General Study on the Social Transition and the Reestablishment of the Housing System in Japan

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1. This interdisciplinary study about the Japanese housing system has investigated the change of the Japanese housing system in and after 1990s in Japan relating to the transition of the social and economic system as whole and proposed the possible direction of the reestablishment of a new housing system.2. Housing systems not only provide housing, but are also deeply embedded in a wider economy and social structure. The Japanese system for housing in the post-war period has been focused on constructing a 'social mainstream'. The core of society has consisted of middle-class families who live in privately owned housing. However, conditions surrounding housing are unsettled. The housing system has been restructured after the 1990s due to an increasingly uncertain economy, drastic change of the demographic conditions, social fragmentation and a new series of deregulation-oriented public policies. In this situation, the housing condition of Japanese people has become very unstable during the decade. The rapid increase in homeless people is one example which reflects this change.3. To respond to this change of socio-economic condition and to secure the housing for Japanese people, it is not realistic and also not desirable to reproduce the housing system focusing on the traditional social mainstream (the middle-class families who live in privately owned housing). The future housing policy should be constructed in the line which secures the multiple life styles and the choice of wide variety of housing tenure to each Japanese people.