A recently published official report for fiscal year 2024 reveals that 3,498 land and buildings located near military bases, critical infrastructure or remote islands They were purchased by non-Japanese buyers.
Almost half of these operations, 47.5%, correspond to Chinese citizens or entitiesa proportion that has once again placed the phenomenon at the center of the country’s political and media debate.
Although the Executive insists that no hostile use detected Of these properties, the sustained growth of acquisitions has generated concern for two key reasons: its possible impact on national security and its contribution to the rise in housing prices in certain urban areas.
The authorities emphasize that these operations only represent 3.1% of total real estate transactions in the monitored areas, but recognize that the concentration of foreign purchases in strategic points requires strengthening control mechanisms.
Although the total volume of foreign operations remains limited in percentage terms, their concentration in certain areas amplifies their social impact and fuels a malaise that transcends the question of the origin of the buyers.
The rise of these acquisitions responds largely to global economic factors. The prolonged weakness of the yen has made Japanese real estate assets cheaper for foreign investors, while the real estate crisis in Chinaalong with restrictions on capital outflows, has driven the search for safe haven assets abroad.
In this context, Japan combines institutional stability, legal security and still moderate pricesmaking it a particularly attractive destination compared to other more regulated or volatile Asian markets.
This growing flow of foreign investment is beginning, however, to have visible effects in the territory. In urban and peri-urban areas, buying pressure coincides with a sustained increase in house prices and with a reduction in the offer available for local residents.
In rural or island areas, where depopulation has historically been a problem, the arrival of foreign capital generates a paradox: it revitalizes the market, but at the same time raises misgivings about land control and the future use of spaces considered sensitive from a strategic or environmental point of view.
Far from being limited to rural areas or remote islands, many of these areas are today integrated into large urban centers. Districts of Tokyo, Osaka or Yokohama are among the monitored spaces due to their proximity to ministries, Self-Defense Forces bases or key logistics centers.
This debate has forced the Japanese State to intervene in an area that for decades remained practically unregulated.
Since 2022, Japan has applied the Important Land Investigation Law, a regulation designed to supervise the purchase of land and buildings located near military installations, critical infrastructure or territories considered sensitive from a geostrategic point of view.
The law requires notification of certain operations and empowers the State to investigate the subsequent use of the properties, although without prohibiting in general foreign investment. Its application has been progressively expanded, and in 2024 the number of areas subject to surveillance rose to 583 throughout the country.
From the real estate sector, however, it is insisted reduce the geopolitical reading of the phenomenon. “In the vast majority of cases we are talking about equity investment, not purchases for strategic purposes,” explains a real estate agent based in Tokyo who specializes in international clients in conversation with this newspaper.
According to details, many Chinese buyers are looking for urban apartments or small buildings in well-connected areas, with the idea of diversify assets and protect savings in a context of uncertainty in their country of origin.
“Japan offers legal certainty, political stability and prices that, at the current exchange rate of the yen, are very competitive. That is what weighs on the decision,” he points out, highlighting that operations are concentrated above all in already urbanized areas.
The Japanese Government maintains a cautious but vigilant discourse. The Ministry of Territory, Infrastructure and Transport recognizes the increase in foreign acquisitions in sensitive areas, but states that, to date, no use of these lands that poses a direct threat to national security has been detected.
“Our objective is not to stop foreign investment, but to guarantee that land use does not harm public interests,” a senior executive official recently said.
However, the Government itself admits that the trend requires strengthening monitoring mechanisms, in a country where the purchase of land by foreigners continues to be much less regulated than in other advanced economies.
Japan thus faces an uncomfortable dilemma: continue betting on unrestricted opening or redefine the role of land in a country where security, housing and economic sovereignty are beginning to inevitably intertwine in a country that for decades avoided asking itself who should control its land.