---
title: Can You Refuse a Transfer in Japan? | Nobu Sato
description: Without a location limit in your contract, a Japanese transfer order is hard to refuse. Negotiate after the naiji and check your contract's scope of change.
image: https://nobusato.jp/hubfs/can-you-refuse-a-transfer-in-japan-en.png
---

[Nobu Sato](https://nobusato.jp/en?hsLang=en)

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# Can You Refuse a Transfer in Japan?

[Nobu Sato](https://nobusato.jp/en/profile?hsLang=en)

![Diagram of how a Japanese transfer notice turns into an order, with the three tests from the Toa Paint case](https://nobusato.jp/hs-fs/hubfs/can-you-refuse-a-transfer-in-japan-en.png?width=1200&height=630&name=can-you-refuse-a-transfer-in-japan-en.png)

You usually can't refuse a transfer outright in Japan if your contract doesn't limit where you work. But the weeks between the informal notice and the formal order are where most outcomes get decided, and since April 2024 one line in your contract matters a lot more than it used to.

The notice tends to arrive the same way. Your manager asks for ten minutes on a Friday and says, "From April, we'd like you in Osaka." That's the naiji. You go home and wonder whether you have a choice.

## Is a naiji an order?

Not yet. A naiji (内示) is an informal advance notice. No statute defines it. The binding instruction is the formal order (辞令) that follows. So asking for time, or explaining your family situation when you get the naiji, is not insubordination.

The leading case shows the sequence. In the Toa Paint case, decided by the [Supreme Court of Japan on 14 July 1986](https://www.courts.go.jp/app/files/hanrei_jp/925/062925_hanrei.pdf), a sales employee was sounded out about Hiroshima in September 1973 and said no. He was offered Nagoya and said no again. A formal Nagoya order followed on 30 October. He didn't go, and he was dismissed for misconduct the following January. What the court looked at as grounds for dismissal was his refusal of the formal order.

## When is a transfer order invalid?

If the work rules allow transfers and nothing in your contract limits your location, the employer can order a transfer without your individual consent. The Supreme Court then set three conditions under which an order is an abuse of rights and void:

- there is no business necessity;
- there is a necessity, but the real motive is improper (pushing someone out, retaliation);
- the disadvantage to the worker goes well beyond what a worker should normally be expected to accept.

That third bar is high. The court said business necessity doesn't mean "nobody else could do this job." Anything that contributes to running the company rationally counts. And the employee in that case had a 71-year-old mother living with him, a wife who had just started work at a daycare, and a two-year-old daughter. The court still found the disadvantage acceptable. Living apart from your family, on its own, has rarely been enough.

Care duties are where the line has moved. Article 26 of the Child Care and Family Care Leave Act says that when a relocation would make it hard for an employee to keep raising a child or caring for family, the employer must take that situation into account ([e-Gov](https://laws.e-gov.go.jp/law/403AC0000000076)). It doesn't ban the transfer. It asks whether the employer found out the facts, listened, and looked at alternatives. In the Nestlé Japan case, the Osaka High Court in April 2006 voided transfer orders for two employees caring for family members. And from 1 October 2025, employers must ask each employee about their preferences, including work location, and take them into account. This happens when the employee reports a pregnancy or birth, and again before the child turns three ([Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare](https://www.mhlw.go.jp/seisakunitsuite/bunya/koyou_roudou/koyoukintou/ryouritsu/ikuji/law-amendment)).

## The contract line that changed in 2024

For any employment contract signed on or after 1 April 2024, the employer must state in writing not only your initial workplace and duties, but also their "scope of change": the range of places and jobs you could be moved to later ([MHLW, 2024 rules on stating working conditions](https://www.mhlw.go.jp/stf/newpage_32105.html)). Fixed-term contracts need it at every renewal. If you were hired on an open-ended contract before April 2024, the ministry's Q&A says the employer doesn't have to reissue it.

Then put that next to a Supreme Court ruling from 26 April 2024 ([Shiga Prefecture Social Welfare Council case](https://www.courts.go.jp/app/files/hanrei_jp/928/092928_hanrei.pdf)). A technician of about 18 years was moved to a general-affairs post. The court held that where employer and employee agreed to limit the job type, the employer has no power to order a transfer outside it without the employee's individual consent. The question of abuse never comes up, because the power doesn't exist. That case was about job type. My reading is that the same logic applies to an agreed location limit.

So read your Notice of Working Conditions (労働条件通知書). Find the workplace field marked "scope of change." "Any location designated by the company" means a nationwide-transfer contract. A named city, or "no change," gives you something real to stand on.

I'm less certain whether a stated scope will be treated by courts as a binding location limit in every case. The cases haven't piled up yet. If it matters for you, ask a lawyer.

## What refusing actually costs

Refusing a valid order without a good reason is a breach of a work instruction. Discipline can follow, up to dismissal. A dismissal still has to be objectively reasonable and socially appropriate, so one refusal doesn't automatically make it lawful. But fighting takes months. As I wrote in [a look at Japan's labor tribunal cases](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/japan-labor-tribunal-cases?hsLang=en), about 70% end in mediation. In dismissal disputes that often means a settlement payment rather than a return to the old desk.

The quieter fact is that employers expect some people to say no. A 2016 survey by the [Japan Institute for Labour Policy and Training (JILPT)](https://www.jil.go.jp/kokunai/blt/backnumber/2017/10/021-033.pdf) got answers from 1,852 companies with 300+ regular employees. Among the 1,133 that transfer staff, 64.7% said they take employees with serious family reasons off the transfer list in advance. Only 3.2% said they transfer them as planned anyway. 83.7% had a way for employees to raise family circumstances. The survey is from 2016, so today's numbers may differ.

## How to use the weeks before the formal order

Get your contract and the work rules. Then write down your situation as facts. Who needs care, how often, what you do. Which school, which daycare, what moving would break. HR can rarely act on "family reasons." It can act on specifics.

Don't treat it as yes or no. In the same JILPT survey, 40.9% of the companies that transfer staff said they delay the transfer, and 22.9% move the person to a nearby site instead. Across all respondents, 64.1% pay a monthly allowance for employees relocating without family (tanshin funin), and 55.1% pay trips home. Timing, an expected length, the allowance, how often you fly back. Decide which matters most before the meeting.

Refusing is realistic in three situations. The move is outside your contract's scope. You can show that care for a child or parent would genuinely collapse. Or you are ready to leave. For that last one, it helps to lay out both versions of yourself, the one who goes and the one who stays, using [the four-layer self-portrait before changing jobs](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/four-layer-self-portrait-before-changing-jobs?hsLang=en). A transfer mostly changes the context layer. Sometimes that's the layer that was already failing.

This is general information as of October 2026, not legal advice. If you're stuck, a General Labor Consultation Corner (総合労働相談コーナー), the Labour Standards Inspection Office, or a lawyer is a better next call than a colleague.

Everyone who signs with a Japanese company agrees, on paper, to some answer about how much of where they live the employer gets to decide. Most people only learn what their answer is on that Friday afternoon, ten minutes into the meeting.

---

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