On the Radar: Japan's abandoned houses

Across Japan, millions of houses sit empty – a record near 9 million by recent estimates.

Some of these are holiday homes, some may be rentals that have sat empty long-term, but more than one-third of them – 3.8 million to be exact – are abandoned houses, called akiya.

Last week, Japan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications published a report on the number of empty houses in the country, as of October 2023. This data was last published in 2018.

Overall, the number of vacant houses in Japan rose to 8.99 million, or 13.8 percent of homes in the country. This is up 0.2 percentage points from 2018. Akiya make up 5.9 percent of all homes in Japan, the highest number on record, up 30 basis points from the 2018 survey.

Akiya, made up of the word aki, meaning empty and ya, meaning house, are found mostly in rural areas and have become a sign of Japan’s changing demographics.

The rise in abandoned houses is commonly attributed to Japan’s ageing population. Almost a third of Japan’s people are aged over 65 and the World Economic Forum has recognised the country as having the world’s oldest population.

This ageing population feeds into rural depopulation. More and more, younger generations are moving to urban areas. Those who remain tend to belong to older generations, and as they die or move into retirement homes, they leave behind their houses with no one nearby to move in.

That’s not to say akiya don’t have owners: about 59 percent of these homes are inherited properties. 

But for those inheriting properties, particularly in outlying areas, there’s often a large cost attached to them – many akiya need decent renovations or upkeep to bring them up to building standards. On top of that, due to Japan’s property taxes, it’s usually cheaper to own land with an abandoned building on it, than it is to own an empty lot.

Efforts are underway to address the housing issue. For some, that means fixing up the houses – particularly traditional ones – to rent them out as unique accommodation for tourists. For others, that might mean selling houses to foreigners looking to live in rural Japan.

The government has been revising laws too, to help – for example, new regulation in Kyoto allows for imposing a tax on houses not in regular use.

Time will tell whether these measures will help - especially as the issue is only expected to get worse with Japan's demographic projections.

- Asia Media Centre