What the General Service exam is
The National Public Service Examination, General Service track (Kokka Komuin Saiyo Ippan-shoku Shiken) is the main entry route into the day-to-day administrative, technical and education workforce of the Japanese national government. It sits below the Comprehensive Service (sogo-shoku) track, which is the fast-track career route into policy-drafting roles, and above the high-school-level General Service exam, which recruits clerical staff straight out of secondary school. The bachelor’s-degree-level version covered here is the one most university graduates and final-year students in Japan sit when they target a ministry, an agency or a regional bureau.
In the 2026 cycle, the National Personnel Authority received 26,429 applications for this exam, 19,386 candidates actually sat the First Stage, and 8,425 people made the final passer list, an application ratio of about 3.1 candidates per seat and a sit-down ratio of about 2.3. Of the passers, 5,618 went through the Administrative division, 1,180 through the Technical divisions, and 1,627 through the Education division, a category added to the exam only in 2025.
Who runs it
The exam is set, scored and administered by Jinji-in, the National Personnel Authority, an independent body that sits outside the ordinary ministry hierarchy specifically so that recruitment into the civil service is not controlled by the ministries doing the hiring. The Authority publishes the exam guide (juken annai), opens and closes the online application window, holds the written test nationwide on the same day, and releases the passer list. Passing the exam does not by itself get a candidate a job: candidates then go through kancho homon, a round of visits to individual ministries and agencies, where the actual hiring decision is made from among the people on the passer list.
Who can apply
The exam name says “bachelor’s degree level”, but that describes the difficulty of the questions, not a mandatory qualification. Anyone can apply once they clear the age window: 21 or older for most divisions, 20 or older for the General Knowledge division, and in every case under 30 as measured on 1 April of the year the exam is held. Candidates younger than the minimum age can still apply if they have graduated, or are on track to graduate by the end of March of the exam year, from a university, junior college or technical college, or if the National Personnel Authority recognises an equivalent qualification. The exam guide restricts the exam to candidates who hold Japanese nationality.
How the exam is structured
The First Stage is a written, multiple-choice test. Every candidate sits the Basic Ability Test, thirty questions split between an intelligence section of twenty-four questions on reading comprehension, judgment reasoning, numerical reasoning and data interpretation, and a knowledge section of six questions on current affairs across the natural sciences, humanities and social sciences plus information literacy. Alongside it, candidates sit a Specialized Test drawn from the subject knowledge that matches their chosen division, whether that is administrative law and economics for the Administrative division or an engineering or scientific subject for a Technical division. Administrative-division candidates also write a General Essay Test.
Candidates who clear the First Stage move to the Second Stage, which is a one-on-one Personal Interview Test run by an NPA panel, typically fifteen to twenty minutes long. The interviewer works from the candidate’s own interview card and follows up on the answers written there, and the result is scored on a five-point scale from A to E that feeds into the final ranking together with the written scores.
Applying and the fee
There is no application fee. Candidates apply through the National Personnel Authority’s own online application system, which runs a two-step process of provisional registration followed by the full application, inside the window the exam guide publishes for that year. Bring the identification used at registration and the admission slip the system issues once the application is confirmed.
The 2026 schedule
For the 2026 cycle, the application window opened on 19 February 2026 and closed on 23 March 2026. The First Stage written test was held on 31 May 2026, and the National Personnel Authority announced the final passer list on 12 August 2026. Every one of these dates is specific to the 2026 cycle: confirm the current year’s dates against the official juken annai before relying on them, since the National Personnel Authority resets the calendar each year.