100% on-device
Japan passport photo, made in your browser
MOFA does not describe its photo in prose — it publishes a diagram in millimetres. This crops to that diagram. No upload, no sign-up.
The rule this document is failed for
Japan publishes a diagram, and a smile is a rejection.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs states the photo as measurements rather than adjectives: the head 34 ± 2 mm tall, the crown 4 ± 2 mm below the top edge, the chin 7 ± 2 mm above the bottom one, the face 17 ± 2 mm wide. There is very little room to interpret, which is good news — the tool can simply hit those numbers. The rule that catches people is not geometric at all: MOFA explicitly warns against smiling, or any expression noticeably different from how you normally look. A friendly photo is a rejected photo. Keep the face neutral, the mouth closed, and let the millimetres do the rest.
The specification, in numbers
- Photo size
- 35 × 45 mm
- Head height
- 32–36 mm, measured to the top of your skull — hair is ignored
- Head as a share of the frame
- 71–80%
- Background
- Plain and uniform, with no shadow. MOFA says “no background”, not literally “white” — white is the safe choice.
- Printed at 300 DPI
- 413 × 531 px
- Copies on one 10 × 15 cm (4 × 6 in) print
- 8 (4 × 2)
- Online — the Mynaportal online application
- a different frame from the print — crop it inside the form (600 × 730 px, up to 600 KB)
- Background colour the tool paints
-
#f5f5f5— only if you tick the background box, which is off by default.
Applying online? That is a different photo.
Applying online in Japan: exactly 600 × 730 px, jpg, 600 KB or less — and Mynaportal itself warns that this ratio is NOT the 35 × 45 mm of the paper photo. No head geometry is published for the digital frame, so this tool will not guess one. (From outside Japan the limits differ again: 20 KB–2 MB, and the file is recompressed on upload, so one inside the range can still fail.)
From the form's own rules, last read on 2026-07-13.
What Japan passport asks for
- MOFA publishes the layout as a diagram, in millimetres: head 34 ± 2 mm, crown to the top edge 4 ± 2 mm, chin to the bottom edge 7 ± 2 mm, face width 17 ± 2 mm.
- Neutral expression. MOFA explicitly warns against smiling or any expression markedly different from your normal appearance.
- Glasses are best removed; reflections or frames across the eyes mean rejection.
- Taken within 6 months of applying.
- THE ONLINE APPLICATION WANTS A DIFFERENT SHAPE, AND THE GOVERNMENT SAYS SO ITSELF: exactly 600 × 730 px, and Mynaportal warns in as many words that this ratio differs from the 35 × 45 mm paper photo. The paper crop, rescaled, is not it.
Every figure above comes from Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, last read on 2026-07-13. These rules do change; if you are reading this long after that date, spend a minute on the source page.
How it works
- Drop in a photo. It is read straight into this tab. There is no upload.
- Mark three points — the top of your head, your chin, the middle of your face. From those the crop is fully determined: the scale comes from the head height Japan passport demands, the position from where it wants the crown. You do not pan or zoom anything.
- Download the single 35 × 45 mm photo, or the print sheet with all 8 copies on it.
Questions
Why so specific about the margins?
Because MOFA is. Where most countries name one measurement and leave the composition open, Japan’s official diagram fixes the head height, the gap above the head and the gap below the chin. The tool positions the crop from those published margins rather than centring the head and hoping.
Can I smile?
No. This is stated outright: no smiling, and no expression markedly unlike your ordinary appearance. It is one of the most common reasons a Japanese passport photo is turned away.
Can I use this for the online (Mynaportal) application?
No, and you do not have to take our word for it — the government warns about this itself. The online application wants a photo of exactly 600 × 730 pixels, and Mynaportal notes in as many words that this ratio is NOT the 35 × 45 mm of the paper photo. It is not: 600 × 730 is a slightly wider frame, so the printed crop squeezed into it would distort your face. No head geometry is published for the digital frame either, so this tool will not guess one and quietly hand you something plausible. Use this page for the printed photo, where MOFA publishes every millimetre. (Applying from outside Japan changes the file limits again — 20 KB to 2 MB — and the system recompresses your file after you upload it, so one that was inside the range can still fail.)
Glasses?
Best removed. Reflections, or frames sitting across the eyes, mean rejection — and both are hard to judge from a phone screen.
Is my photo uploaded anywhere?
It is not uploaded — and that is a fact of how the tool is built, not a promise in a privacy policy. There is no upload endpoint. The photo is read straight into this browser tab and cropped by code running on your own machine; you can pull out your Wi-Fi halfway through and it will still finish. Given that a passport photo is your face attached to a government form, that is the only honest way to build this.
How do I get it printed?
Download the print sheet and hand it to any photo lab as an ordinary 10 × 15 cm (4 × 6 in) print — it costs small change and comes back on real photo paper with the cut guides on it. If you print at home, print at 100% scale and never “fit to page”: that quietly rescales the sheet and makes every millimetre on it wrong.
Other documents
The same tool knows all of them — pick one from the dropdown above, or start from its own page: