Rio de Janeiro.- The governments of Brazil and Japan reached an agreement to reciprocally exempt the visa requirement for visitors from both countries with a common passport on trips of less than 90 days, official sources reported Wednesday.
The measure will enter into force on September 30 of this year and will have an initial term of three years, the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs reported in a statement.
“The announced exemption will contribute to the deepening of human exchange and relations between the two countries in the year in which the 115th anniversary of (the beginning of) Japanese immigration in Brazil is commemorated,” the Foreign Ministry said in its statement.
In 2019, in his first year in office, then-President Jair Bolsonaro waived the requirement for visitors from Japan, the United States, Canada and Australia, four of the countries that emit the most tourists in the world and that require a visa for Brazilians. as a way to encourage tourism in Brazil.
The unilateral measure, without requiring reciprocity from those four countries, was criticized by different sectors for being a concession without any type of counterpart.
Last March, the government of the progressive Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who defeated the far-right leader in the 2022 presidential elections, decided to repeal his predecessor’s measure and announced that visitors from the four countries will have to present a visa to enter Brazil from next October 1.
Lula clarified that the measure would not be adopted if the other countries guarantee reciprocity, which was achieved at least with Japan.
“The understanding was the result of the announcement that Prime Minister (of Japan) Fumio Kishida made on the occasion of the visit of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to Japan last May in the sense of extending the exemption of visiting visas to Brazilians, which allowed the Brazilian government to adopt the same measure for the Japanese,” according to the statement from the Foreign Ministry.
According to the note, the decision is in accordance with the standards of Brazilian migration policy, “based on the principles of reciprocity and equal treatment between States.”
