‘I live with a ghost’: Japan’s haunted homes attract bargain hunters
From the moment Ryua first walked into her rental apartment in Tokyo she believed it to be haunted.
"When I visited the place for a viewing there was a man standing there, glaring at me," she says.
"Since the estate agent couldn't see him, I realised he must be a ghost."
While someone more squeamish would probably have left the flat quickly and never returned, Ryua chose to move in.
"I'm a bit of a contrarian, so I decided I wanted to become friends with this glaring male ghost," adds Ryua, who works as an aidoru, a young entertainer, and who doesn't wish to share her surname.
Four years later, still in the same apartment, she says she continues to experience paranormal activity daily. She says she hears endless footsteps and the ghost talking.
Although Japan has increasingly marked Halloween in recent years, many Japanese people take ghosts seriously year-round. The country has a word, "yuurei", which means a lingering, troubled spirit.
These are the ghosts of people who died in violent or tragic circumstances - those who were murdered, killed themselves, or simply were lonely and died alone. If they died at home, then the belief is that their yuurei won't go away.
For house hunters who are not superstitious or squeamish, it means there are big bargains to be found. A whole category of dwellings is called jiko bukken, meaning "stigmatised" or "incident" properties.
Under guidelines issued by the government in 2021, Japanese estate agents must disclose suicide, murder, death by fire, and any death where the body was not discovered for an extended period of time.
For rental properties, this information must be disclosed for three years, and for any property offered for sale, it must be disclosed indefinitely.
By contrast, in the UK there is no legal requirement to reveal that a person died in a property. In the US, it varies by state. For example, in California you must disclose whether a person has died in the property in the past three years, while in Arizona and Oregon you do not.
Ryua was told that a man had killed himself in her apartment. That meant she got an almost 30% discount on rent for her tiny, 25 sq m bedsit in the fashionable ward of Setagaya. She says she pays 45,000 yen ($285; £213) a month instead of the 62,000 yen she should pay.
While a house where there had been a murder or suicide would probably be harder to sell or rent out anywhere in the world, Tokyo estate agent Erik Oskamp says that Japanese people are particularly superstitious and averse to stigmatised properties.
"[Even] an apartment next to a cemetery will be difficult to rent out, especially if you can see the tombs from the kitchen," explains Oskamp. "The worst thing is if a suicide has happened in the apartment. Even if somebody has jumped from the roof, many renters will move out. Other issues are a serious crime or a lonely death."
The latter issue, a person dying alone, would not generally affect a property's price in, say, the UK or the US.
But in rural Kagoshima, in Japan's southwest, it let Diane Tincher buy a large three-bedroom house for about half the asking price.
'If there is a ghost I'm thankful to her'
The 79-year-old American has lived in Japan for nearly 40 years and works as a tour guide. She says that the estate agent had been straight with her – there was a heavy discount as an elderly lady had died alone, thereby stigmatising the property.
Tincher paid 20m yen for the house, in a location where similar properties usually sell for up to 45m yen.
"I don't believe in ghosts. But I know that the Japanese are very superstitious," she says. "If there is a ghost I'm thankful to her every day... to live in such a splendid and affordable home."
While researching the house, Tincher found it on a website called Oshimaland, which lists jiko bukken properties and details what happened. Launched in 2005 and covering Tokyo, it expanded across Japan before going international in 2011.
It is crowdsourced, meaning that members of the public add the homes and their details.
Teru Oshima, the founder of Oshimaland, says that in the past such properties were "not very attractive options" in Japan.
Yet as house prices have surged in the country in recent years, as well as a big increase in the wider cost of living, a 2025 survey found that more than half of Japanese people would now rent a jiko bukken if it was cheap.
Back in Setagaya, Ryua says she is happy living with her ghostly flatmate. "I believe that ghosts were once living human beings, so they deserve our respect," she says.
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