Originally Posted by
acregal
Self-employed at any level makes it fairly difficult, at least for my experience. I know simultaneous interpreters, who are basically always self-employed (and get around 80k yen per day for more than 4 hours of work), who have had trouble. I knew of a Japanese teacher who started his own school and had 70+ students and had trouble. I have a friend who owns a chain of schools (with, I believe 10+ full-time teachers) who only used Citibank (not sure who he uses now) because he was tired of the nonsense from other banks.
If you are seishain banks generally love to lend you money, especially if your company is big/famous. If you're not seishain, it gets a lot trickier (this isn't just for foreigners but for Japanese as well).
So register as a company? Show collateral. Get a credit rating. Not at all hard to do. I know translators who've done just that. I know teachers who have done so. I know a number of people who are creatives. Just because one works for themselves does not mean money is not available. Being Seishain is great sure, but a loan entirely doable as a proprietor. I guess what it really boils down to is asking yourself if you would lone you money as a a bank. In today's uncertain times to boot.