The Future of Japanese Pension

[Wales4rugbyWC23]

Thanks for the replies everyone.
My wife is British, born and bred. But never worked in the U.K. except for the occasional volunteer job, and very short periods of part time work never last more than a couple of months.
I’ll finish off my application and see what I get first (hoping for class 2). Then I’ll see what position I’m in before having my wife apply for hers or not.
We are technically contributing to Japanese pension in that we are legally in the system but under exemptions so not actually paying (wife 100%, me 50% but not received the payment slips yet).
Currently throwing 10,000 yen into Tsumitate a month so will see what I can do after getting class 2s

If your wife is British then you should absolutely pay either class 2 or 3 National insurance contributions (even though they are voluntary) for her. I talked about earlier how you might need to a Gateway account to check your NICs but you could also write to HMRC about how much both of you have contributed in the UK. Although be prepared to wait a while- few months a least for a reply by letter.

[TokyoWart]

This is…insane??! Free pension/insurance as long as the spouse is a ‘salary-man’??
It definitely disincentives spouses to work full-time as you said. I would have thought Japan needs more wives to work full-time…

This is not unusual. The US Social Security system works the same way in that a non-working spouse is entitled to a benefit based on their working spouse's contributions. When both spouses work the benefit received is the greater of their own benefit or half that of the highest income spouse. After one spouse dies the benefit received becomes the higher of whichever spouse received while alive.