For Japanese, Tight Squeeze Is Way of Life

TOKYO —  Mizuho Nagayama, owner of a small computer software company, is in the market for a bargain. Her quarry: a house and plot of Tokyo land for around half a million dollars.

It might sound like a bundle to outsiders, but for Nagayama and other Japanese chasing a slice of suburbia and the dream of owning a home, the market is looking better all the time.

“Interest rates are cheap, so I thought we ought to buy,” she said while shopping for a house for herself and her aging parents at a model home showing in central Tokyo.

Nagayama’s search--and the fortune she assumes she’ll need to spend--illustrate both the slow improvements in Japan’s notoriously cramped lifestyle and the hurdles still facing aspiring homeowners.

Things are getting better. Interest rates are at record lows--ranging from 3% for loans from a government-subsidized housing corporation to 4.8% offered by a private construction-banking company.

Land prices have tumbled 16% in urban areas--and 55% in Japan’s six biggest cities--since a speculative bubble burst in the early 1990s after driving real estate to giddy heights.

Housing costs also are coming down, thanks in part to an influx of less expensive foreign materials. The government says Japan’s tight-fit homes are getting roomier all the time.

The changes signal Japan’s slow march from a crowded nation of people living in homes derided as “rabbit hutches” to a living standard more on par with its status as the world’s second-largest economy.

But the country has far to go before its people enjoy the airy homes and expansive green lawns of their dreams.

“The housing situation in Japan is still behind,” the Construction Ministry said in a 1997 report, adding that floor space per person is nearly 30% less than in developed countries in the West.

In many ways, Japan is defined by its lack of space.

Tight corners are a fact of life. Toy-like trucks are built narrow to negotiate urban alleys. City dwellers can reach out their kitchen windows and touch passing cars. An American-style shopping cart would never fit down the aisle at a Tokyo supermarket.

Nowhere is Japan’s “tight squeeze” lifestyle on display more than inside the home. People roll up their mattresses and convert bedrooms to living rooms. Stairways are built at precarious angles. Wardrobes and dressers stretch to the ceiling to make the most of space.

Japan’s age-old housing crunch, however, is coming under increasing criticism these days as more and more urbanites demand a few more inches of elbow room for their yen.

A prime target has been government regulations blamed for hindering more efficient real estate development. Agriculture laws, for example, keep some urban plots as rice fields instead of land for housing.

Other regulations make it unprofitable to knock down aging apartment buildings and put up modern high-rises, encourage the construction of tiny condominiums and limit building size, critics say.

“It’s very difficult to carry out urban renewal,” said Michael Smitka, an economist at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Va. “Tokyo is twice the size of New York City, twice the population. Why should it be less comfortable to live there?”

The government is working on reforms to free up the real estate market and meet a burgeoning demand for housing, fueled in part by an increase in middle-age couples looking for larger homes to care for their elderly parents. The Construction Ministry estimates 7.3 million housing units need to be built by 2000.

Progress has been made. Floor space in new houses, rented homes and condominiums is at record high--865 square feet, compared to an average of 721 square feet for all housing in 1987. Less than 8% of housing is considered substandard.

But nature may limit just how big Japanese homes can get.

One problem is inhospitable terrain. Two-thirds of the Japanese archipelago is a string of mountains, prone to eruptions, landslides and earthquakes--hardly the place to build a home. Most people are packed onto flat coastal areas like Tokyo.

Then there’s population. Japan’s 125 million people are crammed into a country smaller than California. There are 860 people per square mile, compared to 73 a square mile in the United States.

In many ways, it’s hard to imagine a Japan of spacious homes, so much has limited living area sculpted daily life--and helped mold Japan’s self-image as a nation of scrappy underdogs.

High land prices translate into hours-long commutes for office workers. The home is too small for entertaining, so coffee shops, restaurants and bars proliferate. Instead of bulky furniture, Japanese buy spiffy cars and load them with TVs and electronic navigators.

Quirks in the law have also determined the look of urban Japan, in some ways for the better. Modern high-rises tower over clusters of tiny, 30-year-old wooden homes; crumbling, postwar apartment houses squat on prime real estate. But the mix prevents the formation of whole blocks of low-income housing that turn to slums in other countries.

Space management has also become something of a hobby--or an obsession. Hiromi Honda, a former homemaker from Yokohama, has built a thriving business out of counseling Japanese through magazine articles and advice sessions on how to get the most from their crowded surroundings.

“Many people don’t know how to maximize the little spaces in their home,” said Honda, who has a map of the contents of her refrigerator on its door. When she runs out of an item, she moves the magnetic label to the shopping list.

Despite the slowly changing landscape, for the short-term at least, the Japanese will still do what they have done for years: shell out big bucks for the luxury of squeezing into small places.

Nagayama, for example, figures she will have to double her commute to work in the city to an hour to find an affordable place for her house, which she hopes to buy sometime in the next two years.

“In places farther from the city, the land is cheaper, so you can do it,” she said. “If the land is expensive, there’s just no way.”