There were a record 1,258,263 Japanese living abroad as of Oct. 1, according to the Foreign Ministry's Annual Report of Statistics on Japanese Nationals Overseas, released Friday.
The total is up 0.7 percent from the previous year
Of those Japanese who have been abroad for three months or longer, 474,996 (38 percent) were in North America, 362,878 (29 percent) in Asia and 194,406 (15 percent) in Western Europe, the report said.
By country, 412,639 were living in the United States, 135,078 in China, 81,981 in Australia, 67,148 in Britain and 62,349 in Canada, it said.
The number of Japanese in China, however, sank 10.2 percent from a year earlier, the report showed.
Cambodia meanwhile saw a 21.2 percent jump in Japanese residents to 1,793, while Myanmar's Japanese population spiked 42.6 percent to 891.
Nearby, Singapore saw a gain of 12.8 percent to 31,038 and Indonesia saw a gain of 10.7 percent to 16,296, with Japanese residents rising 10.5 percent to 7,883 in India.