[HN Gopher] Japan's abandoned villages ___________________________________________________________________ Japan's abandoned villages Author : benbreen Score : 107 points Date : 2023-08-26 04:45 UTC (1 days ago) (HTM) web link (www.japantimes.co.jp) (TXT) w3m dump (www.japantimes.co.jp) | kqr2 wrote: | This article kind of reminds me about the opening scene in | _Spirited Away_ with the abandoned amusement park. | nico wrote: | I kept reading thinking they were going to mention it... but no | | Still very interesting article, the pictures aren't super good, | but reading about the way human society evolves is very much so | ip26 wrote: | One such place is described as having been 'about ten houses', | which isn't quite what I imagined when they said 'villages'. | nradov wrote: | Hamlet? | cyberax wrote: | This is the inevitable result of thoughtless densification. | | People _have_ to move into denser cities, because they are the | only places with jobs. This in turn results in more and more jobs | moving into denser cities. | | And people have to live in ever-smaller apartments. | SECProto wrote: | What makes you think it is "thoughtless densification"? To | deliver services to a given population, it is easier, faster, & | cheaper if they are in more dense metropolitan areas (up to a | certain point). Same trend happens in every developed country | as the proportion of the labour force required for | farming/forestry decreases. Land scarcity in Japan just | amplifies the density in urban areas - you cant live outside | the city and drive your car in, because you'll end up spending | as much on a parking spot as you would on renting a small | apartment. | smadge wrote: | Cities are the engines of the modern economy. We can revert to | an agrarian society if you please, but not without | consequences. | tomcam wrote: | I can't see where GP said anything about reverting to an | agrarian society. Was the post edited? | rgrieselhuber wrote: | When I first started traveling in Japan, the dilapidated | countryside was very disconcerting to me, almost felt like I'd | stumbled into some sort of back room. The more time I spent | there, however, the more I came to appreciate the aesthetics of | the lonely restaurants, the rusted steel-sided buildings, almost | abandoned shrines, etc. Hard to say what exactly is so appealing | about it, but it sticks with you. | andromaton wrote: | Could it be the quiet and calmness? | rgrieselhuber wrote: | It reminds me of the forest passage concept described by | Ernst Junger. | | He was writing about sovereignty within one's own | consciousness and I'm not referencing this particular context | in this case (although they probably are related) but more | generally how "the hinterlands" provide a place away from the | beam of focus that a society maintains. | | Almost by definition these places feel forgotten but once you | get over the unnerving sense of separation and isolation from | everything, your imagination seems to recover some of its | creativity. That creativity then fills in the gaps visually | to create an aesthetically pleasing setting even if it didn't | feel that way at first. | ChatGTP wrote: | It's nice to see nature taking things back and making something | beautiful again...forest. | | In a way an abandoned village is just another type of zen | garden... | resolutebat wrote: | There's an amazing (and depressing) blog called Spike Japan | that's all about this aesthetic, with a special focus on the | Bubble of the 80s and the detritus it left behind: | | https://spikejapan.wordpress.com/ | nataz wrote: | If you are interested in buying an abandoned home in the Japan | countryside highly recommend the YouTube channel Tokyo Llama. | He's spent the last four years renovating a beautiful traditional | style Japanese house and property about an hour outside of Tokyo. | He talks about the renovation aspects, taxes, paperwork process, | and the pros and cons of doing this with a family. Lots of videos | the watch. | | https://youtu.be/TwRjO3kHxU4?si=a9rw7FbwpiXEQLjr | toomuchtodo wrote: | For anyone in Japan or with domain knowledge, what are the | logistics for acquiring and taking up residence in an abandoned | village (assuming you can legally reside in Japan of course)? | | EDIT: Thank you all for the replies! | srvmshr wrote: | From an earlier post, copying my answer which seems relevant to | your query | | > Being a Japanese resident (PR) now, I did look up this option | for a summer home in the woods (Akita, Aichi-ken etc). This is | what I learnt: | | * Akiya houses come with an agreement to reside. Not just be a | summer home. Their goal is to repopulate the countryside. | | * You have to cultivate any farmland that comes with the deed. | You cannot sell it without special permission. There is a whole | lot of paperwork to deal with such situations. | | * Most old Akiya will have strong regulation not to change the | frontage significantly. It isn't permitted. Architecturally | these changes have to be consistent with the older house and | rest of the community. Building permits are very stringent. | (Basically, you can't build a sprawling European villa in a | Japanese countryside for e.g., even if land wasn't a concern.) | | * Land tax is levied the day from purchase - not from the day | of moving in. (This could pinch given that time to renovate can | be 1-2 years in remote places, and taxes aren't cheap | necessarily) | | * Residents have to contribute to local development funds which | take care of _Matsuris_ etc. You like it or not, local | government will knock on your door with a bill. | | * Connectivity is poor. Cell reception outside NTT can be | spotty. Internet is even harder. | | * Language proficiency is a must. No one speaks English. Not | even the local government officials. | | * House will need a significant amount of renovation. With the | stringent restrictions - anywhere between 100 & 200 grand | (depending on the disrepair) | crooked-v wrote: | That seems like a very "wanting to have your cake and eat it | too" setup on the part of the local municipalities. 'No | summer homes' seems like an easy way for many of them to get | no people at all, especially since the country as a whole has | very good housing policy and so doesn't have the same kind of | home affordability crisis as the US. | Ekaros wrote: | Vacation homes might bring occasional injection of cash, | but they do not really support local community and local | services for most of the year. So it is understandable that | unless community is build on that type of industry they do | not want it and instead focus on those that bring more | revenue. | jrockway wrote: | I mean, you pay property tax whether you live there or | not. I don't know how this works in other states or other | countries, but at least in New York a primary residence | has tax _advantages_. | | That said, I'm not sure what you do with a rich | municipality that has no residents. You probably want the | corner store to be open when you go out there for the | winter for some reason, and with no customers, that's not | an economic reality. | polski-g wrote: | "Paying property tax" does not fund the local business | revenue needs. | gloryjulio wrote: | Not really. Their goal is for the local community first and | foremost. You know what you are getting into if you trying | to buy this kind property. | crooked-v wrote: | My point is that for a lot of these places, unless they | can figure out some way to be more appealing, there will | be no local community before all that long. | ska wrote: | This may be true, but doesn't mean that all other options | are better in the view of the community. They may prefer | to roll the whole thing up compared to some models. | gloryjulio wrote: | Japan is in population decline and people are moving to | the city. There is no reversal of this trend. Compromise | would not solve the problem anyway. | | Making sure the the current crops of the residents are | part of the local community is a good goal. They are not | gonna win, might as well preserve what they have | temporarily. | Unfrozen0688 wrote: | No? Its their land? YOU just want an ez cheap house. | renewiltord wrote: | It looks like their order of preferences is: | | Repopulate by old standards > take the L > become vacation | community | | I don't think it's "wanting to have your cake and eat it | too" so much as it being the same as sometimes I want | something done but not if it costs too much. In that case, | having it not done is better than paying too much for it. | makeitdouble wrote: | Welp, those are empty houses for a reason. | | Home affordability is stil an issue, people working in the | metro area while being homeless is a thing, but they still | probably end up better than being jobless in the emptying | and infra less countryside. | caesil wrote: | >* Most old Akiya will have strong regulation not to change | the frontage. It isn't permitted. Architecturally these have | to be consistent. Building permits are very stringent. | | Interesting how at odds this is with land use rules in Tokyo. | makeitdouble wrote: | I think it's mostly due to these specific localities. | | Countryside with no specific preservation rules and more | favorable arrangements are plenty. They will have better | chance to see new people moving in, or have better land | reuse policies, leaving few empty homes in the first place. | tomohelix wrote: | Buying one isn't hard. They are quite cheap. A completely | broken house like the ones in the OP is probably begging to be | sold. A 2k+ sqft livable house in the suburb of Tokyo is about | $300k. | | https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/17/realestate/japan-empty-ho... | https://archive.is/BDCnm | | But these are traditional Japanese houses so quite a lot of | renovation is needed to bring it up to a Westerner's standards. | Still, all in all, if you are fine with living in a backwater | village with barely any modern conveniences then 200-300k for a | big house is not too bad. | | Assuming you can speak Japanese and don't mind the | xenophobia... | Macha wrote: | So a 2k sqft house here, in my European country, would be | considered quite a large one, and my understanding is | Japanese standards for housing sizes trend even smaller than | here. I realise it's commonplace in parts of the USA, but | you're likely paying a premium for getting a house that the | market considers "oversized". Wikipedia seems to indicate | that 1000 sqft is the average in Tokyo. | resolutebat wrote: | Tokyo is extremely dense and land is very expensive. The | mountainous rural backblocks that contain these abandoned | properties is not, and land is essentially worthless or | negative value: it has no productive use, but you still | need to pay taxes. | | This is in fact a big reason why Japan has a big problem | with abandoned rural property: there is no incentive for | next of kin to sort out the inheritance paperwork, and then | it's left in limbo. | Prickle wrote: | Especially due to inheritance tax in Japan being very | high. It can sometimes be cheaper to abandon | inheritances, than actually claim them. Even if you do | claim the inheritance, large expensive things like houses | tend to be sold because the tax makes it unaffordable. | exhilaration wrote: | FYI for those passing by, that New York Times article above | is fantastic, I was about to post it as well. | layer8 wrote: | It was discussed a couple months ago: | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35606413 | nataz wrote: | While there are a fair share disposable/modern style abandoned | houses, there are also these incredible traditional style | properties. | | While I understand some of the underlying reasons, I'm still | shocked that they are just allowed to sit there falling apart. | Part of me wants to spec out deconstruct/container/ship to the | US for for rebuild. | | Obviously it's not economically feasible, but some of them are | that interesting. | Ekaros wrote: | I think it really comes to what is common in place and what | is not. Like Detroit had plenty of homes. And many of them | were left to rot. As they had no value or even negative | value. | | It is same all around the world in these dying communities. | They might be exotic from outside, but there is just too many | of them in those places. | civilitty wrote: | You can take a look at AkiyaBanks: https://www.akiyabanks.com/ | | It's a directory of municipality-specific sites and pages with | lots of links to cheap akiyas, subsidy programs, and Google | translations of pages for English readers. Many | municipalities/prefectures have akiya matching programs where | you send them what you want and they help find a house within | your budget. | | Getting one is really easy since there are millions of empty | homes but the logistics of maintaining these houses is a whole | other matter. Be prepared to do most of the work yourself | because a lot of these akiyas are rarely in areas with plenty | of craftsmen and construction workers. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-08-27 23:00 UTC)