Can you take canned food on a plane?

On a domestic flight the 100ml liquid limit does not apply. On an international flight it does.

Domestic flights in Japan

The 100ml liquid limit does not apply.

International flights from Japan

Each container 100ml or less, all of them inside one transparent re-sealable bag of 1 litre or less, one bag per person.

Canned soup, curry and stew are on the liquids list too. The screener at the checkpoint makes the final decision on whether an item counts as a liquid.

A tin is judged by what it holds and how much of that is liquid, not by the metal around it.

Tins only the Japanese edition names

The Japanese edition of Japan's liquids list is longer than the English one in its row for other canned food. Besides vegetables and fruit it names dessert tins such as mitsumame and anmitsu, quail eggs, canned oden and chestnuts in syrup. All of these are on the restricted side for the cabin on international flights.

Corned beef appears in both English rows

The English edition places Corned Beef beside canned vegetables and fruits, then repeats it among the excepted meat products with ham and sausage. The Japanese edition has it once, among livestock tins excepted when they hold very little liquid. Salmon is named among the excepted fish tins in English, where the Japanese text gives tuna, crab and fish in oil.

Tuna changes sides at the border

South Korea's list gives tuna, saury, soy-braised beef, perilla leaves and fruit cocktail as tins that contain liquid, so in the cabin on international flights they follow its liquids control. Australia's TravelSECURE page names tuna too, with abalone and sardines, as canned food with high liquid content. Taiwan's CAA explains that canned and jarred pickled foods mostly contain liquid.

JAL's examples, and tins bought past security

A travel column on JAL's shopping site lists the tins it expects to be limited on international flights: curry, stew and soup, mackerel simmered in miso, oden, and fruit in syrup. It adds that canned and jarred food or drink bought inside the airport after the security check can be carried on board even at 100ml or more.

Bringing it into Japan: canned goods and animal quarantine

Japan's Animal Quarantine Service states that products such as canned goods, clearly recognized as posing no risk of spreading pathogens because of how they are manufactured, are excluded from its designated items even when the material inside would otherwise be covered. Canned foods head the examples under its retort standards, Standards 3 and 4.

Bringing it into Japan: what the standard requires of the tin

Standard 4 describes the product it excludes: it contains liquid, is packed in an airtight container, can be stored unopened at room temperature for 12 months or longer, and was manufactured on an industrial scale. The Service does not accept zip-lock seals or metal clips as airtight. Home-made preserves fall outside the wording, which is limited to industrial products.

The carry-on answer for canned food is the same in all 7 other places we checked. The limits themselves are not identical, so read the row for the country you fly from.

Each row comes from that authority's own page. Airlines can be stricter, and the screening officer has the final say.

What to do

Move canned food to the bag you check in before you reach security. Narita Airport states that anything given up at the checkpoint is discarded and cannot be returned.