Why are there millions of empty houses in Japan? - The Global Story podcast, BBC World Service — Transcript

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1. 0:00Hello, I'm Lucy Hockings. From the BBC  World Service, this is The Global Story.
2. 0:07In Japan, the number of abandoned homes is at an  all-time high. Nine million properties sit empty,
3. 0:14blighting city streets and turning some  rural communities into ghost towns. So
4. 0:21what do these crumbling houses say about  Japan's existential crisis and its aging,
5. 0:26shrinking population? And could  a new breed of homeowners, young,
6. 0:33foreign and eager for a bargain,  help to solve the problem?
7. 0:44With me today is our Tokyo correspondent,  Shaimaa Khalil. Hi, Shaimaa, how are you?
8. 0:49I'm good, I m good. It's so  good to speak to you, Lucy.
9. 0:51Shaimaa, lovely to see you. Now, if I'm out  and about in a big city in like Tokyo or
10. 0:57Osaka or Kyoto or even on the countryside, am  I going to see some of these abandoned homes?
11. 1:02Yes, and some of them are more obvious than  others. So if you're in the countryside,
12. 1:06for example, there are homes where nature has  pretty much taken over. So that's a very obvious
13. 1:13sign of an abandoned home. I think here In Tokyo,  for example, there are also obvious older ones,
14. 1:18but if you're like me and you're a big, avid home  programmes fan and you walk around looking at
15. 1:25houses and wondering how people live inside them, some will be more obvious to you. And then
16. 1:32others are just so deceptive. You walk  around and they look perfectly normal,
17. 1:35but you find out from a broker or real estate  agent or those who bought them that they've
18. 1:40been abandoned for years and years and years.  So some are more obvious than others, for sure.
19. 1:45And the obvious ones, it's obvious  because they're decaying and decrepit
20. 1:51or they have sort of, you know, foliage  growing out of them. How can you tell?
21. 1:55Exactly. They're in really bad, they're in a  really bad state. They're pretty much falling
22. 2:00apart. Yeah, so sometimes you just, you can  tell by the state of it that it's, you know,
23. 2:05it's a wooden, very traditional-looking Japanese  home that has seen better days in the middle
24. 2:13of a main street where there are many other  buildings around it. And you could tell that
25. 2:18it's been abandoned for many years. Is this generally, though, Shaimaa,
26. 2:21seen as a more rural issue? Japan is really suffering
27. 2:24when it comes to urbanisation. And there are  villages that are literally dying out. You know,
28. 2:30for example, there's this remarkable story of  a village called Nagoro. It's literally just a,
29. 2:36you know, 20-something people, a couple  dozen people. And what they've done,
30. 2:40they've made human-sized dolls to replace people  and just put them around the village in schools
31. 2:45and bus stops in different areas. And while on  the face of it, it's a cute and innovative idea,
32. 2:50it's actually quite unsettling because you can  see that it's literally running out of people. The
33. 2:55majority of the abandoned homes are in villages. However, there are actually more abandoned
34. 3:01homes in cities here in Tokyo even, more than I  imagined and I've been taken to a couple of them.
35. 3:08Do the Japanese have a word for  these abandoned homes, Shaimaa?
36. 3:12Yes, Akiyas. It's called Akiya. Essentially,  it means empty home, but right now it's used
37. 3:19interchangeably with abandoned homes as well,  homes that have been empty for many, many years.
38. 3:23How did it get to this  point? Why are there so many?
39. 3:25If you're sitting anywhere in the world right  now where there is a housing problem where
40. 3:29young people are finding it very, very  difficult to get on the property market,
41. 3:32to actually think there's a place in the world  where there are nine million homes that are empty,
42. 3:37ready for someone to occupy them, it's  quite, I still try to get my head around it,
43. 3:42but essentially it's an aging population, It's a  shrinking population. More people are dying than
44. 3:49there are people being born here. Combine that  with people leaving villages and coming to the
45. 3:55city, so the urbanisation, and you get those  villages of people dying out, of homes that
46. 4:00are not worth much, that are just left abandoned. So for these Akiyas, it's not so much a problem
47. 4:06of too many houses, it's a problem of not  enough people. But Japan's not the only
48. 4:10country experiencing this Shaimaa. What about  South Korea? I mean, there are neighbouring
49. 4:13countries with low birth rates as well.  Why are the Akiyas a big issue in Japan?
50. 4:20I think there are a couple of reasons. One is  cultural. I think the majority of Japanese people
51. 4:27tend to want to live in brand new homes. This is a  country that has many, many earthquakes, you know,
52. 4:33with different strengths. But let's just say there  are homes that get affected by earthquakes or get
53. 4:37destroyed by earthquakes. Instead of renovating,  people would prefer to just build anew. So
54. 4:42that's one thing. I think economically as well,  there is a depreciation in the value of homes,
55. 4:47unlike the West and unlike anywhere else in the  world, actually. And so you have this picture in
56. 4:52Japan where homes are not worth much, people  who live in them and then die, and they leave
57. 5:00them to family members, and everything about that  house then is more costly than it is profitable
58. 5:08because it costs money to empty it, putting it on  the market, trying to sell it, all the paperwork
59. 5:13that comes with that, it just becomes not worth  it for family members. So it becomes cheaper
60. 5:18for people just to leave them abandoned,  and that's why you get that large number.
61. 5:22And presumably, Shaimaa, if you're  leaving your home to the next generation,
62. 5:26and there isn't anyone to leave it to,  there's no heirs, what do you do with it?
63. 5:29This is a country that suffers, or that is  suffering with a phenomenon of 'lonely deaths',
64. 5:34of people who die alone and then  they don't have family members,
65. 5:38so people don't claim their remains for  example. So they don't claim their remains,
66. 5:42they're not going to claim their homes. So it's  almost like the homes die when the people die.
67. 5:48It must have been interesting as well just the  whole culture of older homes Shaimaa, living
68. 5:53in London everyone wants to live in an historic  property and yet in Japan it's the exact opposite?
69. 5:59Yeah it's a completely different culture,  it's a completely different ballgame. The
70. 6:02fact that a value of a home is how new it is,  how structurally robust it is and that comes
71. 6:10from newer homes and so yeah the concept of  older homes here is not as valued or is not as
72. 6:15romanticised, if you will, as it is in the West. One thing that is the same all over the world, the
73. 6:22West, and it sounds like Japan, too, is that young  people don't want to go and live in the country.
74. 6:26That is very, very true. And I think that's one  thing that you see more acutely here in Japan,
75. 6:32in rural areas is that when you go, you can see  them shrinking. I think the concept on its own of
76. 6:38an empty home seems benign, but actually it's not  because if you're a village that's emptying out,
77. 6:45it's almost like you're going extinct because  it becomes a ghost town and it becomes more
78. 6:49off-putting the emptier it is and it becomes less  of a good option for a young family to go live in
79. 6:58an area that's emptying out. Why do the local councils
80. 7:01not just knock these homes down? When you knock them down, you need
81. 7:04permissions from family members and from those who  inherit. I think this is where it gets complicated
82. 7:10because the homes themselves are not valuable. The  land is valuable. But who gets the land? How do
83. 7:17you track people down, for example? Because again,  if people die and leave a home, you need to track
84. 7:21those family members down. And if they haven't  followed up and if they're hard to find because,
85. 7:27for example, they're not in Japan or they live  in Tokyo somewhere and not in the village,
86. 7:31that becomes a very difficult proposition. But  also, what do you do with the land? Who gets
87. 7:37rights to the land? So as long as they're homes,  it's almost like it's a contained problem, when
88. 7:43they become land that becomes a different problem. Any conversation about Japan, it doesn't matter
89. 7:49how short or long, earthquakes come up. It's  come up a few times already in our conversation,
90. 7:53Shaimaa. But given how earthquake-prone Japan  is, empty houses sitting there surely also
91. 7:59present some kind of hazard. Is that an issue? Yes. I've seen that firsthand. You know,
92. 8:06in the new year, when an earthquake happened  in the Noto Peninsula, when you go there and
93. 8:10you see the smaller villages, and you see older  houses that have either been completely destroyed
94. 8:16or they've been affected and they're kind  of like leaning on their side waiting to be
95. 8:22destroyed or waiting to completely collapse, that  is actually dangerous for the houses next to them
96. 8:28and the houses on the other side of the road.  And I've seen that in many of the streets where
97. 8:33people have trouble getting into their own home,  not because the home itself has been affected,
98. 8:36but because these older houses are in danger  of collapsing. So you're absolutely right.
99. 8:42These empty homes in a country that is so  earthquake prone become a problem for the
100. 8:48neighbours and the neighbourhoods they're in. Shaimaa you've already mentioned there is a
101. 8:51housing crisis around the world. Young people  as well find it really difficult, I think,
102. 8:56here in the UK to get on the housing ladder and  to buy a home. Are there foreigners sitting here
103. 9:02looking at the real estate pages in Japan going,  here is a massive opportunity for me to go and
104. 9:06get an affordable home somewhere beautiful? Yeah, I think many foreigners are waking up to
105. 9:11the fact that this is an opportunity. I've spoken  to a couple of people, for example, one of them,
106. 9:17who is now a TikTok phenomenon. His name is Anton  Wormann. He is from Sweden, from Stockholm. He is
107. 9:23a model who's now turned renovator, and he went  viral, because essentially what he did is he
108. 9:29bought an Akiya, and he chronicled his journey  into this fixer-upper in the middle of Tokyo.
109. 9:37Wow. Welcome, welcome. So I spent about
110. 9:42a year into making this house beautiful again. I was just going to say it doesn't
111. 9:47look abandoned to me. No, it's not abandoned. It was
112. 9:49abandoned for about 10 years. Oh, okay.
113. 9:51And when I got the keys to this house, it  was things literally everywhere. Japan has
114. 9:55a scarcity of space and just getting rid of  things, getting rid of trash getting rid of
115. 10:01debris costs a lot of money and also a lot of  time. So the houses just gets abandoned that way.
116. 10:07I have to say this combines two of my guilty  pleasures. Not only do I love like you Shaimaa
117. 10:13home renovation shows, I love shows about buying a  property abroad, somewhere in the sun or somewhere
118. 10:19different. So it's the combination of these  two things. But for these people, is it about
119. 10:24gaining followers or are they really trying to  say this is an affordable, good option for you?
120. 10:30I don't know. I think it's a combination  of both. I think it taps into something
121. 10:35that just translates and transcends everywhere  in the world. I think no matter where you are,
122. 10:42the idea of owning a home, the idea of turning  it from something that's derelict and old and
123. 10:47abandoned to something beautiful and liveable.  You know, it just appeals to so many people.
124. 10:53Tourism is doing really well in Japan. Lots of  people are now going not just to Tokyo, but to all
125. 11:00over the country. So surely these Akiyas would  be great to be used as guest houses or cafes?
126. 11:07Yes, and this is what Anton is doing. In fact,  he liked it so much. He started his second Akiya
127. 11:12project. He showed it to me. And it was really  interesting to into his second home because you
128. 11:17see it from the beginning when they were laying  down concrete slabs, they're making sure it's
129. 11:22earthquake safe and it is a lot of work because  you see for example that there are so many things
130. 11:28that were left by the previous owner that he had  to that he had to let go of, deciding what to do,
131. 11:34deciding what to throw away, what to keep. But  essentially his first property, he now rents
132. 11:41it out for visitors, rents it out short term,  when his family comes to visit. And so it is
133. 11:47a lucrative business opportunity for people who  are willing to put in the work. And as you say,
134. 11:53I think tourism has picked up quite a bit. This  year was phenomenal in the number of tourists that
135. 11:59have come to Japan. I think in one month, there  were about 3 million, if not more. Just the fact
136. 12:04that technology and translation apps is a lot more  advanced. Japan has become much more accessible,
137. 12:12not just the big touristy areas, but you can go  into these nooks and crannies of some villages
138. 12:17and explore because you can get access to  them. So if Akiyas then turn out to be this
139. 12:24new phenomenon where more tourists are coming in,  more people are investing in these empty homes,
140. 12:29That's actually a win-win situation because all  of these villages, all of the local governments,
141. 12:36would then say, look, well, this could be  a new lease of life for those villages.
142. 12:41So Shaimaa, what are the foreigners doing  once they've renovated, bought and renovated
143. 12:46the Akiya? Are they staying put and living  there or using them to set up a business?
144. 12:51Some of the foreigners who are coming, they're  coming because they want to have a foot in Japan.
145. 12:55So, for example, they live in America, they live  in the UK, they live anywhere in Europe, and this
146. 13:01is an affordable option for them to come and have  a holiday home, you know, in the mountains or by
147. 13:06the beach in Japan. But, for example, I've met  a couple. The husband is from the UK originally.
148. 13:12The wife is Japanese, and they've just had a  baby boy. His name is Sam. Her name is Nanami
149. 13:17and their baby boy is baby Aiden. And Sam's been  living in Japan for about seven years, I think,
150. 13:22or even more. And, you know, Nanami is from Tokyo.  And they've decided that they just wanted more for
151. 13:27their money. So what was interesting about their  case and their journey is that they almost paid
152. 13:31the same amount of money Anton paid for his home.  I think they paid $100,000, but their country home
153. 13:37is a lot bigger. And when I asked Sam why he did  it, he said, it's just bulks more that I can get
154. 13:43for this kind of money in the UK. It's a huge  house with a land and a big garden overlooking
155. 13:50the mountains. It's just beautiful and they just  wouldn't get that anywhere else in the world,
156. 13:55especially in Europe and especially in the  UK. And so this was about a lifestyle choice.
157. 14:00I definitely think if we had done a new  build, that would have been a lot easier
158. 14:04and straightforward, probably affordable  and quicker. But it's such a beautiful
159. 14:08house and you just kind of think like It's nice to  preserve that and to, you know, extend its life.
160. 14:15Shaimaa, what do the Japanese think about  foreigners coming in and buying up these Akiyas?
161. 14:20So far, I don't think that we've seen  any negative reaction because remember,
162. 14:24the foreigners who come here are not tapping  into something that the Japanese want or that
163. 14:31the Japanese have expressed interest in. This  is very much still a novel phenomena. This
164. 14:39is something that foreigners have caught on to  because, again, of the housing crisis, because of
165. 14:48the idea that these homes could be renovated  because they come from renovation culture.
166. 14:54Everything that we're talking about, though, in  the grand scheme of things, it probably barely
167. 14:58makes a dent, Shaimaa. So does the Government  actually have a plan to deal with the Akiyas?
168. 15:04Yeah, I mean, so far, we're talking about hundreds  of people that are interested in these Akiyas,
169. 15:11a few hundred that take them on and actually buy  these Akiyas and transform them and renovate them.
170. 15:17With government statistics by the year 2038,  if I'm not mistaken, one in every three homes
171. 15:23in Japan is going to be abandoned. That is a huge  number, and I think they're trying to tackle it in
172. 15:28different ways. There are local governments,  local municipalities or local governments in
173. 15:34these villages that are trying to give away these  homes for free, just to say, come, find something
174. 15:43to do with this house, make it a cafe, make it a  business, come and live in it, but just, in a way,
175. 15:50just breathe life into this village. But it's a  huge problem and again, it comes back to the core
176. 15:56of Japan's population crisis. The Government  has been trying many things. The Government
177. 16:02has been trying to tackle the population crisis  for a long, long time now. And I think you have
178. 16:07to deal with the core of it, which is that you  need more people in this country to occupy these
179. 16:12homes. But these existing empty homes also  need to be either reused, renovated, or just
180. 16:20have people in them to give them a new lease of  life. And it's not just about the physical homes,
181. 16:25it's about how do you make those homes lucrative?  How do you make those homes liveable? And a lot
182. 16:32of that has to do with, do you have schools  around you for your kids? Do you have hospitals,
183. 16:38et cetera? And so It's a whole infrastructure  system that needs to happen around these homes.
184. 16:44Shaimaa, the Prime Minister,  Fumio Kishida, has actually said,
185. 16:48and it was such a dramatic statement, that Japan  is on the brink of no longer even being able to
186. 16:53function as a society because of this massive  demographic problem that you've described to us.
187. 16:58What's his way out of it? It was very unusual for him to sound
188. 17:03so alarmed when he's actually alarmed. They're  trying to come up with ways and incentives for
189. 17:10families to move to outside of the cities and into  some places in the countryside. They're trying
190. 17:17financial incentives and financial aid to families  with more children. It's about trying to shift the
191. 17:23culture so that more people are getting married,  more people are having babies in your own country,
192. 17:27but also welcoming more people into your  own country so that more people than occupy
193. 17:32all of these empty spaces that you have. These houses, these Aykias though, Shaimaa,
194. 17:38they tell a much richer, bigger story  about what is happening in the country.
195. 17:42These Akiyas essentially tell the story of Japan  at this very moment, the crisis that Japan is
196. 17:49facing, the fact that this is a country that's  facing a shrinking, aging population, essentially
197. 17:56a population crisis. Essentially people die, yhey  leave behind homes that don't hold much value,
198. 18:02that no one wants. And essentially what they tell  you is that this is a country that's emptying out
199. 18:09and that is trying to find a solution to  give itself, to give society and to give
200. 18:16these homes a new lease of life. Arigato gozaimasu Shaimaa.
201. 18:22Arigato gozaimasu. Thank you, Shaima.
202. 18:25Thanks, Lucy. It's such a  pleasure. Lovely to talk to you.
203. 18:28And thank you so much for watching. If you  want more episodes of The Global Story,
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