The other day, when I was having a meal with a friend, a foreigner buying up land in Japan became a hot topic. In particular, Chinese people are buying up land here and there from Hokkaido to Okinawa. My friend was a little worried about the future of Japan, which allowed such behavior to go unchecked. Perhaps many Japanese feel the same anxiety.
Japan is a free country, and while it is theoretically possible to buy and sell anything, selling land by the piece, in other words, the country’s land, has the aspect of hurting public sentiment. Even if the land is not my land, I have a sense of being cut off as a Japanese.
Discussions with friends and acquaintances came to the conclusion that the government should respond properly from a security perspective.
It is unreasonable for the private sector alone to solve the national land problem, so it is appropriate for the government to deal with it.
Landowners often say things like this. “We cannot easily sell the land that we have inherited for generations.” Government officials who took this seriously believed that the Japanese would not sell their land so easily. However, for some reason, they sell a lot to Chinese people. This is because Chinese people buy land for 1 billion yen, even though the domestic valuation is at most 10 million yen.
It seems that the landowners simply insisted that they would not sell their ancestral land at a low price, and would sell it to anyone if the price was high. Thus, cheap Japanese land is sold. And the people can’t do anything, only increasing anxiety.
Without a big national vision and no prospects for the future, individuals and organizations have no choice but to run for short-term profits. Especially in times of turmoil like the current one, the urge to keep money on hand is strong. Based on these individual and organizational psychology, we should consider how land transactions. (Kei Kitajima)