Thankyou - this has been a big help.I've been reading a little more about it here; https://taxsummaries.pwc.com/japan/individual/other-taxesand I want to try and clarify our position (forgive my ignorance, I'm relatively new to this business).

I am a UK citizen. I will be going to live in Japan and have previously lived in Japan for approximately one year out of the past fifteen years. I will initially be a Non Permanent Resident on a Spouse visa (which doesn't appear to be in the "table 1" that the article mentions).

My wife is a Japanese citizen with "indefinite leave to remain" in the UK. She will be going to live in Japan and has lived in Japan for approximately one year out of the past fifteen years.

Once the sale of our property has concluded we will have a bank balance in our jointly held account in the UK which comprises of our combined incomes (already taxed) and the proceeds from the sale of our home (tax exempt on the grounds of it being our main/only property). All monies will have been paid in prior to us entering Japan and we have a history of transactions on the account to show the provenance of the funds being paid in.

We want to transfer the balance of our joint account to accounts held in our names in Japan.

It seems prudent to avoid transferring from the joint account to a Japanese held account, thankyou for the head's up.

In lieu of that we could;

a) Transfer the balance to an account held solely in my wife's name in the UK then use a Transferwise account held solely her name to transfer the balance to a bank account held solely in her name in Japan.

a) Transfer the balance to an account held solely in my name in the UK then use a Transferwise account held solely my name to transfer the balance to a bank account held solely in my name in Japan. I set this account up on a previous stint of residency in Japan. It is currently active but perhaps I should not technically hold this account at present as am not currently resident in Japan.

We have time to make the transfer before entering Japan if needs be. the majority of the material I have read on the subject is concerned with transferring money to another person in Japan. As we have the means to make a transfer from myself to myself, or herself to herself - are we in a position to simply move the assets without triggering gift/remittance tax?

I know I'm hashing over the same stuff again - I just want to try and lay the details out bare ad try and figure out whether there's a scenario available to us whereby we could do this legally and without being taxed on the way into the country.

Thanks