We’ve received two letters in response to our Aug. 2 Home Truths column about renewal fees, both from landlords who obviously want to relate, as Paul Harvey used to put it, the rest of the story. Both letters were sent to the Japan Times, one for the Readers in Council page and the other indirectly to us with a directive that it not be published. Moreover, the RIC letter was published anonymously, so while both of these persons hold strong opinions as to their own situations as property owners neither seems to feel that strong that they might risk exposing themselves to whatever sort of negative reaction landlords can normally expect. This is probably unavoidable. The landlord-tenant relationship is almost by definition an adversarial one; the dynamic fraught with defensiveness. Both landlords basically wanted to show the difficulties of maintaining properties for rental purposes in Japan, and in the process defended the collection of supplemental fees such as reikin (gift money), shikikin (deposits), and koshinryo (rental agreement renewal fees) as essential to their businesses. Read More