A two-storey house in the southern suburbs of Yokohama has seen better days. The metal shutters on the windows downstairs are permanently drawn, the sliding paper window covers upstairs are torn, and the garden is overgrown. However, with a little effort and money, the property can be renovated into a completely livable home once again.
But no Japanese wants this house. It is marked as “Jiko Bukken”, which translates as “tainted property”, and has been vacant for at least five years.
Something bad happened here, possibly a suicide, a fire that took someone’s life, or an elderly person who died, what the Japanese call a “lonely death.” Murder is another obvious reason for closing a property.
Kazutoshi Kodama, president of specialist property Kachimod company, believes that “Jiko Bukkanen” is a financial ruin for the owners and, for them, a business opportunity. Founded in December 2022, CatchyMod “assists owners or properties with a history of incidents in managing their rental properties.”
Part of this service, he said, is a comprehensive “ghost check.” He said that far from being dismissed, the demand for service is increasing.
‘Japanese people consider death impure’
“Japanese people sometimes consider death impure,” Kodama told DW.
He said, “Death is equated with impurity and bad luck. As a result, they believe that coming in close contact with death will bring them bad luck.” “And that means many Japanese are hesitant to approach such properties, let alone rent or buy them.”
It has become increasingly difficult to rent or sell “Geico Bukken” due to the legal requirement on any estate agent to disclose the property’s history to any interested parties. A website has been set up It reveals the location of each stigmatized asset in the country and the reason for its blacklisting.
Most listings hint at accidental fire, lonely death or suicide, but some offer a more ominous note: “Get details from real estate agent.”
In a big city with high rental demand, the owner of a blighted property would have to cut the rent by 30%, Kodama said, while in other places it would be halved.
“And there are some properties which remain vacant for 500 days despite advertising for tenants,” he said. “I know of one property that remained vacant for over 1,000 days. In essence, they simply become vacant properties and the concept of price reduction does not apply.”
However, some tenants have calmed down after Catchmod “cleaned” the property by replacing carpets, fittings and wallpaper.
“My company does what we call ‘ghost investigations,'” he said.
“We stay in the rooms where the incidents occurred from 10 pm to 6 am the next morning, conducting video recording, audio recording, electromagnetic wave surveys, room temperature, humidity and atmospheric pressure, thermography and noise surveys.
He said, “The purpose is to verify that the rooms where people died have been completely renovated and are now clean, and to prove that poltergeist phenomena, the presence of ghosts and other mysterious phenomena do not occur.”
warding off ‘evil 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 the owner is provided with a comprehensive report, which a real estate agent can use to support claims that there are no “evil spirits.”
Kodama said his equipment has experienced several anomalies, including video cameras that have stopped recording and microphones that have malfunctioned.
“In most cases, what was perceived as ‘impurity’ could not be replicated and was dismissed as a one-time event,” he said. “However, there are also properties where various mysterious phenomena occur continuously over a long period of more than a year.”
Joey Stockerman is one of the founders of Akiamart, which promotes the sale of a growing number of vacant properties around Japan, especially in rural parts of the country that are experiencing rapid population decline.
“There are a lot of vacant properties throughout Japan and even surprisingly in city centers,” he told DW. “There are lots of reasons – families disagree on how to dispose of an asset or they don’t think it’s worth selling – but there are also a lot of stigmatized assets.”
According to a government survey at the end of 2024, there were 9 million vacant homes across Japan, accounting for 13.8% of all housing in the country. Although there are many reasons for the high number of vacant homes, superstition also contributes to the problem.
“Japanese people are often very superstitious,” Stockerman said. “It can be really difficult to rent places where someone has died, and they also don’t want properties that are close to cemeteries because there are strong feelings about death here.”
a challenging investment
One of Stockerman’s business acquisitions took a chance on buying a blighted property in a Tokyo suburb, he said, capitalizing on it as an investment opportunity for less than $5,000, or about 5% of its real value.
However, the investment did not go as well as he had anticipated, as the real estate agent refused to shed light on its history, meaning it remained vacant for two years before finding a tenant.
Aware of the sensibilities of property buyers in Japan, Akiyamart has recently introduced a package whereby a Shinto priest from a nearby temple will come to perform a service to “purify” the property of any evil spirits.
“It’s a little weird, but there’s interest,” Stockerman said.
In the real estate business for over 15 years, Kodama also believes that ridding homes of their unpleasant past will be a growth industry.
“Properties where we find mysterious incidents are generally ignored,” he said. “They are difficult to rent out or sell. But there are still ways to manage these properties, and we work with owners to do that.
“I think there is potential in this area,” he said. “Because there are people in need.”
Edited by: Srinivas Majumdaru