Occupational Therapy Research in Japan: Journals, Conferences & How to Connect

By Hiroemon · Last updated: 2026-08-06

I’m a licensed occupational therapist in Japan with more than a decade of clinical work. Over those years I have attended OT conferences here, from prefectural meetings up to the national congress, and presented within that system. I have cooperated with other people’s studies as a clinical data collector, and presented at and joined the in-house case meetings where research actually touches everyday practice. I also read the English literature and have attended an international congress.

Here is what I am not: a published academic. I have written at the abstract and in-house-report level, but I have no peer-reviewed papers, I have never served as a journal reviewer, and I did not go to graduate school. I’m telling you this up front because this page is a practitioner’s map of Japanese OT research — where things are and how to reach them — not an insider’s account of academia. For the academic view, the journals below speak for themselves. More about me is on the about page.

The Two Journals to Know

Asian Journal of Occupational Therapy (AsJOT) — in English

If you read only English, start here. The Asian Journal of Occupational Therapy (AsJOT) is a peer-reviewed, open-access journal published in English by the Japanese Association of Occupational Therapists (JAOT). Its stated aim is “to promote occupational therapy in Asia,” carrying clinical, research, and educational work from Japan and other Asian regions to the rest of the world. As of August 2026 it stands at volume 22 with over 220 articles, every one of them free to read (online ISSN 1347-3484). Submissions go through the journal’s Editorial Manager system.

Sagyo Ryoho (作業療法) — the Japanese flagship

JAOT’s main journal is Sagyō Ryōhō (作業療法), published under the English journal name Japanese Occupational Therapy Research (JOTR). One thing English-language guides often get wrong: this is a Japanese-language journal, not an English one. It is peer-reviewed, open access with no embargo, published six times a year, and hosted on J-STAGE from 2015 onward (over 730 articles, online ISSN 2434-4419). J-STAGE’s English interface shows translated article titles, so even without Japanese you can scan what the profession here is working on — case studies of dementia care in acute hospitals, intervention studies, and much more.

Reading It All for Free: J-STAGE and CiNii

Both journals live on J-STAGE, the electronic journal platform run by the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST). It hosts more than 4,400 Japanese academic journals across every field, and the large majority of its six million-plus articles are free to read. The whole platform has an English interface. If you have ever assumed Japanese research sits behind paywalls and language walls, J-STAGE is the pleasant surprise: the access wall mostly is not there.

For searching beyond a single journal, CiNii Research is the free database run by the National Institute of Informatics (NII). It cross-searches papers, doctoral dissertations, government research-grant (KAKEN) projects, and researcher profiles, and it has a full English interface. It is an index rather than a full-text host — whether the PDF is one click away depends on where the paper lives — but as a way for a researcher abroad to find who in Japan works on their topic, it is the best free starting point I know.

The Congresses

The profession’s main annual meeting is the Japanese Occupational Therapy Congress, organized by JAOT. The 60th congress — The 60th Japanese Occupational Therapy Congress & Expo in Niigata 2026 — runs November 20–22, 2026 at Toki Messe in Niigata, in a hybrid format with on-demand streaming through January 11, 2027. The previous congress was held in Takamatsu in November 2025. The congress runs in Japanese; if you are considering attending from abroad, check the congress site for the current registration details and ask JAOT’s international department (address in the contact section below) rather than relying on any summary, including this one.

I have presented at conferences in this system myself, and what surprises people who know OT congresses only from the big international events is the layering. Below the national congress sits a dense second tier of prefectural and regional block meetings — smaller, cheaper, close to home, and where many clinicians, give their first presentation. That tier is nearly invisible in English, but it is where much of the profession’s research culture actually gets built: a case study presented to a friendly room, questions from clinicians who saw a similar patient last week, and a poster refined into next year’s national submission.

One smaller body worth knowing: the Japanese Society for the Study of Occupation (JSSO), which focuses on occupational science. Its site is mostly Japanese, with a short English page explaining its view of occupational science.

An English Literature Trail: MTDLP as a Worked Example

A good way to see how Japanese OT research reaches English is to follow one home-grown tool through the literature. The Management Tool for Daily Life Performance (MTDLP) — JAOT’s structured framework for goal-setting around daily life performance — has an English trail with two useful stops:

• Kosaka & Imai (2019) — a controlled clinical trial (non-randomized) of tailor-made MTDLP intervention for persons with schizophrenia, published in Sagyo Ryoho / JOTR with the full reference visible in English (DOI: 10.32178/jotr.38.4_460).
• Mashimo et al. (2020) — a multicenter randomized controlled trial of home-visit OT using MTDLP for people with severe mental illness (60 participants, weekly visits over four months), published in English in the Kobe Journal of Medical Sciences (PMID: 33994515). One study, so treat the results as promising rather than settled.

The pattern those two papers show — a Japanese-language evidence base with occasional English-language studies surfacing on PubMed or J-STAGE — repeats across many Japanese tools and topics. My MTDLP guide walks through the tool itself, and the Kawa model guide covers the framework that traveled the opposite direction — born in Japan, thriving abroad.

Where Research Meets the Clinic in Japan

JAOT’s own membership statistics tell you something important about how research happens here. Of the association’s 63,352 members (as of March 31, 2025), 46,761 report clinical work as their main duty — 94.8% of those reporting a main duty. The number who report research as their main duty: 33. Japanese OT research is not produced by a large professional research class; it is produced by universities working with, and often through, clinicians.

I have been on the clinical end of that arrangement. I have cooperated with studies as a data collector and case contributor, and I have presented at and taken part in shōrei kentō-kai (症例検討会) — the case conferences that most Japanese workplaces hold. In my experience, that is the realistic on-ramp: a clinician’s case report becomes a prefectural presentation, sometimes a national one, and occasionally feeds a university-led study. If you are a researcher abroad looking for Japanese collaborators, it helps to understand that the person delivering the therapy in your dataset is probably a full-time clinician doing research on the side — because that is what the structure looks like from inside.

How to Connect

• JAOT’s international department — the association’s English pages are partial, but there is a dedicated international contact: dep.international@jaot.or.jp. Japan has been a WFOT full member through JAOT since 1972, and WFOT’s Japan page (updated July 2025) lists 118,471 occupational therapists and 134 WFOT-approved education programs.
• Corresponding authors — AsJOT papers carry English-language author and affiliation details; for the topic you care about, the corresponding author of a recent paper is usually the most direct door.
• CiNii researcher profiles — the same database that indexes papers also profiles researchers and their funded (KAKEN) projects, in English, which makes it practical to identify a lab before writing a cold email.
• The congress — for questions about attending or presenting, the current congress site plus the JAOT international department are the authoritative pair; registration practices are set per congress, so I deliberately make no promises here.

Frequently Asked Questions

Primary Sources & References

Every institutional and numeric claim on this page was checked against the sources below on 2026-08-06. Figures change; if you are citing them, go to the source.

• Asian Journal of Occupational Therapy — J-STAGE
• Japanese Occupational Therapy Research (Sagyo Ryoho) — J-STAGE
• Japanese Association of Occupational Therapists — English pages and the JAOT membership statistics for fiscal 2024 (data as of March 31, 2025; licensed-OT figure is cumulative registrations)
• The 60th Japanese Occupational Therapy Congress & Expo in Niigata 2026
• WFOT — Japan member organisation page
• CiNii Research (English interface) — National Institute of Informatics
• Kosaka & Imai (2019), Sagyo Ryoho / JOTR 38(4):460–468; Mashimo et al. (2020), Kobe J Med Sci 66(4):E119–E128 (PMID 33994515)