MAFF Japanese Cuisine Cooking Skill Certification Explained

One way to give local staff at a Japanese restaurant abroad a structured grounding in Japanese cuisine is the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF) scheme for certifying cooking skills in Japanese cuisine overseas. Owners regularly ask about getting staff certified, yet the requirements and where to apply are not easy to work out.

Drawing on the text of the guideline and MAFF's published materials, this article sets out the requirements and how the scheme works as of September 2026, and explains the steps for getting staff at an overseas restaurant certified. A separate English-language explainer is available at MAFF Japanese cuisine cooking skill certification.

1. What the scheme is

On 1 April 2016, MAFF issued the Guideline on Certification of Cooking Skills for Japanese Cuisine in Foreign Countries (most recently revised on 1 April 2024). Its purpose is to let private organisations and similar bodies certify, on a voluntary basis, non-Japanese cooks of Japanese food working overseas whose knowledge of Japanese cuisine and cooking skills have reached a set level.

Three points are worth keeping in mind.

• It is not a national qualification. Private organisations award the certification in line with a guideline set by the government.
• It is for non-Japanese cooks. The guideline covers "foreign cooks of Japanese food overseas". It is not meant for cooks of Japanese nationality.
• It does not certify restaurants. What is certified is the individual cook. MAFF currently has no scheme for certifying Japanese restaurants overseas.

2. Requirements for the three levels (after the 2024 revision)

There are three levels: Gold, Silver and Bronze. Under the revision of 1 April 2024, each higher level now requires the level below it, and the years of work experience required were raised.

Two further points:

• Graduates of a cook training facility in Japan (a facility designated by a prefectural governor under the Cooks Act, 調理師法) do not need the Bronze certification that is otherwise a prerequisite for Silver.
• On the Silver requirement of "about 150 hours", the Q&A issued by MAFF and the operating and managing organisations explains that this refers to hours spent on subjects covering the knowledge and skills set out in the guideline, not total hours across every subject taken at the cooking school.

When experience at an overseas restaurant counts

For owners of Japanese restaurants abroad, the key question is how work experience is counted for Silver and Gold. The guideline accepts experience at "a Japanese restaurant in Japan" and at "a Japanese restaurant overseas recommended by a Goodwill Ambassador for Japanese Cuisine". Experience at a restaurant abroad does not count towards this requirement unless that restaurant has been recommended by a Goodwill Ambassador.

MAFF launched the Goodwill Ambassador for Japanese Cuisine programme in February 2015, and 15 new ambassadors were appointed for fiscal 2025 (announced 15 December 2025). If you want experience at your own restaurant to count towards Silver, you need to check in advance with the body you are applying to how a recommendation would be handled. In practice, for most local staff the realistic route to Silver will be completing a cooking school course.

3. The knowledge and skills required

The guideline sets out the knowledge and skills to be acquired at each level across four areas. You can use this directly as the framework for your own in-house training curriculum.

It is useful when designing your training to note that making dashi is not part of Bronze. Knife work and hygiene first, then dashi and heat, then menu planning at the end: this staged design matches the order in which cooks are actually developed in a real kitchen.

4. What the exam involves

A Q&A prepared by MAFF and the operating and managing organisations on 24 April 2025 (updated 1 July the same year) sets out the approach to the exams.

• There are two exams: practical and written.
• The Bronze practical has two mandatory tasks: filleting a fish into three pieces (sanmai oroshi) and katsuramuki (peeling a vegetable into a thin continuous sheet). As a rule, assessment follows the practical test assessment manual of the All Japan Cooking School Association (全国調理師養成施設協会).
• The written exam, as a rule, has at least 20 questions drawn from the knowledge and skills in the guideline, with a pass mark of at least 70% correct.
• MAFF and the operating and managing organisations are still working towards unified practical standards for Silver and Gold.
• There are also requirements for the exam supervisors who decide pass or fail. For Bronze, for example, at least one supervisor must be a non-Japanese cook certified at Silver or above, or a Japanese national recognised by the operating and managing organisation as being at an equivalent or higher level.

There is no official textbook, but the Q&A lists as reference texts the Japanese Culinary Academy's "Complete Japanese Cuisine" (日本料理大全), available free in Japanese and English on the Kyoto Prefectural University website, and the teaching materials of the All Japan Cooking School Association (Japanese only, paid).

5. Number of certified cooks by nationality

As of 31 March 2026, there were 28 Gold, 1,337 Silver and 2,611 Bronze certified cooks, 3,976 in total. The tables below take the regional totals and the main countries from MAFF's breakdown by nationality.

Note that these figures are by nationality, not by the country where the cook works. Even so, the regional differences are clear: in South Korea, Silver holders far outnumber Bronze, while in the United States and Europe almost everyone has stopped at Bronze.

For scale, MAFF's survey counted about 181,000 Japanese restaurants overseas in 2025. Divided by the total number of certified cooks, that is roughly one certified cook for every 45 restaurants. Having a certified cook on staff is still unusual.

6. How to get staff at your overseas restaurant certified

Step 1: Understand the structure

Certification flows from "MAFF → operating and managing organisations (five) → certifying bodies approved by an operating and managing organisation → cooks". It is the certifying body that runs the exam and awards the certification. The operating and managing organisations approve the certifying bodies and work to keep standards consistent.

As of September 2026, the five operating and managing organisations are:

• Organization to Promote Japanese Restaurants Abroad (JRO), a specified non-profit corporation (特定非営利活動法人日本食レストラン海外普及推進機構)
• TSA Career Co., Ltd. (株式会社TSAキャリア)
• All Japan Cooking School Association, a public interest incorporated association (公益社団法人全国調理師養成施設協会)
• VIDA Corporation Co., Ltd. (株式会社VIDA Corporation)
• Japanese Food and Food Culture Promotion Council (JCDC) (日本食・食文化振興協議会)

MAFF publishes a PDF listing each organisation's contact details (updated 10 August 2026) and directs enquiries about their activities and progress to the organisations themselves.

Step 2: Find a certifying body near you

Certifying bodies exist overseas as well as in Japan. JCDC's website, for example, lists 22 certifying bodies, including ones in the UK, Canada, China and Turkey. The first step is to ask an operating and managing organisation whether there is a certifying body near your restaurant and, if not, how your staff could sit the exam.

According to the Q&A, a certifying body without its own exam supervisor can still run exams by having a supervisor sent from another certifying body under the same operating and managing organisation, or even one under a different operating and managing organisation (for Bronze, this is limited to two years from first use). So even where nothing is set up nearby, there may still be a way to sit the exam.

Step 3: Choose who will take it

• The candidate must be a kitchen staff member of non-Japanese nationality.
• Start with Bronze. It is about 10 hours of training plus an exam, so it fits around work more easily.
• If aiming for Silver, completing a Japanese food course of about 150 hours at a cooking school is the realistic route. If applying on the basis of work experience, first check how a Goodwill Ambassador recommendation would be handled, as described above.

Step 4: Prepare in-house

The Bronze practical tasks, sanmai oroshi and katsuramuki, can be practised during daily prep. If you have a Japanese head chef, an efficient approach is to use the guideline's list of knowledge and skills as training items and coach intensively in the few weeks before the exam.

7. What we know about fees and where to apply

To be frank, MAFF's published materials say nothing about exam or certification fees. The guideline sets no fees either, so fees appear to be set by each organisation. While preparing this article we checked the official websites of the All Japan Cooking School Association, VIDA Corporation and JCDC, and none of them listed exam or certification fees.

In addition, when we checked on 22 September 2026, VIDA Corporation's cooking skill certification website displayed a notice that it "has stopped accepting new applicants for certification". When choosing where to apply, contact each organisation directly about whether it is accepting applications and what it charges.

8. What a restaurant can and cannot use it for

What it is useful for

• Setting training goals. A target such as "Bronze in year one, Silver in year three" gives local staff a clear career path and helps with retention.
• Giving your Japanese chef a defined role. Making a chef you brought over from Japan responsible for coaching local staff through certification turns skills transfer into a visible result. For the retention angle, see our article on retaining chefs.
• A benchmark when hiring. When you hire kitchen staff locally, whether a candidate holds the certification is a rough guide to their basic skills.

What it is not useful for, or needs care

• Using the logo. Under the guideline, the logo mark set by MAFF may be used by operating and managing organisations and certifying bodies, and use requires MAFF's permission. The rules do not envisage a restaurant with a certified cook putting the logo on its menu or signage on its own initiative.
• Visas. We found no official information that this certification is treated as a requirement for any country's work visa. Do not have staff take it on the assumption that it will support a visa application.
• Information sharing. Certifying bodies report a list of certified cooks every six months, including name, nationality, country of residence and the restaurant where they work, and MAFF may pass it to Japanese embassies and consulates, JETRO and others. It is considerate to tell staff this before they sit the exam.

For developing local staff more generally, see Training local staff in Japanese cuisine. For a different scheme that trains non-Japanese cooks in Japan, see our guide to the programme for developing talent to spread Japanese food culture overseas.

This article is general information, not an official explanation of how the scheme is administered. Requirements and figures were checked against MAFF's published materials as of 22 September 2026. Always confirm eligibility, fees and dates directly with an operating and managing organisation or a certifying body.