[HN Gopher] Japan's abandoned villages
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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.
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