Ishi Kokka Shiken

It is a multiple-choice examination delivered in Japanese over several days of testing. Items include standalone knowledge questions and case-based questions that present a short vignette, sometimes with laboratory data, and ask for a diagnosis, the most appropriate next step, or an underlying mechanism. Confirm the current structure on the official site.

It is a demanding, high-volume examination that assumes you have completed a full medical curriculum; most candidates spend several months on dedicated review. Pass rates vary by year and by candidate category, so the official examining body publishes the current figures. Check its site rather than relying on numbers quoted in forums.

Yes, retaking is possible, and many candidates do. The rules on how often and under what conditions differ by candidate category, and the official body publishes the current retake policy. Read the eligibility section carefully before planning a second attempt, and build your study plan around the areas that cost you marks.

Fees and the exact examination schedule change from year to year. The official examining body publishes the current fee, application window and examination dates on its site. Plan your application early, because document deadlines are strict and missing them cannot be fixed after the fact.

Start with the basic sciences and pathology, because clinical reasoning questions are much easier when the mechanism is automatic. Then move to internal medicine as your anchor, and layer surgery, paediatrics, obstetrics and gynaecology, psychiatry and neurology on top. Keep public health, ethics and law in a steady weekly slot rather than cramming them at the end.

Use them as a diagnostic tool, not a scoreboard. After each block, write down why the wrong options were wrong and which fact you were missing. Revisit those notes weekly. Timed full-length practice under exam conditions matters too, because pacing across several days of testing is a skill in itself.

Candidates most often fail through shallow coverage of broad subjects, ignoring public health, ethics and law, and never practising under time pressure. Another common error is reading explanations without testing recall. Passive review feels productive but does not build the retrieval speed that case-based items demand.

Yes. The examination is delivered in Japanese, and disease names, drug names and anatomical terms appear in kanji and katakana forms. If you trained abroad, practise reading Japanese vignettes and laboratory reports early, because terminology slows you down before clinical reasoning even begins.

They appear as written items covering interviewing, history taking, physical examination findings, informed consent and professional behaviour, rather than as a live practical test in the written examination. Study them alongside ethics and law, since the reasoning overlaps, and practise choosing the most appropriate next communication step.