Highly Recommended Watch: Why are there millions of empty houses in Japan? - The Global Story podcast, BBC World Service
(youtube.com)
In Japan, the number of abandoned homes - known as Akiyas - is at an all-time high, with 9,000,000 million properties sitting empty on city streets and turning rural communities into ghost towns.
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Lucy Hockings is joined by BBC Tokyo correspondent Shaimaa Khalil to ask why these abandoned homes are such a problem? What they say about Japan's existential population crisis? And whether there are any solutions?
00:00 Introduction
01:00 Spotting the abandoned homes
02:20 Dolls replace people in 'dying' village
02:55 Abandoned homes in cities
03:23 Why are there 9,000,000 empty homes in Japan?
04:06 Cultural and economic factors
05:22 'Homes die when the people die'
06:29 Impact on rural communities
07:00 Why not just knock the homes down?
07:47 Empty houses creating earthquake hazards
09:00 Foreigners buying and renovating these homes
10:53 Can tourism solve the empty home crisis?
12:42 Why foreigners are buying Akiyas
14:15 Japanese opinion on foreigners buying up empty houses
15:00 Does the Government have a plan for Akiyas
16:44 Japan's aging population problem
17:35 'Akiyas tell the story of Japan'
Watch more episodes of The Global Story here 👉🏽
• The Global Story
You can listen to more episodes of The Global Story here. Making sense of the news with our experts around the world. Insights you can trust, Monday to Friday, from the BBC 👉🏽 https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w13x...
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Click here to subscribe to our channel 👉🏽 https://bbc.in/3VyyriM
Lucy Hockings is joined by BBC Tokyo correspondent Shaimaa Khalil to ask why these abandoned homes are such a problem? What they say about Japan's existential population crisis? And whether there are any solutions?
00:00 Introduction
01:00 Spotting the abandoned homes
02:20 Dolls replace people in 'dying' village
02:55 Abandoned homes in cities
03:23 Why are there 9,000,000 empty homes in Japan?
04:06 Cultural and economic factors
05:22 'Homes die when the people die'
06:29 Impact on rural communities
07:00 Why not just knock the homes down?
07:47 Empty houses creating earthquake hazards
09:00 Foreigners buying and renovating these homes
10:53 Can tourism solve the empty home crisis?
12:42 Why foreigners are buying Akiyas
14:15 Japanese opinion on foreigners buying up empty houses
15:00 Does the Government have a plan for Akiyas
16:44 Japan's aging population problem
17:35 'Akiyas tell the story of Japan'
Watch more episodes of The Global Story here 👉🏽
• The Global Story You can listen to more episodes of The Global Story here. Making sense of the news with our experts around the world. Insights you can trust, Monday to Friday, from the BBC 👉🏽 https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w13x...
----------------
This is the official BBC World Service YouTube channel.
If you like what we do, you can also find us here:
Instagram 👉🏽
/ bbcworldservice Twitter 👉🏽
/ bbcworldservice Facebook 👉🏽
/ bbcworldservice BBC World Service website 👉🏽 https://www.bbc.co.uk/worldserviceradio
Thanks for watching and subscribing!
#BBCWorldService #WorldService #Japan #Akiyas #Housing
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Francisco Gimeno - BC Analyst The problem of “akiyas” (abandoned homes) mainly in rural areas ofJapan has grown in a such way that s already presenting significant challenges. There are approximately 9 million empty homes, a result of several interconnected factors, like demographic shifts, as elders die, and young people go to towns and cities, leaving rural areas empty. Also some tradicional practices when Japanese believe that homes die when the people die, then add high inheritance tax and high renovation costs. SO rural areas are becoming ghost areas, which are considered even hazards, and the typical Japanese ambiance becomes kind of disturbing. What can be done? Government is trying to open to young foreign buyers trying to revitalise areas, and other initiatives, but this means a change, always slow, in the Japanese culture, not used to live with foreigners, and change or accommodate their culture with foreign ones. In short this trend is going to continue for a time yet, in a country who already suffers from one of the less birthrate in the world. A sign of the times.