Importing Indonesian Tropical Plants
to Japan.

1. A NACCS or WebAPS route to the Plant Protection Station. The inspection application is filed electronically through NACCS or its web portal WebAPS, either before the flight lands or as soon as the cargo is transferred into the bonded area. Whoever files it — the importer or a customs broker — must be able to reach the station with jurisdiction over the arrival airport. MAFF states plainly on its import permit notice that Japan's plant quarantine system does not adopt an import permit system; the letter MAFF sent to other national plant protection organisations on 31 October 2018 exists so an exporter can answer a request for a Japanese permit at its own end. There is no advance approval to wait for, which is exactly why the filing cannot be left until the last day.

2. The original phytosanitary certificate from Barantan. MAFF's plant quarantine guidance requires a certificate issued by the exporting country's plant protection organisation and an import inspection for the goods regardless of quantity or intended use. The certificate is issued by Badan Karantina Indonesia after inspection of the actual consignment, and must name the genus and species exactly, the quantity, the number of packages and the consignee. Any correction has to carry the stamp and signature of the issuing Indonesian inspector; an unauthenticated alteration invalidates the document.

3. A METI CITES import licence, if the line is a listed taxon. Most commercial nursery material in Orchidaceae, Euphorbia, Cycas and Pachypodium is listed on CITES Appendix II, but each of those groups also contains Appendix I taxa — Paphiopedilum and Phragmipedium among the orchids, and particular Euphorbia and Pachypodium species. Commercial trade in wild-collected Appendix I specimens is prohibited, and artificially propagated Appendix I material needs a stricter permit route than Appendix II nursery stock. Japan Customs states that CITES goods require the export permit from the exporting country's authority and an import licence from the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry; Customs sets no pre-shipment deadline, and Foliaria's practice is to hold the licence before the air waybill is booked. Foliaria supplies the matching Indonesian export permit for artificially propagated plants. This is a separate instrument from plant quarantine and is not covered by the absence of a plant-quarantine import permit.

4. A tariff classification and tax line. Live plants including roots, slips and runners are classified under HS 0602.90. The general and WTO rate for the heading is 0%, so IJEPA, AJCEP and RCEP origin certificates do not change the duty outcome on this line. Consumption tax is charged at 10% on the CIF value — invoice, international freight and insurance — and is settled with the customs import declaration.

5. The importer of record. The buyer is the importer of record. Foliaria supplies the origin-side phytosanitary certificate, the commercial invoice and the packing manifest; the Japanese buyer or its broker handles the Form 4(a) application, the customs declaration and the tax payment.

Soil and growing media — absolutely prohibited. Article 7, Paragraph 1, Item 3 of the Plant Protection Act prohibits soil, sand and plants with growing medium attached, from every country, as a prohibition separate from the Item 2 listing of quarantine pests. Bare-root means bare-root: every Foliaria consignment is washed free of substrate before inspection, and the certificate declares the stock free of soil, sand and plant parasitic nematodes. Inert inorganic media are not a loophole for organic earth.

Quarantine pests — prohibited in their own right. Live harmful insects, mites, nematodes, fungi, bacteria and viruses are prohibited articles under the same provision, independently of the plant they arrive on. Detection at the border leads to an action order rather than a conversation.

Rice straw and rice husks — prohibited, with two exceptions. Rice straw and rice husks may not be imported except from the Korean Peninsula and Taiwan. This matters for packing material: straw is not an acceptable dunnage or moisture buffer for a Japanese consignment.

Host material listed in Annexed Table 2 — closed for Indonesia. Fresh fruits and vegetables hosting Bactrocera fruit flies, living vegetative propagating material of certain Solanaceae including potatoes, eggplants and tomatoes, sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas), and Poaceae and bamboo vegetative slips hosting designated viruses and borers are prohibited from Indonesia. Annexed Table 2 also carries country-by-country entries, among them Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu; those target fruit-fly host material rather than bare-root ornamentals, but the table is the table, and it is checked by country as well as by plant.

What this leaves open. Standard ornamental aroids — Monstera, Philodendron, Anthurium, Alocasia, Epipremnum, Syngonium — and Hoya do not appear in Annexed Table 2. That is not the whole test: the Database of Import Conditions also applies plant-part and certification rules, and Xylella fastidiosa host material showing leaf scorch is sent for molecular testing at the port of entry. The database check decides the line, not the genus's reputation.

How this is handled in practice. The export desk runs the taxon against the MAFF database before an invoice is issued, and says so plainly when a cultivar cannot be shipped to Japan. If a variety is restricted, the alternative is a documented substitute agreed with the importer — never a silent swap in the box.

The two regimes are separate and are routinely confused. Plant quarantine has no import permit; CITES does. Japan Customs states that importing CITES-restricted goods requires the export permit issued by the exporting country's authority as well as the import licence issued by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, and that customs clearance of CITES goods may be made only at designated customs offices. For a listed taxon, Foliaria's practice is to hold the METI licence before the air waybill is booked; Customs requires the licence for clearance, and its guidance sets no pre-shipment deadline.

The Appendix distinctions matter more than a family-level shortcut suggests. Most commercial nursery material in Orchidaceae, Euphorbia, Cycas and Pachypodium is Appendix II, but Appendix I taxa exist within all four groups. Commercial trade in wild-collected Appendix I specimens is prohibited, and artificially propagated Appendix I material moves on a different, stricter route than Appendix II stock. The CITES status is therefore checked at species level before an order is accepted, not at family level.

METI's Trade Control Department, Office of International Trade Control, is Japan's CITES management authority — not the Ministry of the Environment, which handles domestic endangered species under the Species Conservation Act. On the Indonesian side the export permit for artificially propagated Appendix II material is issued by KLHK through the Directorate General of KSDAE, and Foliaria arranges it per line.

Practically: confirm the CITES status before the order is accepted, obtain the METI licence before the air waybill is booked, and keep listed and non-listed taxa in separate boxes so a single orchid line does not hold up the whole inspection. A missing CITES licence is not a paperwork delay at the airport; it is a shipment that cannot be cleared.

Japan requires live plant air cargo to clear at one of the 33 airports designated under Article 6, Item 2 of the Enforcement Ordinance. The six major gateways for Indonesian stock are Narita (NRT), Tokyo Haneda (HND), Kansai (KIX), Chubu Centrair (NGO), Fukuoka (FUK) and Naha (OKA), each with its own Plant Protection Station presence: Yokohama's Narita sub-station and Haneda branch, Kobe's Kansai sub-station, Nagoya's Centrair sub-station, Moji's Fukuoka branch and Naha's airport branch. A consignment that lands at a non-designated airport has no inspection point there and has to be moved to a designated one, so the routing decision is made before the booking, not after.

Air transit from East Java is a 3 to 5 day carrier estimate. Inspections run on weekday hours, typically 08:30 to 17:00 depending on the station, and bare-root plants move through the perishable lanes; overtime can be requested in advance through NACCS for perishable cargo. Because the Form 4(a) application can be lodged before the flight lands, the practical bottleneck is the inspection slot, not the paperwork.

Budget the tax, not the duty. Duty on HS 0602.90 is 0% under the general and WTO rate, while consumption tax at 10% on CIF is payable on every consignment, and CITES goods must be cleared at a designated customs office. Foliaria quotes the plants, the freight and the certificate; the landed cost in Japan is those three plus 10% consumption tax.