District Immigration Office of the Tokyo Regional Immigration Bureau in October 2010.

Moreover, in order to promote user registration of the automated gates in 2013, as well as increasing the number of devices for user registration and posting information in airport facilities and in-flight magazines through the cooperation of the airport operating companies and airline companies, the Immigration Bureau has been working to improve its administrative services with regard to those persons wishing to register for use of the automated gates through such means as sending immigration officers to the prefectural passport offices in order to enable mobile on-the-spot user registration.

## (2) Trusted Traveler Program

The Bill for Partial Amendment of the Immigration Control Act in relation to “facilitation of the immigration procedures pertaining to ‘trusted travelers’” was passed in June 2014 as one of the measures to promote Japan as a tourism-oriented country.

At present, use of the automated gates is limited to mid to long-term residents in possession of re-entry permission, but the scope of eligible users of the automated gates will be expanded through the “Trusted Traveler Program” to include eligible foreign nationals who are entering Japan with the status of residence of “Temporary Visitor”. Under this program, foreign nationals with the status of residence of “Temporary Visitor”, who have a past record of having visited Japan a number of times and are registered as a “Trusted Traveler” having undergone an examination through providing their fingerprints and other personal identification information in advance and who are deemed to pose little risk in terms of immigration control, will not be required to receive a seal for verification of landing and will be issued with a Registered User Card as a means to prove landing permission in place of the seal for verification of landing.

The program requires necessary system development and is scheduled to commence operation at the time of the enforcement of the amended Act in November 2016.

## (3) Consideration of the Implementation of Facial Recognition Technology in the Departure and Return Procedures for Japanese Nationals

In order to be able to implement smooth yet strict landing examinations to handle the increasing number of foreign nationals visiting Japan, consideration is currently being given to accelerate this process through streamlining the departure and return procedures for Japanese nationals, and reassigning the capacity of immigration officers that has been made available through such streamlining to the immigration examinations for foreign nationals. For this purpose, a trial run was conducted utilizing facial recognition technology in the departure and return examinations for Japanese nationals in FY 2012, and the results showed that the technology was unable to recognize the person as the individual (false rejections) in 17.7% of cases. In response to these results, the “Results of a Study on the Direction of Immigration Control Administration in an Era of 25 Million Foreign Visitors Coming to Japan” reported to the Minister of Justice by the Immigration Policy Discussion Panel in FY 2013 stated that “it will be difficult to immediately introduce automated gates which rely simply on facial recognition, however, while watching the technological trends, it is preferable for the Ministry of Justice to encourage technological developments by the private sector, and to implement automated gates using facial recognition technology at the earliest possible date”.

Based on the report, the Immigration Bureau continued to watch the trends of facial recognition technology, and moreover, in light of demands from the promotion of Japan as a tourism-oriented country, carried out a further verification test with regards to the use of facial recognition technology.