The Right to Abandon and the Duty to Maintain: Addressing the Akiya Mondai in Regional Japan

Introduction

Born and brought up in Tokyo, Kaito moved to Nagano prefecture in 2016 to become a grape farmer. He was soon able to secure a plot of land for his grape orchard, but, two years later, he was still struggling to find a farmhouse. In the area there was no shortage of apartment lots for rent, but detached houses with parking space, the kind a farmer needs for his work, were hard to come by. When I met Kaito, he was renting a small flat and returned to Tokyo every other weekend to see his wife, who had chosen to remain in the city for the time being. She liked the idea of moving to the countryside, but not to live in an apartment lot in the peri-urban sprawl. Kaito and his wife were not alone in facing this problem. Many new rural settlers from the city struggle to find detached houses for rent or affordable ones for sale. Given the steady trend of house abandonment all over the country, this appears as a paradoxical situation.
 
In the past half century rural municipalities in Japan have experienced sustained trends of out-migration, with many small settlements brought to the verge of demographic extinction (Matanle, 2016). Counter to this broader trend, Japan recently saw an increase in the number of young urbanites relocating into rural areas. The phenomenon, dubbed ‘den’en kaiki’ or ‘return to the country,’ testifies to the changing values of urban youth pursuing more fulfilling lives in the countryside and the efforts to revitalise rural communities (Klien, 2015, 2020; Rosenberger, 2017; Funck, 2020; Lewerich, 2020; Reiher, 2020; Takeda, 2020; Lollini, 2023). The rise of pro-rural migration is a most welcome trend for regional Japan. However, many new settlers struggle to secure livelihoods and desired lifestyles in rural areas. One example is represented by new entry farmers from a non-farming background, whose number increased significantly in the past decade but who often struggle to derive sufficient income to live on from agriculture (NCA, 2021). During fieldwork conducted in eastern Nagano prefecture in 2018-2019, I had the chance to meet many new farmers from the city and learn about the difficulties they faced making this transition. I originally expected accessing farmland to be the most troublesome tasks for outsiders to the rural community, but housing was often regarded as even more problematic. Housing is in fact referred to as one of the three hurdles of urban-to-rural migration, together with community life and employment (Odagiri et al., 2016).
 
Why is it difficult to access family houses in Japan's depopulating regions? The answer to this puzzle is closely linked to the root causes of the so-called akiya mondai, or the problem of vacant houses. Property abandonment in regional Japan is a complex phenomenon stemming from demographic trends as well as numerous institutional factors. Previous studies in English focus on specific aspects, such as the role of home financing (Zhang, 2020) and the effects of urbanisation (Kubo and Yui, 2020). More comprehensive accounts can be found in the Japanese literature (e.g., Nozawa, 2016), yet little attention has been paid to the role of sociocultural norms in inhibiting property transfers. The first goal of this study is to provide a comprehensive account of the institutional factors underlying property abandonment in regional Japan, while also elucidating the role played by ideas and social norms in the context of rural communities.
 
The second goal of this study is to document the challenges faced by local administrations in coping with the problem of vacant houses. While previous studies analysed legislative responses (Kadomatsu et al., 2020) and grassroot initiatives (Schrade, 2019), this article focuses on the activity of so-called akiya banks, public bodies managed at the municipal level. Akiya banks resemble land banks established in other countries but as discussed in the article, their effectiveness is constrained by local governments’ limited legal authority. The conclusion section presents legislative tools that could strengthen akiya banks’ performance based on measures adopted in the United States.
 
Finally, this study documents the challenges faced by urban-rural migrants in securing family houses, shedding light on the mismatches in the supply and demand for used properties. Such mismatches are illustrative of the limits of the market mechanism in the context of dwindling property value. Given the current economic incentives for landowners, rural property often incurs in an under-use problem. Under-use issues in Japan’s shrinking regions have been often analysed through the lenses of the tragedy of the commons paradigm (e.g. Kadomatsu, 2020; Miyanaga, 2018). In his seminal work, Garrett Hardin (1968) discussed the problem of the negative externalities emerging from the overuse of shared resources and identified the establishment of property rights and regulation as the only viable solutions. While Hardin was concerned with overuse issues, Heller (1998) presented the tragedy of the anticommons as a property regime in which multiple owners hold rights of exclusion in a scarce resource, resulting in its under-use. If the existence of property rights does not guarantee the optimal use of shared resources, negative externalities can nevertheless be mitigated by communal management, as famously surveyed by Ostrom (1990). As discussed in the article, however, communal management in the context of housing appears largely impractical. Regulation and the expansion of local governments’ legal authority are in turn argued to be the only effective solutions to the problem of property abandonment in regional Japan.
 
The article first introduces the issue of vacant houses and its proximate causes: specific features of Japan’s real estate market, patterns of urban development, and legislation surrounding property ownership. The article then documents attempt by local administrations to cope with the problem and the reasons why many vacant houses are not exchanged in spite of market demand. Economic aspects influencing property transfers are discussed along with the role of social norms in rural communities. Data presented in this study is based on ethnographic fieldwork and interviews conducted between April 2018 and March 2019 in eastern Nagano prefecture with landowners, migrants from the city, and functionaries of akiya banks in four municipalities: Saku, Komoro, Tōmi, and Ueda.

The Akiya mondai

House abandonment, known in Japan as the akiya mondai (the vacant house problem) has drawn increasing attention in recent years and especially gained salience after the publication in 2016 of a study by the Nomura Research Institute suggesting that the number of vacant houses, at the time about eight million, will rise to 21.7 million by 2033, about one-third of all houses in Japan (NRI, 2016). Not every akiya is an abandoned, crumbling building. Akiya are classified into four groups for statistical purposes: houses for rent, for sale, second (holiday) houses, and ‘other vacant houses’ (i.e. properties that are not advertised). Houses for rent represent over half of all vacant houses (51%) and in 2018 stood at 4.3 million units (MIC, 2019a). ‘Other vacant houses’ constitute the second largest group (41%) with 3.5 million units and are growing rapidly. Although abandoned, dilapidated houses currently represent a minority of all akiya, millions of second houses and houses for sale/rent are likely to remain empty and deteriorate in the coming years. Depopulation is a key factor leading to the proliferation of vacant houses, but the phenomenon also springs from specific features of Japan’s real estate market, urban development, and legislation surrounding home ownership.
 
At the end of the War, Japan faced a severe housing shortage problem. Thanks to sustained industrial and urban development, the shortage problem was gradually solved, and in 1968 the number of houses began to exceed that of households. The number of households kept rising due to high fertility rates and changes in the family structure, but the stock of houses grew even faster, creating an expanding surplus of houses. This was a common occurrence in many industrialised countries, but in Japan the house/population ratio kept growing extremely rapidly. Compared to England, the United States, and France, in 2015 Japan’s house/population ratio was respectively 2.8, 2.3, and 1.3 times higher (MLIT, 2015b in Nozawa, 2016, p. 5). Although Japan’s population began to decline around 2010 and households’ increase is expected to end soon (NIPSSR, 2018), the real estate market shows no signs of slowing down. Japan finds itself in a paradoxical situation: the population is shrinking and the number of vacant houses increasing, but thousands of new houses are still being built every year.
 
Houses in Japan are treated as fast-depreciating assets and are typically not built to last. The value of used houses (chūko jūtaku) is based on the assumption that a single-family detached structure is worthless after 25-30 years, while the land under it generally retains value. Condominium units (manshon) are generally built of longer-lasting materials and depreciate on a longer timetable than detached family houses. While Japan’s history of natural disasters contributed in defining home-building standards and the way of valuing used structures, the rapid depreciation of used houses is due mainly to their discrimination in financing home purchases (Zhang, 2020). For most of the post-war period, the Government Housing Loan Corporation (GHLC) was the primary source of financing for home purchases. It did not lend any money for the purchase of detached houses older than 25 years old, while for used houses that weren’t that old, it reduced the normal repayment period and charged higher interest rates. This bias toward new home construction was arguably due to the GHLC’s mission in sustaining the home-building industry. Banks have today replaced the GHLC as the source of home financing, but continue to use the same depreciation schedule to value structures and provide mortgage lending. This system ultimately discourages homebuilders from building long-lasting structures and homeowners from renovating their properties. As a result, the used house market only accounted for 14.7% of the whole real estate market in 2015 (MLIT, 2015c, p. 2). The need to address the situation has been recognised at the policy level. A cabinet resolution adopted in 2016 updating the national ‘home living basic plan’ (jūseikatsu kihon keikaku) set as a goal the expansion of the market for used houses from 4 to 8 trillion yen and the house reformation business from 7 to 12 trillion yen by 2025 (MLIT, 2016, p. 9-10). Both markets have shown signs of improvement in recent years, but it is unlikely that such ambitious targets will be met without substantial reform of the home purchase financing system (Yano Research Institute, 2019).
 
The proliferation of new houses springs from the expansion of major cities and the creation of new residential areas throughout regional Japan. Rather than building on existing building lots, developers have an incentive to build in newly developed areas where houses are easy to sell: they are cheap (converted farmland is less expensive than building lots and does not require the demolition of existing structures) and always in demand because of the brand-new look of the neighbourhoods, proximity to new supermarkets, and available parking spaces. Less than 10% of new houses in Japan are built on existing building lots, while the majority stand on converted farmland (MLIT, 2017a). Regulatory plans for urban development exist, but they are amended continuously by local administrations due to the numerous interests involved. While landowners (i.e., farmers) are eager to convert farmland and sell at a high price, real estate and construction companies benefit from work and commissions. It is not just about money. As Nozawa (2016, p. 71) points out, local administrations see the creation of new urban development areas as a way to stimulate the economy, prevent outmigration, and attract new residents from neighbouring towns.
 
As a consequence of the urban sprawl, old cities are increasingly left behind, and akiya proliferate. Because existing building lots located near train stations are more expensive than converted farmland, there is little incentive to rebuild on them. This creates a vicious circle whereby old urban centres grow increasingly shabby, and new residential areas become more appealing. The resulting paradox is that akiya rates (the ratio of akiya on the total stock of houses) are surprisingly high near train stations (MLIT, 2018). Another effect of the urban sprawl is the lowering of the population density, in turn leading to rising costs of public services and maintenance of existing infrastructure. Local governments are usually insolvent, and many cannot keep up with the maintenance of thousands of kilometers of streets, bridges, pipes, wires, ditches, and sewers. The lack of adequate infrastructure maintenance is a mounting problem all over Japan, and failing to understand the benefits of compact cities, local administrations further aggravate the existing problems.
 
Vacant houses create numerous problems. In the case of condominiums (manshon) and apartment complexes (danchi) in urban areas, a growing number of empty flats leads to the deterioration of the entire building and, progressively, of the whole neighbourhood. The shrinking number of residents, often elderly, cannot afford to pay for infrastructure maintenance. Broken elevators, leaking gas and water pipes, wildfires, and even criminals occupying vacant flats are among the consequences. Even major Japanese cities count numerous cases of apartment blocks turning into slum-like areas (Nozawa, 2016, p. 122-127). Similarly, in rural and peri-urban areas, the proliferation of abandoned detached houses negatively affects the neighbourhood, which becomes increasingly shabby, leading to more houses being abandoned. Empty houses quickly become a haven for pests and can turn into illegal dumping areas. They also pose a health hazard due to risks of fire or collapse. A bill adopted in 2015 to address the problem of dangerous houses (akiya taisaku tokubetsu sochi-hō) allows local administrations to request the demolition of designated buildings (MLIT, 2019). However, local administrations are extremely reluctant to rely on enforcement when it comes to private property. In Nagano prefecture, this measure had only been enforced twice, as of February 2019. ‘It usually takes an accident or a dangerous building on a street used by children on their way to school to prompt action’, an employee of Saku city local government told me. ‘It’s people’s private property.’ For local administrations it’s difficult to compel someone to demolish their house.’ Local governments receive numerous complaints from akiya neighbours, but there’s little they can do. ‘We send warning notices to the landlords, who either live somewhere else or simply ignore them.’

Inheritance and Unknown Ownership

Homeowners have several reasons not to demolish their empty houses. Not only is the cost of demolition high, but a building lot without a house standing on it is charged with property taxes up to six times higher. Since in many parts of the country such lots are likely to remain unsold, there is no financial incentive to demolish a building. Houses that do not border a street cannot be rebuilt by law, so, in these cases, landlords cannot expect to sell at all. As all akiya bank employees told me, akiya owners willing to sell typically keep the house standing, advertise it as a building lot, and only demolish it once a buyer has been found.
 
In many parts of the country, real property has little or no commercial value and often represents a liability for the children of rural residents living in cities, with property taxes and maintenance costs adding to potential complaints from neighbours and quarrels with siblings. More and more people find themselves in the vexing situation of inheriting unwanted properties. Legal counseling by juridical clerks, seminars organised by real estate companies, and books and magazines on the topic are increasing rapidly (Nozawa, 2016, p. 5). As an employee of Saku city government told me, ‘Children ask their old parents to get rid of land and properties because they don’t want to deal with it. If only one parent is left alive, they might ask them to sell the house and move to an elderly home.’ Many people would like to get rid of their inheritance but cannot find a buyer or even someone to take it for free. Once a property is inherited, legally, it is not even possible to give it away, so cases of relinquished inheritance are steadily increasing (Supreme Court of Japan, 2018). If all heirs renounce their right, the civil code prescribes that the property will be entrusted to a ‘property manager’ designated by a family court who will pay eventual debts contracted by the deceased owner and transfer what is left to the national treasury. However, there is a shortage of legal scriveners for the growing number of cases and the value of such properties is usually so low that it cannot even cover the cost of the procedure (Yoshihara, 2017, p. 72). Some people try to donate unwanted properties to local governments, which usually decline such requests (Nozawa, 2016, p. 84). For many people, the simplest solution is to inherit and then abandon land and other properties. As an employee of Komoro city government told me, ‘If you still live in the area, it’s difficult to do that, but when the heirs live elsewhere, they don’t feel much guilt for the problems they might cause to the neighbours.’
 
The problem of property abandonment is especially difficult to tackle because of Japan’s normative framework surrounding land ownership. The law does not oblige heirs to register inherited property titles under their own name, so a good deal of land and properties all over the country are currently registered to dead title holders (Yoshihara, 2017). As years pass and properties are passed to other heirs who also do not register the titles, ownership becomes divided among a growing number of people. When local authorities need to contact absent landowners to solicit tax payments or acquire land for public projects, they may have to trace too many people. In Japan, there is no comprehensive system for organising and updating property records. Information is scattered throughout an array of different ledgers, including property registries, property tax registries, land registries, etc., which often are not up to date. For local authorities, consulting family registries and multiple ledgers to find heirs and their whereabouts becomes a long, expensive, and often fruitless process (Yoshihara, 2017).
 
The issue of unknown landownership emerged in the national mass media during reconstruction efforts in Tohoku following the 3/11 disaster and, in Kumamoto prefecture, following the earthquake of 2016. However, at the local level, this is not a new problem at all. Already in the early 1990s, absent forest owners represented more than 20% of the total, giving rise to problems of forest stewardship (Yoshihara, 2017, p. 35). In agriculture, the problem constitutes an obstacle to land consolidation measures and measures to prevent land abandonment. According to a survey published by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transportation in 2014 (MLIT, 2014), land for which registry information had not been updated in the past 50 years accounted for 19.8% of the total, while registry information that had not been updated for 30 to 49 years accounted for 26%. In other words, for at least 20% of national private land, corresponding to an area equivalent to that of all Kyushu, it had already become difficult to identify land ownership. This figure is confirmed by another national survey conducted by the Ministry of Agriculture in 2016, showing that 934,348 hectares of farmland, about 20% of all farmland nationwide, was registered to dead or likely dead title holders (MAFF, 2016).
 
Heirs have many reasons not to register their property titles. First, the process is expensive and time-consuming. Inheritance tax amounts to 0.4% of a property’s assessed value and completing the title registration usually involves hiring a legal scrivener or a lawyer. Completing the registration entails travelling to one’s hometown and, in the case of multiple heirs, each one must give separate permission and provide a set of documents as well as their signature-seal. If even one of the heirs cannot be contacted or disagrees, the title cannot be changed. Notwithstanding the costs and time involved, there are no perceived benefits from completing the registration. Heirs can always change the titles should they need to sell the property. Excluding land designated as part of future urban development projects, the value of land and houses in most parts of Japan is extremely low. When registration costs are higher than eventual earnings derived from the sale, there is no economic incentive to register. For more and more people, avoiding registering one’s title rather becomes a way to cover one’s tracks and avoid paying property taxes on unwanted inheritance.
 
For local administrations, the growing number of absent, untraceable landlords is especially troublesome because they cannot collect property taxes. Property taxes account for a significant share of municipal tax revenues, and, especially in small villages, the phenomenon is progressively draining already depleted public purses (Yoshihara, 2017, p. 52). Because the agreement of the majority of property rights holders is required for the lease of a property, the growing number of unknown, absentee landlords also leads to land and buildings that otherwise might be put to good use being abandoned. In Tōmi city in Nagano prefecture, locating absentee landlords lists on top of the akiya measure plan published in 2018. The problem of unknown ownership also hinders the implementation of public works and the removal of dangerous buildings. Though some local governments have introduced laws allowing them to acquire private property if the owners cannot be found, they still have to bear the cost of demolition themselves.
 
It is evident that the system must be reformed, but because a substantial reform would touch many people’s interests, it keeps getting delayed. Because private rights are involved, local administrations cannot intervene easily. The most imminent issue is arguably the reorganisation of property registries, ensuring that the array of ledgers related to land matters is gradually integrated and kept up to date (Yoshihara, 2017, p. 166). Many argue that title registration should be made compulsory, but this may not suffice. Because property registries have no compulsory system to update changes in title owners’ addresses, even when the title transfer is done, it happens that landowners cannot be found. There is also the question of which Ministry should carry out a reform, given the overlapping jurisdiction of three ministries in property and titles matters: the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transportation, and the Ministry of Justice (Yoshihara, 2017, p. 5).

Akiya Banks

In the past years, numerous akiya banks have been established all over Japan to address the mounting problem of vacant houses. Akiya banks are public bodies managed at the municipal level, acting as mediators between homeowners and potential buyers/tenants. Akiya banks cannot finalise sale or lease contracts and must rely on a licensed real estate agent. However, unlike real estate companies, they usually offer a small allowance for cleaning costs and, as a public body, provide a higher degree of trustworthiness for interested buyers/tenants and a greater transparency concerning the properties and the neighbourhood. In some municipalities, akiya banks also offer financial support for renovation. Financial incentives are sometimes provided by prefectures and NGOs as part of local revitalisation initiatives. For instance, one of the most fruitful measures of Kyoto prefecture’s 2009 policy plan (sato-ryoku saisei akushon puran) to save its then 141 ‘marginal villages’ on the verge of extinction was the introduction of financial incentives for volunteers to reform old akiya and create guesthouses for visitors. The prefecture granted up to 1.8 million yen to reform an akiya to turn it into a guesthouse, up to 1,000,000 yen to help people renting their house/room if they move into town, up to 100,000 yen for moving in expenses, a reduction of 50% of property taxes, and 0.5% interest rates for loans to reform houses accessed through akiya banks.
 
According to a report of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transportation, in 2017, over 40% of regional public organisations had set up an akiya bank (MLIT, 2017b, p. 12). On the other hand, their performance varies remarkably. According to a survey conducted in 2014 by Japan Organisation for Internal Migration (JOIN, 2014) on 374 local administrations, 14.1% of existing akiya banks had no properties registered, and 34.8% had between one and nine properties. Akiya banks’ performance depends on several factors, including the year of establishment, size of the municipality, demographic-migratory patterns, etc. Such variability can be observed among akiya banks in eastern Nagano prefecture. Akiya banks in Saku, Komoro, Tōmi, and Ueda municipalities were established in 2009, 2015, 2014, and 2015, respectively. As of February 2019, the total number of properties registered (including those currently listed) were 400, 211, 100, and 143, respectively. The akiya bank in Saku city only took in properties whose titles are registered to the current owners, while in the remaining municipalities, akiya banks allowed owners not to change the titles until the sale agreement is settled.
 
In Nagano prefecture, the akiya rate decreased from 19.8% to 19.5% between 2013 and 2018. However, in 2019 the prefecture still ranked third nation-wide following Yamanashi (21.3%) and Wakayama prefectures (20.3%) (MIC, 2019b). Akiya rates are not accurate indicators of the situation as they do not describe the relative distribution or state of vacant houses for rent/sale, second houses, and ‘other vacant houses.’ Nagano prefecture has, for instance, a high number of vacant holiday houses inflating the total akiya rate. In Tōmi city, the number of vacant houses decreased from 2,100 to 1,960 between 2008 and 2013, but the number of so-called ‘troublesome akiya’ (dangerous or otherwise troublesome buildings) increased by 550 units, coming to represent 66.3% of all akiya in 2013 (Tōmi-shi, 2018). Nagano prefecture has actively tackled the problem of empty houses in the past years. The prefecture is a popular destination among urban-rural migrants, and this arguably contributed to the performance of akiya banks as well as to lowering akiya rates in the past years.
 
According to the akiya bank employees I interviewed, only a minority (5-10%) of homeowners in Nagano prefecture are willing to lease their properties while the vast majority aim for a sale. Not only are landlords worried about the nuisances involved in apartment management, but most properties require repairs to become livable, and low rents in rural areas often do not justify the investment. Some tenants might be willing to shoulder the cost of reforms, but for landlords this means it will be difficult to ask them to leave should they decide to sell in the future. Unlike homeowners, the majority of akiya banks’ visitors are looking for properties for rent. Akiya are in demand among urban-rural migrants, who often do not have sufficient money to buy and reform an entire house or would rather avoid doing so right after their relocation. This mismatch between supply and demand is a major reason why many new settlers find it hard to access detached houses despite the growing number of vacant properties.
 
Many people rent an apartment for the first few years after their relocation while looking for a suitable property. New entry farmers in particular need farmhouses with parking spaces for machinery and for the sorting and packing of farm products. For Sakagami-san and his wife, a couple of new farmers who moved from Tokyo to Saku city in 2014, it took more than three years to find a house reasonably close to the farm. For Fuji-san and his wife, finding a house in Tōmi city was also quite tiresome. For many years they asked the older woman from whom they leased farmland to sell or rent them the vacant house standing next to the farm, but she always refused. Only when she died were they able to buy it from the woman’s daughter, who lived in Yokohama and was happy to sell. A new settler from Osaka living in Komoro city since 2017 told me that housing had become a source of discussion with his wife. ‘She followed me here because she thought it would be different from life in the city. She hoped we could live in a country house and that our daughter could play in the yard, but we still live in a flat similar to the one where we lived in the city.’
 
Akiya banks have long waiting lists for detached houses for rent, and it can take many years before such properties become available. This is especially true for older, single new settlers given akiya banks’ policy of prioritising young couples. Some new settlers I met claimed that in rural villages word of mouth can be more effective than relying on real estate companies or akiya banks. ‘Many homeowners are worried about a stranger living in their house or about selling to someone who might cause trouble to the neighbours. People in rural areas don’t trust strangers, so recommendations are very important.’
 
Akiya banks tend to focus on properties where people can live right away rather than on houses to be reformed. Requirements tend to become increasingly strict as akiya banks become more established. For instance, Saku city’s akiya bank was set up earlier than those in the neighbouring towns and did not accept properties in bad condition or properties for sale without up-to-date title registration. Only a small share of the properties proposed by akiya owners can be used without major repairs (about 10% on average), so most offers are declined. Damaged gas and water pipes are the most common problems. In Nagano prefecture, another issue is that vacant summer houses are extremely cold in the winter and thus difficult to market as all-year-long dwellings.
 
Because there is not much that can be done about houses in a poor structural state, the primary goal of akiya banks is to prevent their further increase. Advertisements are typically carried out through the city’s Website, radio, and circulating notices (kairanban). Akiya banks’ employees lament lack of awareness of the problem of empty houses among rural residents, who often do not think of their house as an akiya (e.g., when they use it as a storehouse). For instance, 25% of respondents to a survey conducted in 2018 in Tōmi city on 293 owners of houses in an evident state of abandonment replied that their house was not an akiya. As for future plans, 44% of respondents did not intend to lease or sell it (Tōmi-shi, 2018). Akiya banks’ employees also stressed the importance of preventing inheritance-related problems, a major reason for the proliferation of vacant houses. Wills can, for instance, avoid future quarrels between heirs. Old parents tend to think their children will never get into a fight over inheritance, but this happens quite often as demonstrated by the growing number of litigations in family courts over inheritance division claims (Supreme Court of Japan, 2018, p. 26).

Kinship, Prestige, and Trust

Homeowners have many reasons not to relinquish their properties. Vacant houses are often used as storehouses for farming appliances or for the plethora of possessions accumulated in a lifetime by the current or previous owners. The idea of emptying a house full of memories and junk discourages many akiya owners who would otherwise be willing to sell. ‘Many people turn melancholic even before starting and end up procrastinating.’, an akiya bank employee in Komoro city told me. A delicate issue is represented by the domestic butsudan, the Buddhist family altar containing the ancestors' ashes. Family altars cannot be simply thrown away, and at the same time, these heavy wooden cabinets can hardly be moved into small apartments in the city. A new entry farmer in Ueda city told me about the peculiar leasing conditions demanded by an akiya owner: he could not use the butsudan room and had to vacate the house for a week during obon, when needed for the family gathering. Sometimes family graves rise next to the house, discouraging homeowners from selling or renting (supposing that a buyer for such properties can be found). Issues related to the ie, the family house, and headship duties remain significant. An akiya bank employee in Tōmi argued that in rural villages, bunke families (branches of the main family) may strongly oppose the sale of the honke (main branch) house.
 
Some rural residents are worried about their reputation and what neighbours might think should they decide to sell or lease their house, while others simply do not want to part with their possessions no matter what. This was the case of Hiroshi, the elder son of a farming family in a small hamlet in Komoro city. The hamlet rises at 800m on the southern side of Mount Asama, served by a small bus passing three times a day. There are no shops or restaurants, and the closest convenience store is one kilometer downhill. About half of the buildings in the village look abandoned and many are in a state of disarray. For a long time, Hiroshi had been trying to purchase the crumbling building standing next to his house, a two-floor wooden structure abandoned for over ten years and home to a colony of cats. One day I saw Hiroshi cutting weeds in the building's yard and asked him why the owner did not take care of it. He laughed, saying that the owner, an old man living on the other side of the mountain, did not care in the least. ‘I offered to buy this house many times, but he always refused. He won’t even talk about money. Maybe once he’s gone his children will be more reasonable.’
 
Personal issues and prestige issues influence farmland transfers as well. ‘Old farmers have all sorts of envies and grudges’, the director of a local agricultural cooperative told me. ‘I’ve heard many of them saying they would be happy to lease out a field to consolidate an area, but because this or that person was involved, they decided not to.’ Reputation is paramount in rural communities. Leasing farmland to a ‘non-respectable’ person can negatively affect the landowner’ reputation; selling it too can become a source of undesirable gossip. As an employee at Ueda city local government told me, ‘People might think you are in financial need.’

Conclusion

Why is it difficult to find detached houses in Japan’s depopulating regions? Answering this question revealed that property abandonment is not simply a consequence of depopulation and largely depends on the institutional and social context surrounding home ownership. The lowering value of rural property is influenced by peculiar features of Japan’s real estate market, patterns of urban development, and legislation surrounding land matters. Economic considerations emerged as central in discouraging homeowners from marketing their houses and prevent their dilapidation, with inheritance issues often predating under-use. At the same time, kinship, reputation, and personal issues too emerged as key factors motivating landowners not to part with their possessions.
 
Kadomatsu (2020) discusses property abandonment in Japan as a problem of anticommons, a property regime in which multiple owners hold rights of exclusion in a scarce resource, resulting in its under-use. In his seminal work, Heller (1998) presented the tragedy of the anticommons in response to the tragedy of the commons famously described by Garrett Hardin (1968) to demonstrate that the existence of property rights does not guarantee the optimal use of shared resources. The anticommons paradigm applies well to situations in which the existence of multiple right holders such as heirs impede the use (including the disposal) of real property. The tragedy of the anticommons is a well-known theory about underuse problem, but as Miyanaga (2018) points out in discussing the management of satoyama in rural communities, the anticommons paradigm is conceptually valuable only in situations whereby resources still retain value for the parties involved. For much rural property in Japan, problems arise instead from the absence of economic value. The two situations are distinct, albeit often chronologically related. As previously discussed, properties might still be valuable when inherited, but become worthless because of underuse. This is the process that akiya banks try to address by preventing the emergence of the anticommons problem.
 
In situations in which property has no value, it can be useful to conceptualise the landscape as commons and ask what solutions exist to deal with negative externalities. To be sure, what constitutes an externality is controversial (e.g., aesthetic impact on the landscape) and government intervention to prevent under-use is not easily justifiable on the ground that this might lead to negative externalities in the future. A well-known solution famously scrutinised by Ostrom (1990) as an alternative to private property rights and regulation is the communal management of resources. Numerous scholars have, however, pointed to the weakness of community norms especially in contexts of low social cohesion (Rose, 2020). Rural communities in Japan have long been depicted as influenced by the heritage of interdependence characterising the traditional hamlet, in which the good of the community transcends individual interests (e.g., Fukutake, 1982; Satō, 1990). This might have been true in the past, but, as previously discussed, more and more property owners now live somewhere else and do not feel particularly responsible toward the community. At the same time, in the absence of strong local leadership, envy and grudges can hinder cooperation initiatives.
 
Regulation ultimately appears as the most effective solution to the akiya mondai. Japan has entered an era in which, for many people, owning a property is no longer an asset, but a liability. Abandoning land and other properties has become a way to get rid of unwanted inheritance, a practice facilitated by the institutional context regulating land matters. As Kadomatsu (2020) points out, Japan’s laws on land use have been focused primarily on limiting overuse and are not well equipped to deal with issues posed by under-use. While property abandonment is especially problematic in Japan because of the steady trend of rural depopulation and its peculiar institutional setting, the phenomenon is common in many post-industrial societies (Eurostat, 2018; ESPON, 2020). Various legislative solutions around the world attempt to mediate between individual rights and communities’ wellbeing (e.g. Henderson, 2015; Lončar and Pavić, 2020; Morckel et al., 2023). How different governments address the problem rests on the conceptualisation of real property in modern legal systems, balancing our right to abandon (Strahilevitz, 2009) vis-à-vis our duty to maintain (Shoked, 2014).
 
In discussing the so-called rural blight in the United States, Eisenberg (2018) refers to similar issues to those observed in Japan, including absentee property ownership, cloudy property titles, property tax delinquency, and difficulties encountered by local governments with their limited legal authority. He presents the case of West Virginia legislature in expanding local governments’ powers since 2007. The initial phase permitted five pilot cities to introduce modifications across various aspects of local administration. As long as the proposed actions adhered to state and federal constitutions, local authorities could request approval for any measures they deemed necessary, irrespective of state laws, guidelines, and regulations. In the initial stage, municipalities involved in the program put into effect twenty innovative strategies, and the program was regarded as so successful that the state legislature voted to make the program permanent in 2017. The most successful proposals included the issuance of liens for delinquent city fees, streamlined processes for disposal of city property, the ability to place liens on fire insurance proceeds, the imposition of a one percent local sales tax, and streamlined modification of zoning regulations. Especially noteworthy is the introduction of a streamlined tax lien foreclosure process. Foreclosure on tax delinquent properties can be a useful tool for local governments to combat blight, but, as Eisenberg (2018) points out, the procedure can be lengthy, legally intricate, and financially burdensome. This can pose a challenge for rural communities, especially considering their constrained resources and limited access to legal expertise. As previously mentioned, local administrations in Japan avoid becoming liable for abandoned properties, so foreclosure appears as a risky solution. Local governments might benefit from a streamlined mechanism minimising costs and allowing the identification of a bidder before auctions takes place, thus lowering the risk of becoming liable for the property. In this perspective, a useful legislative tool is the so-called conservatorship, a measure allowing community members to petition a court for the right to seek a custodial role over the nuisance property, potentially leading to ownership. A well-known example analysed is the Pennsylvania Abandoned and Blighted Property Conservatorship Act of 2008, amended in 2014 better to safeguard the conservator (Lacey, 2017). Conservatorship only becomes possible if the owners waives their opportunity to meet the terms for rehabilitation of the injunctive court order. If the property is conserved, the rehabilitation expenses become a lien against the property upon which the conservator may foreclose. Unlike the tax sales foreclosure procedure, successful conservatorship entail immediate improvements and quick re-occupancy (Lacey, 2017).
 
Property abandonment in Japan is widely recognised as problematic, but vested interests, ideological resistance, and bureaucratic path dependence hinder the reform process. Japan appears to be strongly protective of private property rights, with local administrations reluctant to enforce regulations that are prejudicial to homeowners. Akiya banks can ameliorate the problem of property abandonment, but an expansion of local governments’ legal authority would certainly improve their effectiveness. Measures long advocated by scholars and currently discusses by governments include the consolidation of land-property registries and the simplification/legal requirement of the procedure of title registration (Yoshihara, 2017), as well as the abolition of economic disincentives for homeowners to remove dilapidated buildings (Nikkei Asia, 29 April 2023). The introduction of legal tools such as the conservatorship could also ameliorate the mounting problem of vacant houses in Japan.

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Article copyright Niccolo Lollini.

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