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ELON : Japon cada vez tiene mas "casas de fantasmas".
es decir mas casitas de viejos que han espichao y esta ahi muertas der risa. PROBLEM CIVILIZATORIO
Japan’s ‘witch houses’ a sign of a rapidly shrinking population
Richard Lloyd Parry
, Tokyo
Monday February 13 2023, 12.01am GMT, The Times
Empty homes, like these in Setagaya, Tokyo, can be a burden to children
ALAMY
You stumble across them everywhere, in villages and cities, in the smartest neighbourhoods and the most run down. They lurk behind overgrown gardens, decaying beneath veils of moss and ivy. Crows and raccoon dogs make their homes in them; little children peer through their gates and imagine ghosts. They are the “witch houses” of Japan — mysterious tokens of social decay in one of the wealthiest societies in the world.
Called akiya, or abandoned homes, they have spread like mould in the past few years. The last time the government made a count, five years ago, it found 8.5 million houses standing empty nationwide, 13 per cent of the total. There are streets in which almost every house has been abandoned; there are three in the little cul-de-sac in which I live in western Tokyo. The number doubled in a generation; according to a report by the Nomura Research Institute, a third of Japanese houses will be uninhabited by 2038 unless they are knocked down. In the small towns and villages of the countryside the phenomenon is easy to understand. There Japan’s demographic crisis — elderly people living ever longer, young people not giving birth to replacement children — is at its most acute. There are more communities in rural Japan where almost everyone is old.
Their children have moved to the big cities and the properties that they leave behind when they die have little value. Often, the cost of knocking down a decaying old house is more than the resale value of the land on which it stands. For the heirs, it is cheaper just to leave the old place untended than to deal with all the bother. But it is harder to fathom why witch houses have proliferated in Japan’s richest cities.
Setagaya ward in Tokyo contains some of the capital’s most desirable neighbourhoods, but it also has 50,000 abandoned houses, more than any municipality in Japan. Sometimes there is an obvious reason: the house is at the top of a steep slope, for example, or accessible only by narrow alleys difficult to drive a car down. But the problem also has its roots in history and in the curious character of the Japanese property market.
Prewar houses were made to last, with the expectation that they would be the home to a family for several generations. After aerial bombing laid waste to the cities, the priority was to provide housing in quantity, and quality was neglected. The new apartment blocks were not expected to survive more than 40 years; the most desirable homes were new and they did not keep their value. In Japan, a new home is like a new car, which loses much of its value as soon as it is driven out of the showroom.
Until the late 1980s, the land on which a house was built could be relied on to rise in value, but then the property bubble burst spectacularly. In Japan, buying your own home has not been the solid investment that it has been in Britain, for example. To the children of recently deceased parents, their ramshackle house on the narrow Tokyo alley can be a greater burden than an asset.
Witch houses are contagious; a cluster of abandoned houses affects the value of those around it.
Some local governments are imposing taxes on abandoned properties and increasing their power to knock them down (at present they can only do this to structures on the verge of collapse).
But the core of the problem is insoluble: Japan’s population is shrinking. Since 2008, it has shed more than two million people. The witch houses are the ghosts of a country that is no more, the visible sign of an irreversible dwindling.
es decir mas casitas de viejos que han espichao y esta ahi muertas der risa. PROBLEM CIVILIZATORIO
Japan’s ‘witch houses’ a sign of a rapidly shrinking population
Richard Lloyd Parry
, Tokyo
Monday February 13 2023, 12.01am GMT, The Times
Empty homes, like these in Setagaya, Tokyo, can be a burden to children
ALAMY
You stumble across them everywhere, in villages and cities, in the smartest neighbourhoods and the most run down. They lurk behind overgrown gardens, decaying beneath veils of moss and ivy. Crows and raccoon dogs make their homes in them; little children peer through their gates and imagine ghosts. They are the “witch houses” of Japan — mysterious tokens of social decay in one of the wealthiest societies in the world.
Called akiya, or abandoned homes, they have spread like mould in the past few years. The last time the government made a count, five years ago, it found 8.5 million houses standing empty nationwide, 13 per cent of the total. There are streets in which almost every house has been abandoned; there are three in the little cul-de-sac in which I live in western Tokyo. The number doubled in a generation; according to a report by the Nomura Research Institute, a third of Japanese houses will be uninhabited by 2038 unless they are knocked down. In the small towns and villages of the countryside the phenomenon is easy to understand. There Japan’s demographic crisis — elderly people living ever longer, young people not giving birth to replacement children — is at its most acute. There are more communities in rural Japan where almost everyone is old.
Their children have moved to the big cities and the properties that they leave behind when they die have little value. Often, the cost of knocking down a decaying old house is more than the resale value of the land on which it stands. For the heirs, it is cheaper just to leave the old place untended than to deal with all the bother. But it is harder to fathom why witch houses have proliferated in Japan’s richest cities.
Setagaya ward in Tokyo contains some of the capital’s most desirable neighbourhoods, but it also has 50,000 abandoned houses, more than any municipality in Japan. Sometimes there is an obvious reason: the house is at the top of a steep slope, for example, or accessible only by narrow alleys difficult to drive a car down. But the problem also has its roots in history and in the curious character of the Japanese property market.
Prewar houses were made to last, with the expectation that they would be the home to a family for several generations. After aerial bombing laid waste to the cities, the priority was to provide housing in quantity, and quality was neglected. The new apartment blocks were not expected to survive more than 40 years; the most desirable homes were new and they did not keep their value. In Japan, a new home is like a new car, which loses much of its value as soon as it is driven out of the showroom.
Until the late 1980s, the land on which a house was built could be relied on to rise in value, but then the property bubble burst spectacularly. In Japan, buying your own home has not been the solid investment that it has been in Britain, for example. To the children of recently deceased parents, their ramshackle house on the narrow Tokyo alley can be a greater burden than an asset.
Witch houses are contagious; a cluster of abandoned houses affects the value of those around it.
Some local governments are imposing taxes on abandoned properties and increasing their power to knock them down (at present they can only do this to structures on the verge of collapse).
But the core of the problem is insoluble: Japan’s population is shrinking. Since 2008, it has shed more than two million people. The witch houses are the ghosts of a country that is no more, the visible sign of an irreversible dwindling.
