As of 26th December 2020, Japan (population 126m) had 389,343 licensed amateur radio stations, a fall of 12,837 during the year. The previous year, there had been 402,180 amateur stations which in turn had been a fall of some 15,000 from a year earlier.

Over 90% of all Japanese amateurs have the popular Class 4 operator license. Introduced in the 1950's it was the world's first HF license that didn't require a Morse code test.

A Class 4 licence permits the following:

• 1-watt1 watt EIRP on 135 and 472 kHz

• 10 watts output on 1.9, 3.5, 7, 21, 24, 28 MHz bands

• 20 watts output on 50, 144 and 430 MHz bands

• Varying power levels between 10 watts and 0.1 watts on ALL amateur bands between 1240 MHz and 250 GHz.