The growing number of plots of land whose owner is unclear stunts the effective use of the nation's limited land area. The nation needs a viable system that encourages the use of such land for the benefit of the public.
The government will submit to the ongoing Diet session a bill that grants businesses with a high degree of public benefit the right to operate for 10 years on vacant land whose ownership is unclear. The government aims to have the bill come into force in summer 2019.
The new system envisages such land will be used by city, town and village governments and companies for parks, parking lots and farm produce stands, among other purposes. If the land owner comes forward and claims the land, it will be vacated and returned in its original condition after the 10 years are up.
Some estimates say Japan's total land whose owners are unknown or unclear has reached 4.1 million hectares -- an area larger than Kyushu. This land lying idle should be steadily put to productive use.
Prefectural governments will decide whether a proposed business can operate on an ownerless plot. It will be important to flexibly deal with such proposals and ensure they meet the region's needs, when governments confirm the degree of public benefit and other factors.
In principle, these projects likely will be limited to land with no buildings. This is where the system's practicality could be dented.
In cases involving unoccupied homes that have become eyesores, there is a framework through which local governments can exercise power to demolish and remove these homes even if it is unclear who legally owns it.
The government plans to set up shared application counters at prefectural governments for handling requests to use vacant land and to have unoccupied homes removed. Both systems need to be efficiently combined.
Consider mandatory registration
It also will be vital to devise policies that prevent cases of land with unclear ownership from increasing.
At the heart of this problem is the reality that many families of deceased landowners do not update the name of a property's owner in registries when they inherit land. As generations pass, the number of legal heirs to the land grows exponentially, which makes pinpointing the owner, or owners, even more difficult.
During reconstruction projects after the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, plans for relocating affected communities had to be changed in a string of cases because owners of land at candidate sites could not be identified.
Observers have pointed out that land owner registers are often not updated in cases such as when the distribution of an inheritance is unable to be sorted out, or when someone strongly wants to avoid the burden of paying the registration costs and property tax on the land.
There are efforts by local governments to urge people who notify them of changes to information such as their certificate of residence to also update their name as property owners on the land registry. This could be helpful for others.
The pros and cons of making registration of the owner of land mandatory also will become a point for discussion. Although challenges abound, such as determining how the burden of paying these registration costs will be borne, mandatory registration should be actively considered.
In a striking number of cases, people living in urban areas have abandoned land they inherited in rural parts of Japan. Establishing a mechanism that makes it easier to donate such land to local governments and other entities also will become an issue deserving discussion.
In tandem with this bill, the government intends to include a course of action for medium- and long-term policies covering land whose ownership is unclear in this summer's Basic Policy on Economic and Fiscal Management and Reform (also dubbed the "big-boned policy"). Dealing with this land will need to be considered from a wide range of perspectives.
(From The Yomiuri Shimbun, Feb. 27, 2018)
Read more from The Japan News at https://japannews.yomiuri.co.jp/
