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This is not a quick or easy answer as it depends upon both the employer in question and the contract you had with the employer.
There is a strong possibility that they didn’t a need to enrol in pension due to a technicality in the law – and this is often the case for those working as dispatch ALTs.
Even if your company broke the law and did not enrol you in social pension, it was your responsibility to enrol yourself in national pension at your local ward office.
Not having done that could make you liable for up to two years of back-payments, and leave a permanent gap in your pension contribution history.
This happens to some people and not others, and is often down the luck of the draw.
Depending upon the legal responsibility of the company to enrol you, you can actually request the government to give you a forced back-enrolment.
Unfortunately, however, you would still be required to pay your portion of the contributions – around 30,000 to 45,000 yen for each month that you get back-enrolled.
As for the new employer, just tell them that you were never enrolled in pension and that you didn’t know you had to be, as that is the truth of the matter.
The new company can enrol you without the pension number.
Consultations for non-members such as this are only possible thanks to the continued support of our dues-paying members.
Even so, due to the substantial amount of time, effort, and research that many complicated consultation requests demand, we cannot guarantee that we will be able to answer all inquiries from non-members — we simply receive too many requests to handle.
Before contacting us for basic information, please be aware that many of the questions that the General Union receives can often already be found on our website: http://www.generalunion.org/component/search/