Rirekisho, Shokumu-keirekisho and Your CV: Which One Japan Actually Wants

A Japanese company asks for your documents, and you send your CV. Then they ask for a rirekisho. And a shokumu-keirekisho.

Most countries have one document. Japan has two, and they do different jobs. Sending the wrong one — or putting your best material in the wrong place — costs you at the stage where six out of ten applications already fail.

Here’s what each document is for, and where to put your effort.

The three documents at a glance

	English CV	Rirekisho (履歴書)	Shokumu-keirekisho (職務経歴書)
What it is	Your usual resume	A fixed-format personal record	A free-format career history
Format	Yours	A standard form you fill in	Your choice of layout
Length	1–2 pages	1 sheet (2 pages)	1–2 pages
Who reads it closely	Everyone, at international-friendly companies	HR	The engineers
What it proves	Everything	That you’re a serious, careful applicant	That you can do the job

If the posting doesn’t say, ask which documents they want and in which language. Asking is normal. Sending the wrong format is a small, avoidable bad impression.

Many international-friendly companies accept an English CV alone. Traditional Japanese companies usually want the two Japanese documents, sometimes later in the process.

The rirekisho: a form, not an essay

The rirekisho is a standard form with fixed boxes: name, contact details, education and employment history by date, qualifications, and a space for your motivation.

Think of it as identity and diligence. Nobody is impressed by a beautiful rirekisho; they only notice a careless one. Fill it in completely, in order, with no gaps in the dates.

Which form to use

Japan’s JIS standard used to publish a template. It was removed in July 2020, so the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare published its own recommended form.

In the ministry’s version:

The gender field is optional — an open field rather than a male/female choice, so you can write what you want, or leave it blank
Four fields were removed: commuting time, number of dependants, spouse, and whether you support your spouse
These changes come from Japan’s fair hiring policy (公正な採用選考), which asks employers to select on aptitude and ability. The ministry states plainly that what you write in the gender field — or leaving it blank — must not decide the outcome

Source: MHLW — on the creation of the new resume form example (Japanese, PDF)

Practical points

You don’t have to handwrite it. Typing is normal now; the ministry publishes an Excel version
The photo is still expected: plain background, business clothing, taken recently
Dates: pick either the Western calendar (2026) or the Japanese era (令和8) and use it consistently
The motivation box (志望動機) is short. Two or three sentences on why this company, not a general statement about Japan

The shokumu-keirekisho: where you actually compete

This is the document engineers read. It has no fixed format, which is exactly why it matters: how you organise it is part of what’s being judged.

A structure that works for engineers

Summary          3–4 lines: who you are, years of experience, core strengths
Skills           Languages, frameworks, cloud, tools — with years and level
Work history     Newest first. For each role:
                   - Company (industry, size), period, your position
                   - The product or system, and its scale
                   - What you were responsible for
                   - What you built, and what changed because of it
Self PR          Short. What you bring to THIS role

The rule that decides everything

For each role, write what you built, at what scale, and what changed because of it — not the technologies you were near.

Weak	Strong
Experienced in AWS and Terraform	Managed 60 EC2 instances across 3 environments; moved provisioning to Terraform, cutting new-environment setup from 2 days to 2 hours
Participated in a microservices project	Split the payment service out of the monolith with 2 engineers; cut deploy time for the team from 30 to 6 minutes
Did monitoring and incident response	On-call for a service with 500k monthly users; redesigned alerts and cut pages by 80%

Numbers do the work. Scale, time saved, cost reduced, incidents avoided.

Make your own part obvious

Japanese teams work collectively, so documents often say “we”. The engineer reading yours needs to know what you personally did. Write “I designed…”, and if you led others, say how many.

If you write in Japanese

Keep it plain. Simple, correct Japanese beats ambitious Japanese with mistakes
Use standard terms: 職務要約 (summary), 活かせる経験・スキル (relevant skills), 職務経歴 (work history), 自己PR
Write in ですます調 and keep it consistent
If your Japanese isn’t strong, it’s fine to submit in English and say so — but check what language the team actually works in first, because that tells you how the document will be read

Common mistakes

Mistake	Why it hurts
Sending one generic document to every company	Readers compare line by line against the posting
Putting everything in the rirekisho	It has no room. Your case belongs in the shokumu-keirekisho
Gaps in dates with no explanation	Reads as risk. One line is enough
Listing 30 technologies	Signals breadth without depth. Lead with what you’re strong in
No visa or start-date information	The easiest reason to skip you — see the engineer visa guide

Summary

Rirekisho = a form. Complete and careful, not creative.
Shokumu-keirekisho = your case. This is what engineers read.
English CV is often enough at international-friendly companies. Ask first.
Write what you built, at what scale, with what result — and make your own role clear.
The government’s own form no longer asks about spouse, dependants or commuting time, and treats gender as optional.

This article is general information based on the official sources linked above and my own experience in the industry. Company practice varies.

Want the inside view on how Japanese companies read your resume? Get the free guide “What Japanese Hiring Managers Actually Check in Your Resume”