The ability to witistand water deficit during the vegetative stage of 62 Vietnamese Japonica rice landraces was screened aiming to se-lect genotypes with drought tolerance for rice breeding program. Six-week-old plants were droight treated under greenhouse conditions by stopping irrigation for four weeks. Leaf relative water content, slope of leaf relative water content and drought tolerance score were measured every week after irrigation termination; recovery ability was measured two weeks after plant re-irrigating. The results show that, rapidly in the second week, causing plants to be fully dried or dead. After 1-week treatment, most of the Japonica landraces held drought tolerance ability, ranging f-rom highly tolerant to tolerant. However, the drought tolerance gradually declined after two and three weeks of treatment, and no tolerant landrace was observed after 4- the rate of water loss f-rom leaves was insignificant after one week of treatment, increased ind week, then increased slowly in the third week and increased intensely in the fourth week treatment. The recovery capacity was in the range of 0-77.8% among all landraces. Based on the obtained results, 15 promising Japonica rice landraces were se-lected for advanced plant water status, drought tolerance score and recovery ability. Among them, G86 and G98 were considered as elites in tolerance to drougt it.