Today is Children’s Day, a national holiday in Japan. To mark the occasion, the health and welfare ministry always releases statistics about the state of the country’s birthrate, which continues to be dire. As of Apr. 1, there were 17 million Japanese between the ages of 1 and 14 years, accounting for 13.4% of the total population. That is the lowest rate in the world for any country with a population of at least 30 million. One of the prime reasons Japanese people are not having children is the country’s housing situation, though it’s considered merely one of many reasons (women’s “position” in society tends to get the most notice). Japanese housing policies since the war have been intrinsically bad for kids, creating residences and neighborhoods that are expensive, cramped, and, most of all, dangerous in ways that you might not expect. Read More

The government’s disaster prevention commission recently came up with guidelines and measures that it said it would work on in response to major earthquakes that are projected to strike the Chubu and Kinki regions sometimes in the next 70 years. The commission estimated that if an earthquake the magnitude of the one that struck Kobe in 1995 (7.3 magnitude) happened in these two areas, about 42,000 people would die in the Kinki region and about 11,000 in the Chubu region. The Kobe earthquake–or, the Great Hanshin Earthquake, as it’s officially called–claimed 6,434 lives. Read More

According to a leading real estate research organization, 40,166 new condominiums were put on sale in the Kanto region (Tokyo + the surrounding five prefectures) in 2008, which is about 30% less than the number put on sale in 2007. It was the first time in 16 years that the number of new condominiums dropped below 50,000 units. In addition, the portion of those actually sold was 64.1%, which is about 2.2 percentage points less than the contract rate in 2007. The analysis of this trend isn’t difficult to understand: the recession has put the bite not only on consumers’ buying habits, but also on developers’ ability to build new buildings. However, anyone who has been watching the condo market closely for the last ten years or so has to wonder if some other aspect isn’t being overlooked. Read More

On Apr. 14, about 2,000 residents of Iwakuni, a city in northern Japan that hosts an U.S. Air Force base, demonstrated against a proposed new housing development for American soldiers. In line with a major shift of military personnel, Iwakuni would be receiving about 4,000 soldiers and their families from other bases in Japan, mainly Atsugi. Iwakuni City wants to build about 10,000 new units for these arrivals on Atago mountain, which is mainly why the citizens protested. Atago has cultural and even sacred significance for local people. However, the reasons for choosing Atago go back further than the base issue. Read More

Prime Minister Taro Aso has promised the rest of the world that he will do his best to stimulate Japan’s economy, and one of the ways he plans to do so in the next supplemental budget (¥15 trillion, the highest on record) is to provide a tax exemption for monetary gifts from parents to their children.

Of course, there’s a catch. In order to qualify for the tax exemption, the gift has to be used to either purchase a home or remodel a home. Basically, the idea is that there is some ¥1,400 quadrillion that is not circulating in Japan, but rather just sitting in people’s back accounts or in their mattresses (or, to put in Japanese terms, in the tansu, or wardrobe). About half of this dormant money is in the possession of Japan’s elderly. Normally, when these people die, the money goes to their offspring, who, in turn, just put it into their own back accounts or in their own wardrobes. Since people live quite long in Japan, their children usually are already settled with their own homes when they die. Aso’s scheme is to persuade these older people to give some of their money to their kids (or grandkids) earlier, at the time when they are thinking of buying a home.

The budget has to be passed before this goes into law, and the opposition says it basically subsidizes the rich. But it is sort of half-assed anyway, since the maximum gift that can be tax exempt is ¥6.1 million, and it costs at least ¥20 million to build a halfway decent house in Japan.