The Japanese Government has recorded an unprecedented record: in 2024, the Tax Agency entered more than 129 billion yen (about 700 million euros) coming from inheritances without heirs, almost four times more than a decade ago.
Behind that figure there is not an accounting anomaly, but the result of a sudden demographic transformation: accelerated aging, the collapse of marriages and a sustained increase in deaths in loneliness They have generated a new flow of assets that, since they have no claimants, automatically end up in the hands of the State.
The process is also slow and expensive since when a person dies without a spouse or children, a liquidator appointed by the family court must settle debts, taxes and funeral expenses before the assets can be transferred to the public treasury.
In practice, this turns homes, land and bank accounts into assets blocked for years due to judicial procedures.
At the same time, the country already accumulates more than nine million abandoned homes (Akiya) that deteriorate without anyone assuming ownership or maintenance.
City councils, especially in towns and medium-sized cities, allocate increasing resources to inspecting, walling up or demolishing properties, which generates a clear paradox: extraordinary income for the central State and an increasing operational and social burden for local administrations.
The paradox is accentuated when observing who are the protagonists of this trend. A good part of the people who die today without heirs belong to the generation that built modern Japan. Los baby boomers of the postwar period, protagonists of the economic miracle, are now reaching the end of their lives without a spouse, without children or with broken family ties.
Decades of extreme working hours, personal resignations and a social model that penalized care and conciliation have led to an old age marked by isolation. Added to this is a persistent taboo: talking about death and planning the distribution of assets continues to be uncomfortable in a society that avoids conflict until the last moment.
The result is that Millions of older people die without having written a willeven knowing that their assets will inevitably end up in the hands of the State.
The Japanese legal framework offers few alternatives. The legislation only allows the assets to be allocated to third parties – such as caregivers, friends or social entities – through a formal will; Without it, there is no room for donation or community use.
Even when there are distant heirs, the location and consensus processes can drag on for years, blocking properties and overwhelming family courts.
Experts in inheritance law warn that the system is not prepared for the coming avalanche: with more than 1.6 million deaths annually and an increasingly aging population, the number of ownerless assets will grow steadily.
At the same time, the rise of these heirless inheritances generates a perverse incentive for the central administration. Each asset that ends up in the hands of the State represents a direct injection of extraordinary income in a context of economic stagnation, accelerated aging and increasing pressure on the pension and health system.
The increase in revenue—quadrupled in just a decade—does not require unpopular reforms or explicit tax increases, which reduces the political urgency to address the root problem.
Analysts and experts point out an obvious conflict of interest: the more family disintegration worsens, the greater the flow of assets to the State and the less incentive to promote legal changes that facilitate the donation, will or social reuse of these assets.
The root of the problem is, to a large extent, cultural and political. For decades, the Japanese family model rested on the presumption of continuity: marriage, descent, and heritage transmission within the lineage. This scheme has been eroded without the legal framework having adapted.
Talking about wills, designating alternative heirs or planning for the end of life remains taboo for a large part of the elderly population, even among those who know they will die alone. Added to this is a Rigid legislation that makes it difficult to channel goods to caregivers, NGOs or social initiatives if there is no formal will.
The result is a system that penalizes foresight and rewards, de facto, inaction: those who do not decide, hand over their legacy to the State.
The implicit message that the Government sends to the young generations is as silent as it is devastating. In a country in which raising a family is increasingly difficult, housing is expensive in areas with employment and family conciliation continues to be a chimera, the State does not offer real incentives to build stable life projects.
The social contract that sustained postwar Japan—hard work in exchange for security, family and continuity—has been breaking down without anyone daring to propose a new one.
The result is a generation that works, contributes and supports a system that promises neither vital stability nor symbolic return. Young people perceive that the State assumes that they will not have children, that they will live alone and that, finally, their assets will end up automatically reverting to the administration if they do not leave everything tied up.
It is not an explicit message, but it is profoundly clear: the system does not expect continuity, it only manages the disappearance of its own people.
This logic has profound economic consequences. When the future is perceived as a closed line and not as continuity, long-term investment is no longer rational. Without children, without heirs and without a horizon of transmission, the accumulation of wealth loses economic and symbolic meaning, and consumption becomes defensive and short-term.
The economy thus enters a state of decline management: less entrepreneurship, less risk, less innovation and a growing dependence on unproductive income linked to death and not to the creation of value.
In this context, the normalization of inheritances without heirs as a stable source of revenue redefines the relationship between the State and its citizens. A system that works best when people don’t marry, have children, and die alone sends a troubling signal about what future it considers plausible and acceptable.
The risk is not only moral, but strategic: no economy can be sustained in the long term if its implicit horizon is the orderly extinction of the generations that should guarantee continuity.
Japan has become a social and demographic failure into a stable source of public income. The unknown is no longer how much the State will continue to earn, but how long a country can sustain itself that balances part of its accounts with the death in solitude of the generation that built modern Japan and made its economic leadership in Asia possible.