It’s a standard rite of passage for anyone interested in the built environment to venture to Japan at some point.
Housing is as much of a product of socio-cultural factors as it is of political and economic ones, and from both an architectural and housing market perspective Japan is utterly fascinating. Similar to the UK, it has a home ownership rate of just over 60% while the rest are renters. However, in many other regards it is radically different. Its built environment is most strikingly defined by a process of constant renewal in the face of destructive earthquakes and other natural and unnatural disasters. This translates to the absolutely wild fact that the average house in Tokyo lasts around 30 years and depreciates in value from the moment it is built. Houses therefore tend to be made from less enduring materials, with a lot having wooden structures but also kitted out with the most up-to-date technology in the pursuit of all things new and modern.
This constant rebuilding obviously doesn’t seem great from an ESG angle, and it will be interesting to see how that might change as the sustainability agenda gains momentum. But what it does do is embed a flexibility and openness to change that I think we can learn a lot from in Europe. It grants people a freedom to remake their cities more to fit their needs and aspirations. Once you buy your land you can sit down with a house building company such as Sekisui House, Ltd., Daiwa House Industry Co., Ltd., or Mitsui Fudosan, to decide which house is right for you and create it from scratch.
It also makes it an absolute dream for experimental architects, where there aren’t the same planning laws that require new development to be in keeping with a prescriptive local aesthetic. This allows a wild west of architectural styles, some attached examples of which I stumbled across and am calling ‘Barbie San Francisco townhouse’, ‘trio of highlighters’ and ‘who needs windows when you have concrete?’ (How different would life in the the UK be if our housing also depreciated in value or if we could all choose the designs of our homes?!)
The other striking feature is the efficiency of space. While the house itself depreciates, the land certainly does not. High inheritance taxes mean that sections of land must often be sold off, leaving plots to become increasingly smaller in a highly competitive land market. This is complemented by a general preference for personal dwellings or studio apartments, where shared housing doesn’t exist in the same as in the West. The lack of domestic space instead encourages greater engagement with the city for socialising or eating. The result is rabbit warrens of everyday life unfolding on the street level in densely packed neighbourhoods.
There are many other factors that make its housing culture particular, like its sunshine laws and the classic two year lease that dominates the rental market. As the country increasingly faces issues of depopulation, it will be interesting to see how this shapes Japan’s cities in new ways, especially in terms of affordability, population concentrations, and dwelling sizes. It already had a 13.6% vacancy rate in 2018, and this will presumably rise as the population continues to decrease.
