Ryua, a young entertainer known as an aidoru, lives in a 25 sq m bedsit in Setagaya, Tokyo. She pays 45,000 yen ($285; £213) a month, an almost 30% discount on the rent for the apartment.
She says the expected monthly rent would have been 62,000 yen. Before she moved in, Ryua was told that a man had killed himself there.
Ryua has remained in the apartment for four years. She says she experiences paranormal activity every day, including endless footsteps and a ghost talking.
Her home belongs to a category known in Japan as jiko bukken, meaning “stigmatised” or “incident” properties. The category has been shaped by government guidelines issued in 2021, which require estate agents to disclose suicides, murders, deaths by fire and deaths where a body was undiscovered for an extended period.
For rental homes, the disclosure obligation lasts for three years. For properties put up for sale, it continues indefinitely.
The discount can also draw buyers. Diane Tincher, a 79-year-old American who has lived in Japan for nearly 40 years and worked as a tour guide, bought a large three-bedroom house in rural Kagoshima. An elderly lady had died alone in the house, leaving the property stigmatised.
Tincher paid 20m yen for it, about half of what would otherwise have been the asking price. Similar properties in the area usually sell for up to 45m yen.
Information about such homes is also collected by Oshimaland, a website for jiko bukken listings. It began in Tokyo in 2005, expanded across Japan and then internationally in 2011. The site is crowdsourced, with members of the public adding properties and their details.
A 2025 survey found that more than half of Japanese people would rent a jiko bukken if it was cheap. The rules differ elsewhere: the UK has no legal requirement to disclose a death in a property, while California requires disclosure when someone died there in the past three years. Arizona and Oregon do not require it.
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