$18 Million an Acre

Imperial Japan's ancient ideal was one family under one roof. Today's typical Japanese family still lives that way--but often the roof covers only a single room. More than three-fourths of Tokyo's private rental units are one-room warrens, and both the financial and the human costs are fearful. Almost once a week a Tokyo infant smothers to death in an overcrowded communal bed. A taxi driver recently nabbed by police for making love to his wife in the public plaza of the Imperial Palace was given a sympathetic release when he pleaded that he simply could not perform his husbandly duties at home--home being a 9-ft. by 9-ft. room inhabited by a family of six.

Despite Japan's industrial prosperity, and partly because of it, the housing shortage is the No. 1 problem new Premier Eisaku Sato faces, and he has made "a home for every family" by 1970 his government's rallying cry. His first budget, approved by the Cabinet last week, earmarks $727 million for new construction--enough for 337,000 new dwelling units, and a modest start toward his goal of 3,000,000 over the next seven years.

On the Ginza. Though smaller than California in area, Japan, with 97 million inhabitants, is five times as populous. Moreover it is caught up in a vast migration from rural areas to cities, especially to the 350-mile-long megalopolis stretching from Tokyo to Osaka. The result is a spiraling real estate inflation that has lifted Japan's urban-land price index 670% since 1955, has made land in Japan the most expensive in the world. Frontage on the gilded Ginza shopping thoroughfare in central Tokyo sells for as much as $18 million per acre v. top prices of about $9,000,000 in choicest Manhattan, $6,500,000 in San Francisco, $4,000,000 on the French Riviera. Even in exurbia, 1 1/2 hours away from downtown Tokyo, the going rate is $38,000 an acre. A three-bedroom suburban home that would rent for $250 a month in the U.S. can easily command $500 to $2,000 a month outside Tokyo.

Apartment Lottery. Even at such prices space is hard to find. For the past year 19 U.S. families, moved to Tokyo by the Caterpillar Tractor Co., have been living in hotels, unable to find other accommodations. The company is now buying new apartments for them ranging from $60,000 to $90,000 apiece. Though government housing is rented cheap (about $10 per month), access to it is a matter of luck, since the government auctions the precious apartments off by lottery as fast as they are built. Seekers of office space fare little better, typically have to put up so much key money to obtain access to new buildings that they end up in effect financing the owner's construction costs.

One obvious solution to the housing shortage would seem to be high-rise apartments. But this is unpopular in earthquake-scarred Japan, and the average height of Tokyo buildings remains 1.7 stories. Premier Sato hopes eventually to ease the claustrophobic crush by building new cities, filling in land around old ones. As a start, his agents are out combing the countryside for farmers willing to sell out for new housing, but the bargaining is tough. "In the final hours of negotiations," admits one agent, "we almost always end up hoisting the Rising Sun and appealing to the farmer to sell his land for the good of the country." He will sell for that--plus $38,000 an acre.

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