Although many Western countries have problems with housing shortage, the opposite is the case in Japan. Empty and abandoned houses scattered all over the country await with almost no hope of life.
Sometimes called “witch houses”, these buildings often have a dilapidated structure and a “strange” feel. Many of them are extremely rural. Less than one in ten Japanese live outside a city, and those who leave farmland and rural areas have their homes empty.
Chris McMorran, associate professor of Japanese studies at the National University of Singapore, told Insider in 2021, “Many empty houses are empty because people don’t want to live in a remote village surrounded by ‘ghost houses’. There is still resistance to resettlement in rural areas because the lack of access to basic amenities like hospitals and grocery stores is driving people away.”
When the last government survey was done five years ago, there were about 8.5 million of these witch houses in the country. The frequency of these buildings varies depending on the region. For example, in rural Wakayama, one in five homes is abandoned.
Also, this is not a new problem. It first appeared in the post-war period of the 1950s, when Japanese urbanization and industrialization were booming. “Pre-war homes were built to last in anticipation of being a family home for several generations,” says Richard Lloyd Parry, Asia editor of The Times, in a recent report on this phenomenon. was to provide housing in quantity and quality was neglected.”
Newly built buildings in Japan are expected to last a few decades at most. These houses even lose their value over time. The vast majority of Japanese people now prefer to buy a newly built house rather than a second-hand one, and once a house is over 10 or 15 years old, it loses a significant portion of its value. This causes the number of witch houses to increase every year.
“A new house in Japan is like a new car that loses most of its value as soon as it leaves the showroom,” says Parry. “There are abandoned houses on almost every street, even three on the little street where I live in West Tokyo.”
Japan’s high average age also adds to this problem. A third of the country’s population is over the age of 65, and many of these people choose to move to smaller, more accessible homes as they reach older age. After their death in the following years, these houses become almost unsaleable again.
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