Starting Monday, Japan will become the last member of the Group of 20 to scrap a service that allowed passport holders to add pages when they ran out of space for visas and immigration stamps.
The Asian nation was advised to end the service by the International Civil Aviation Organization, which sets global standards for travel documents, over difficulties discerning such passports from counterfeit ones.
The move takes place as a revised Passport Act goes into effect Monday. Applications to renew a passport and reporting a lost passport will be done online as part of the changes.
Japan was a rarity among developed nations that allowed extra-page issuance to passports and the only one among the G20, which consists of Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Britain, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, the United States and the European Union.
Japan previously allowed 40 pages to be added to a passport for a fee of ¥2,500 ($19) when the blank pages ran out. Under the revision, a replacement passport, with the same expiration date as the original passport, will be issued at a reduced price of ¥6,000.
A 10-year passport usually costs ¥16,000, and is only available for applicants age 18 years and above, while a five-year passport costs up to ¥11,000.
Although passport renewal services will go online, applications for a new passport will for the time being require an individual to physically provide supporting evidence such as documentation relating to their family register.
Should family register-related documentation be digitized, new passport applications are also expected to become available online.