Japan's superstitions make some homes hard to sell or rent
Many Japanese people are reluctant to buy or rent homes where a sudden or violent death has occurred. To reassure prospective buyers and tenants, property
Many Japanese people are reluctant to buy or rent homes where a sudden or violent death has occurred. To reassure prospective buyers and tenants, property owners are calling in "ghost investigators." The two-story house in a southern suburb of Yokohama has seen better days. The metal shutters are permanently drawn over the downstairs windows, the sliding paper window covers upstairs are in tatters, and the garden is overgrown. With a bit of effort and money, however, the property could be renovated into a perfectly habitable home once more. But no Japanese wants this house. It is marked as "jiko bukken," which translates as a "stigmatized property," and it has stood empty for at least five years. Something bad happened here, possibly a suicide, a fire that claimed a life or the death of an elderly person, what the Japanese refer to as a "lonely death." Murder is another obvious reason for a property to be shunned. Kazutoshi Kodama, president of specialist property Kachimode Co., believes "jiko bukken" are a financial drain on owners and, for him, a business opportunity. Set up in December 2022, Kachimode "assists owners or properties with a history of incidents with the management of their rental properties." Part of this service is a comprehensive "ghost investigation," he said. And far from being dismissed, demand for the service is soaring, he added. 'Japanese see death as impure' "Japanese people sometimes regard death as impure," Kodama told DW. "Death equates to impurity and misfortune. Consequently, they believe that coming into close contact with death will bring them misfortune," he said. "And that means quite a lot of Japanese are reluctant to go near such properties, let alone rent or buy one." In Japan, grief finds a home inside a pearl To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video Renting or selling a "jiko bukken" is made harder by the legal requirement on any estate agent to reveal a property's history to any interested parties, while a website has been set up that reveals the location of every stigmatized property in the country and the reason they are on the blacklist.
Most listings indicate accidental fires, lonely deaths or suicide, but some offer a more ominous note: "Obtain details from real estate agent." In a big city with high rental demand, the owner of a stigmatized property will have to cut the rent by 30%, Kodama said, while elsewhere it will be cut in half. "And there are some properties which, although for tenants, remain vacant as long as 500 days," he said. "I am aware of a property that remained vacant for over 1,000 days. In short, they simply become vacant properties and the concept of a price reduction just does not apply." Some renters, however, are mollified after Kachimode has "cleansed" a property beyond replacing carpets, fittings and wallpaper. "My company carries out what we call 'ghost investigation,'" he said. "We stay in rooms where incidents have occurred from 10 p.m. until 6 a.m. the following morning, conducting video recording, audio recording, electromagnetic wave surveys, measurements of room temperature, humidity and atmospheric pressure, thermography and noise surveys. "The aim is to verify that rooms where people have died have been thoroughly refurbished and are now clean, and to prove that poltergeist phenomena, the presence of ghosts and other mysterious occurrences do not occur," he said. Removing the 'bad spirits' Kachimode's service is unique in Japan, and he works with a university professor who specializes in monitoring the supernatural. An overnight stay costs 88,000 yen (€474/$542), after which a comprehensive report is provided to the owner, which the real estate agent can use to support the assertion that there are no lingering "bad spirits." Kodama said his equipment has, on occasions, picked up anomalies, with video cameras stopping recording and microphones malfunctioning.
The BriefWire