About 400 foreigners remained unaccounted for as of noon Wednesday, several dozen embassies told the Foreign Ministry in the wake of Friday's historic earthquake and tsunami in the Tohoku region.
A ministry official said the missing may not all be caught up in the disaster area and not all embassies have provided information, thus the number will probably change.
An estimated 48,000 foreign nationals are currently registered as living in disaster-stricken Miyagi, Iwate, Fukushima, Yamagata, Akita and Aomori prefectures.