Rirekisho Photo Rules — and How to Take a Good One with Your Phone

The photo (証明写真) is the first thing a Japanese employer sees on your rirekisho, and a poor one quietly makes the whole application look careless. The good news: the rules are fixed and easy to meet, and you no longer need an ¥800 photo booth to get an acceptable result.

The fixed rules

• Size: 30 mm wide × 40 mm tall. This is the standard cell on every rirekisho.
• Freshness: taken within the last 3 months.
• Background: plain and light — white, pale blue, or light grey. No rooms, walls, or patterns behind you.
• Framing: front-facing, head and shoulders, face filling roughly 70–80% of the frame, eyes looking at the camera.
• Attire: business clothing — a dark suit or collared shirt is the safe default, even for part-time roles.
• Expression: neutral with a very slight, relaxed look. No big smile, no hat, no heavy filter, no sunglasses.

Taking it with your phone

A smartphone photo is fine for almost all arubaito applications if you set it up well:

• Stand about 1.5 m from a plain light wall, with the light in front of you.
• Use daylight from a window — avoid overhead light that casts shadows under your eyes.
• Have someone else take it, or use a tripod and timer, at eye level (not from below).
• Keep shoulders square and centred; leave a little space above your head.
• Do not beautify or smooth your skin — recruiters expect a realistic photo.

Several free apps crop to the exact 30×40 mm ratio for you. ResumeJP also resizes your uploaded photo to fit the standard cell automatically, so you can simply upload a clear phone shot in the editor.

Printing it

You do not need a printer. Upload your finished rirekisho PDF to a convenience-store print service (7-Eleven netprint, or ネットワークプリント for FamilyMart and Lawson), get a reservation number, and print at the in-store multicopy machine — about ¥20 for A4 black and white. Use the photo-quality setting so your picture stays sharp.

Editing: what is fine and what is not

Light, honest editing is acceptable; anything that changes how you actually look is not.

• Fine: cropping to 30×40 mm, straightening, gently correcting brightness or colour balance, and replacing a slightly uneven wall with a clean white or pale-blue background.
• Not fine: beauty filters, skin smoothing, reshaping your face, changing hair or eye colour, or anything that makes the photo not match the person at the interview.

The test is simple: when you walk into the interview, the manager should immediately recognise you from the photo. A picture that oversells reads as dishonest the moment you arrive.

Digital photos and the “My Number” style

If a job asks you to upload a photo rather than print one, the same composition rules apply. Save it as a clear JPEG or PNG, keep the 3:4 ratio (e.g. 600×800 px or larger), and avoid heavy compression that blurs your face. Many convenience-store machines and ID-photo booths also sell a digital copy alongside the prints, which is handy when you apply both online and on paper. In ResumeJP you upload the photo once and it is placed at the correct size for every template you export.

Where the photo goes, and attaching it

On the rirekisho the photo sits in the box at the top right, next to your name and date of birth. For a printed sheet you handwrite or print your name on the back of the physical photo before attaching it, in case it comes loose, and use a glue stick rather than tape or staples. With ResumeJP the photo is printed directly into the sheet, so there is nothing to glue — but if you hand-fill a blank template, this small detail still matters to tidy employers.

Common photo mistakes

• A busy or coloured background (bedroom, street, curtains).
• A cropped selfie at arm's length — the angle and distance look informal.
• Casual clothing such as a t-shirt or hoodie.
• An old photo that no longer looks like you.
• A low-resolution image that prints blurry or pixelated.

Once your photo is sorted, walk through the rest of the sheet with our step-by-step rirekisho guide, or start a part-time version on the arubaito resume page.