Japan Passport Photo Maker — Free, Fast & Private
The Japan Passport photo is 35×45 mm on plain white in print, and 413×531 px where the Japan form wants an upload. Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan puts the head at 71–80% of the height, chin to crown, and the eyes at 60–70% up from the bottom edge.
Plain white or light-coloured background with no shadow. Head 32–36 mm from chin to crown. Taken within last 6 months. Neutral expression with mouth closed. MOFA governs the upload by file size rather than by pixels: jpg only and 600 KB or less for an application made inside Japan, and 20 KB to 2 MB with jpg, jpeg, bmp or png from abroad.
Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs writes the head size as a tolerance rather than a band, 34 millimetres plus or minus 2 from the top of the head to the chin on a borderless print of 45 millimetres high by 35 wide. Work it out and 32 to 36 millimetres of a 45 millimetre frame is 71.1 to 80 per cent, which is the 71 to 80 recorded above, one point tighter at the bottom than the 70 that most 35 by 45 documents use. Roughly half a millimetre of face separates a photograph that passes from one that is fractionally short. The upload rules are the genuinely unusual part, because MOFA governs them by file size and not by pixel count at all. The page covering online applications names JPEG only and a ceiling of 600 kilobytes for applications made inside Japan, and a wider 20 kilobyte to 2 megabyte window with more formats accepted for applications made from abroad. Those are the two windows this page now offers, one per route, so pick the one matching where you are filing and the encoder will build to it. MOFA last revised the specification on 3 March 2025.
Shadow is what spoils home attempts. A plain wall is not a plain background if you are standing close to it, because the light that makes your face readable throws your outline onto the wall behind you. MiniPx replaces the backdrop rather than cleaning it, so the composed field is uniform by construction, which sidesteps the problem for anyone preparing a file. The second thing to watch is which application you are filing. Because MOFA sets a 600 kilobyte cap domestically and a 2 megabyte cap from overseas, a file that is comfortably legal at a consulate abroad can be twice the size a domestic online application will take. MOFA also notes that some destinations run facial recognition against the passport image at the border, which is the practical reason the head measurement is policed as tightly as it is. The accepted formats diverge between the two routes as well, and not in the direction you would guess. Applying from inside Japan, jpg is the only format the upload will take; applying from abroad, jpg, jpeg, bmp and png are all listed. A PNG that a consulate accepts without comment is therefore refused by the domestic system, so convert before you travel rather than after.
Switch Japan route in the tool and the export retargets; none of it leaves this browser tab by default. Figures come from Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan — mofa.go.jp, online application photo and signature notes (rev. 2025-03-03). If one has gone stale, contact@minipx.com.