Causes of Abandoned Property in Super-aging Japan and Remaining Tasks: An Examination of Owner-Unknown Land and Vacant Houses

Abstract

This article reflects upon the fundamental causes of the issue of abandoned property in Japans super-aging society and examines the adjustments to the law that the Japanese government has pursued to remedy the matter as well as related debates. To do so, this research examines the effects that property law has had on changes in land utilization in an aging society, focusing on owner-unknown land and vacant houses. The fundamental cause of vacant houses and owner-unknown land in Japan cannot be attributed to inevitable changes in social structure, such as the population aging or the low birth rate, nor is it the fault of a lapse of responsibility on the part of the Japanese citizens. Rather, it is deficiencies in Japans land policy, housing policy, tax policy, farmland policy, and other such legal institutions governing property that have brought about these problems. Such inadequacies have led to problems of nonregistration of inheritance, taxes on the deceased, and inheritance measures and land conversion, and with Japan confronting the current era of low economic growth and population decline, property asset values in the Japanese countryside have been in decline. Such unique socioeconomic factors in Japan have combined to generate an increase in abandoned property. In order to address this issue, the Japanese government has recently enacted and revised relevant land laws including the Act on Special Measures for the Promotion of Measures for Vacant Houses, the Act on Special Measures for the Facilitation of Use of Owner-Unknown Land, the Basic Act for Land, and the Real Property Registration Act. Yet some have raised questions as to the efficacy of these efforts and pointed out the limits of legalistic approaches. Rather than overhauling the current legal system to treat the fundamental cause of land being abandoned, amendments and new legislation are being put out in a piecemeal fashion that addresses only the overt symptoms of the underlying issue. The existing regulations and tax system that were put in place to curb the fastand- loose development of land during the era of postwar national land development must be comprehensively overhauled in line with social changes. Doing so would require drastic deregulation and support measures to be pursued in the vein of revitalizing the countryside and local areas most affected by the rise in abandoned property.