise for someone in their second year of working in Japan.

This is exactly the point at which to stop guessing. The rules behind these lines are technical, they depend on your personal circumstances, and they change. Nothing here is advice about your own deductions. Ask your payroll or HR contact to walk you through the specific line, and for anything touching tax or your residence status, ask whether you should speak to a qualified professional.

Spotting a change from last month

The fastest check is a two-slip comparison. Put last month beside this month and read only the labels whose numbers moved. Usually there is one, and the story runs downhill from it: attendance changed, so a payment changed, so the totals changed. When a deduction moved on its own with nothing above it changing, that is a review cycle rather than your behaviour, and it is a fair question to ask about.

• Line up the two slips and mark only the fields that differ
• Check the attendance block first, since a change there explains most of the rest
• Note whether the gross total moved, the deductions total moved, or both
• Write the exact field name in kanji before you go and ask, so you can point at it
• Ask about one line at a time; a list of five questions gets one vague answer

Asking HR without accusing anyone

The social move that matters is framing the question as your own gap in understanding rather than as a claim that the company got it wrong. Japanese gives you ready-made ways to do this: open with an apology for interrupting, state that you want to learn how something works, and use ～のですが to trail off rather than finishing with a demand. If it does turn out to be an error, this framing loses you nothing and lets the other person correct it without embarrassment.

What HR is likely to say back

Notice how many of these answers point somewhere else: a cutoff date, an annual review, another department. That is normal and it is not a brush-off. The useful reply from you is a short confirmation that repeats the key word you just heard, because it proves you followed and it gives the other person a chance to correct your version if you got it slightly wrong.

Field names that are easy to confuse

Learn these eight pairs and most payslip conversations become navigable, because almost every confusion a newcomer has is one of these two words swapped for the other. Say each pair aloud in sequence until the second word of each pair arrives automatically after the first.

A five-minute routine for every payday

• Open the slip on payday rather than saving it for a quiet week that never comes
• Read the attendance block against your own diary of days and overtime
• Check the remaining leave balance and note it somewhere you will see next month
• Compare the gross and net totals with last month and mark any moved line
• Write down one question in Japanese, with the field name in kanji, and ask it that week
• File the slip where you can find it later, since you may need past slips for administrative procedures