For landlords who own rental property in Japan, it is common for a tenant to simply refuse to move out even after being asked to vacate. This is not a quirk of one difficult tenant — it reflects a distinctly Japanese legal structure. Japan's Act on Land and Building Leases (借地借家法, shakuchi shakuya hō) protects a tenant's right to continued residence and business use far more strongly than the landlord-tenant law most English-speaking investors are used to, so a landlord cannot simply give notice and expect possession back. Unless the landlord can establish what the law calls "legitimate grounds" (正当事由, seitō jiyū) for ending the lease, the negotiation goes nowhere. This article organizes, from the landlord's perspective, the legal countermeasures available when a tenant refuses to vacate: what counts as legitimate grounds, how a "moving-out payment" (立退料, tachinokiryō) is calculated, and the practical procedure from negotiation through to enforcement.
I have personally handled a great many possession cases tied to redevelopment or sale of a building. What I have learned from that experience is that outcomes are decided less by who is legally "right" and more by sequence and preparation. That is exactly why a landlord should never open with an emotional demand to leave — the negotiation has to be designed around a clear understanding of the legal framework first. For an overseas investor, this framework itself is worth studying closely, because it differs fundamentally from the eviction processes common in the United States, the United Kingdom, or Australia, where landlords generally regain possession once a fixed lease term or notice period simply expires.
Why Eviction Negotiations in Japan Are Structurally Difficult
The conclusion up front: unless legitimate grounds exist, a landlord in Japan cannot unilaterally demand that a tenant leave. Under the Act on Land and Building Leases, tenant rights are so strongly protected that it is the landlord — not the tenant — who bears the burden of asserting and proving the facts that establish "legitimate grounds" for refusing renewal or terminating the lease. In practice, this means that the moment a tenant answers "I'm not leaving," the tenant is, legally speaking, already in the stronger position. Contrast this with a typical US residential lease, where a landlord who simply declines to renew at the end of a fixed term generally does not need to prove any "reason" at all — the tenant's occupancy right ends on its own. In Japan, the opposite default applies: the lease is presumed to continue unless the landlord affirmatively proves grounds to end it.
This asymmetry has its roots in Japan's postwar housing shortage, when protecting residential stability was treated as a social necessity. Today, however, the same rule can make it very difficult to redevelop an aging building, and it is a factor that shapes an owner's entire holding strategy. For a foreign investor evaluating a Japanese income property, the single most effective risk mitigation is to price in the difficulty of regaining possession before acquisition, not after — a diligence step that has no real equivalent in markets where eviction after lease expiry is close to automatic.
Notice Deadlines and Lease Types Under the Act on Land and Building Leases
Under a standard lease (普通借家契約, futsū shakuya keiyaku), Article 26, Paragraph 1 of the Act on Land and Building Leases requires a landlord who wishes to decline renewal to give notice between one year and six months before the lease term expires. If this notice window is missed, the lease is deemed renewed on the same terms as before. There is an important catch, however, spelled out in the same paragraph's proviso: once renewed this way, the lease term itself becomes undefined — it no longer has a fixed end date. Paragraph 2 of the same article adds a further trap: even if the landlord gave notice on time, if the tenant continues using the property after the term expires and the landlord fails to object without delay, the lease is again treated as statutorily renewed.
Article 28 goes on to state explicitly that declining renewal or giving notice of termination requires legitimate grounds. The article directs a court (or the parties in negotiation) to weigh, together: the circumstances under which both landlord and tenant need to use the building, the history of the lease relationship to date, the condition and current use of the building, and — critically — any offer of a financial payment made as a condition of, or in exchange for, vacating (that is, a tachinokiryō, moving-out payment).
For a lease with no fixed term, a landlord seeking to terminate must, under Article 27, Paragraph 1, generally allow six months to pass from the date notice is given. Legitimate grounds under Article 28 are still separately required in this case as well. In every scenario, notice should never be given verbally — it should be in writing, sent in a form that proves delivery. In practice, Japanese landlords typically use certified content-proof mail (内容証明郵便, naiyō shōmei yūbin), a Japan Post service that certifies both the exact wording of the document sent and the date it was delivered — roughly analogous to a US certified letter with return receipt, but with the added feature that the post office itself certifies the content.
Standard Leases vs. Fixed-Term Leases
For a property where future redevelopment or sale is already anticipated, Japanese law offers an alternative: the fixed-term lease (定期借家契約, teiki shakuya keiyaku, under Article 38 of the Act on Land and Building Leases). A fixed-term lease ends automatically when its term expires, with no renewal, so the landlord does not need to prove legitimate grounds at all — the closest structure in Japanese law to a standard US or UK fixed-term tenancy that simply lapses. But the formal requirements are strict: the contract itself must be in a notarized instrument or another form of writing (or electromagnetic record), and — separately — before signing, the landlord must hand the tenant a distinct document (which may also be electromagnetic) explicitly stating that "the lease will not be renewed and will terminate upon expiration of its term." Japan's Supreme Court has held that this pre-contract explanatory document must be physically separate from the lease agreement itself, not a clause buried inside it (Supreme Court judgment, September 13, 2012 [Heisei 24]). If this procedure has a defect, the no-renewal clause becomes void and the lease is treated as an ordinary standard lease instead — an expensive mistake for an owner who was counting on a clean exit. One more deadline to note: for a fixed-term lease of one year or longer, the landlord must send a notice of termination between one year and six months before expiration, or the termination cannot be asserted against the tenant.
| Item | Standard Lease (Futsū Shakuya) | Fixed-Term Lease (Teiki Shakuya) |
|---|---|---|
| Renewal | Renewed as a rule | Not renewed; ends at term expiration (notice of termination required for terms of one year or longer) |
| Legitimate grounds | Required to decline renewal | Not required |
| Moving-out payment (tachinokiryō) | Generally expected in practice | Generally unnecessary |
| Rent level | Tends to track the market rate | Tends to run somewhat below market |
| Procedural strictness | Standard | Strict, since a separate pre-contract explanatory document is required in addition to the written lease |
We tell owners honestly that a fixed-term lease is somewhat harder to lease up, since prospective tenants know in advance that the tenancy has a hard end date. The real question an investor should ask is whether preserving a clean, certain exit is worth accepting that likely rent discount — a trade-off with no direct parallel in markets where every lease already behaves like a fixed-term lease by default.
The Four Main Categories of Legitimate Grounds
Whether legitimate grounds exist is decided by weighing all the factors listed in Article 28 together, comprehensively. It is rare for a single circumstance to be decisive; in practice, a case is built from the accumulation of several factors at once. The four scenarios below are the ones that come up most often in practice — though note that rent arrears, discussed second, is not technically a "legitimate grounds" issue under Article 28 at all. It is legally categorized instead as a contract termination for breach of obligation, a distinction that matters for how the case is argued.
Building Deterioration and Insufficient Earthquake Resistance
The age of a building alone is never enough to establish legitimate grounds. A court must find an objectively recognized risk of collapse or a serious accident, such that rebuilding is genuinely necessary to secure safety. A building that is 20 to 30 years old but can still be kept in service through ordinary repairs is, in practice, unlikely to qualify — a much higher bar than the general expectation among many overseas investors that an aging building is, by itself, sufficient reason to redevelop.
To build a persuasive case, it helps to assemble a seismic diagnosis report, a deterioration survey conducted by a licensed architect, and a cost comparison between routine repair and full reconstruction. A building constructed under Japan's older, pre-1981 seismic standard (旧耐震基準, kyū-taishin kijun) is a strong piece of supporting evidence, but even that does not guarantee the grounds will be accepted automatically.
Long-Term Non-Payment of Rent or Renewal Fees
Rent arrears are handled differently: not through the Article 28 legitimate-grounds framework, but through Article 541 of the Civil Code (民法, Minpō), governing termination-after-demand, combined with a judge-made doctrine known as the "breakdown of the relationship of trust" (信頼関係破壊の法理, shinrai kankei hakai no hōri). This means a single late payment does not by itself let a landlord terminate the contract. The real test is whether the relationship of trust between the parties can be said to have broken down, and in practice, arrears of roughly three months' rent or more is treated as one rough benchmark. This is not a fixed rule, though — the outcome still depends on how the arrears arose and how the tenant responded. Records of the paper trail matter enormously: the formal demand letter, a log of payment reminders, and the history of any negotiation over installment repayment. This is a considerably higher bar for eviction than in many US states, where a landlord can typically file for eviction after a single missed month's rent following a short statutory cure period.
What matters most, in fact, is how the landlord responds in the earliest stage of an arrears situation. Not letting contact lapse, and building a documented record of good-faith, repeated demands for payment, carries real weight later if the matter proceeds to a legal process.
Need to Sell or Business Necessity
A sale prompted by deteriorating cash flow, or a disposal needed to repay debt, can be weighed as a relevant circumstance. However, if the property can be sold with the tenant still in place, or if vacancy would have only a marginal effect on the sale price, this ground becomes hard to establish. Because there is an active market for income-producing property sold with sitting tenants — much like the US or UK market for tenant-occupied investment property — courts scrutinize the claim that "it can't be sold unless it's vacant" closely rather than accepting it at face value.
The Landlord's or a Family Member's Own Need to Use the Property
This factor weighs the landlord's own need — or a family member's need — to occupy or operate a business on the property, against the tenant's need to continue occupying it. Where the tenant faces circumstances that make relocation especially hard — advanced age, or a shop whose business depends heavily on its specific location — the landlord is held to a correspondingly higher bar for demonstrating necessity.
How a Moving-Out Payment (Tachinokiryō) Supplements Legitimate Grounds
Article 28 of the Act on Land and Building Leases provides that an offer of a financial payment, made as a condition of or in exchange for vacating, is itself one of the factors weighed in deciding whether legitimate grounds exist. This means that even when the other circumstances alone would produce weak grounds, offering a tachinokiryō can fill the gap, tipping the overall balance toward a finding of legitimate grounds. This is a structural feature with no direct equivalent in most Western jurisdictions, where a landlord's cash offer to a tenant — sometimes informally called "cash for keys" in the US — is a purely voluntary negotiating tactic rather than a factor a statute explicitly instructs a court to weigh. That said, paying a tachinokiryō is not a guaranteed ticket to possession by itself. There is no statutory formula for the amount; it is ultimately fixed either by agreement with the tenant or, in litigation, by the court's judgment. Having the calculation basis organized in advance makes a substantial difference to how persuasive the negotiation is.
- Actual moving costs and the expense of finding a new home
- Compensation for the rent gap between the current unit and the replacement unit (for a set number of months)
- Initial costs of re-contracting elsewhere, such as shikikin (敷金, a refundable security deposit), reikin (礼金, a non-refundable "key money" payment customarily given to the new landlord — unlike a Western security deposit, this is never returned), and the agent's brokerage fee
- Business compensation, fit-out costs, and lost customer base (for commercial tenants)
- An adjustment amount reflecting the tenant's emotional and practical burden
Residential and Commercial Tenants Sit at Very Different Levels
For residential tenants, a figure equal to several months' to about one year's rent is commonly cited as a rough guide, and in absolute terms most cases land somewhere between several hundred thousand yen and several million yen (roughly JPY 300,000–900,000, approx. USD 1,900–5,800, on the low end, up to roughly JPY 2,000,000–5,000,000, approx. USD 12,900–32,300, on the high end, at 155 JPY/USD). Commercial tenants — shops and offices — run considerably higher, because the calculation must also recover the tenant's fit-out investment, cover lost business income during the closure, and compensate for the lost customer base. It is not unusual for a location-dependent business such as a restaurant to command a payment several times the residential figure.
These are only general tendencies, however. The final figure moves considerably depending on the area, the building's age, the remaining term of the lease, and the tenant's individual circumstances. Rather than taking any quoted "market rate" at face value, it is essential to build the number up item by item, case by case.
The Practical Procedure When a Tenant Refuses to Vacate
Stage 1: Continue Good-Faith Voluntary Negotiation
Being refused is not a reason to end the negotiation. The landlord should keep the dialogue going, remaining sensitive to the tenant's living or business circumstances, and lay out — with supporting documentation — exactly why the property needs to be vacated. Offering concrete, practical help, such as introducing suitable replacement housing or arranging support with a moving company, meaningfully raises the odds of reaching an agreement.
In the negotiation itself, it helps to avoid unilaterally imposing a deadline and instead present the tenant with several options. Counterintuitively, a process that leaves the other side feeling they have real room to consider tends to reach a landing point faster, not slower.
Stage 2: Delegate the Negotiation to an Attorney
In situations where direct, party-to-party negotiation risks becoming too emotional, delegating to an attorney is effective. One point worth flagging for overseas owners: Article 72 of the Attorney Act (弁護士法, Bengoshi-hō) reserves the handling of legal affairs such as eviction negotiations, undertaken for a fee as a business, exclusively to licensed attorneys or law firms. A property management company cannot act as the tenant's or landlord's negotiating agent; its staff may only serve as a point of contact for communication and administrative coordination, not as a negotiator standing in for a lawyer.
Stage 3: Proceeding to Mediation or a Possession Lawsuit
If voluntary negotiation reaches a dead end, the matter moves to civil mediation (民事調停, minji chōtei) or a lawsuit for surrender of the building (建物明渡請求訴訟, tatemono akewatashi seikyū soshō). In litigation, the existence of legitimate grounds is examined head-on, and the court may order the tenant to vacate conditioned on payment of a tachinokiryō. If the tenant still does not move out even after the landlord has obtained an enforceable title — a judgment, a court-recorded settlement, or a mediation record — the landlord obtains a writ of execution and proceeds to compulsory execution (強制執行, kyōsei shikkō), the formal, court-supervised physical removal process.
Conduct to Avoid: The Prohibition on Self-Help
As a matter of principle, Japanese law does not permit "self-help" (自力救済, jiriki kyūsai) — a landlord taking matters into their own hands to force a tenant out, rather than going through the court system. The actions below are treated as unlawful and can expose the landlord to a damages claim or even criminal liability. If an owner engages in even one of these, it instantly undermines any legitimate-grounds argument they had carefully built up.
- Changing the locks, or locking the door to physically bar the tenant's entry
- Cutting off the electricity, gas, or water supply
- Removing or disposing of the tenant's belongings from inside the unit without their consent
- Making repeated visits late at night or early in the morning to pressure the tenant to leave
- Applying psychological pressure through intimidating words or conduct
Working through the process step by step, keeping a documented record at every stage, may look like the slow route, but it is the reliable one. Notice letters, records of meetings, and a history of the terms offered all become direct evidence later, whether the matter reaches mediation or trial.
Approximate Costs and Timeline
The cost and time required to regain possession vary widely depending on how contested the case is. The figures below are general guidance only; actual results will vary by region and case complexity. For a specific figure, always obtain an individual estimate.
| Stage | Approximate duration | Main costs |
|---|---|---|
| Preparation and gathering documentation | 1–3 months | Seismic diagnosis and building survey fees |
| Voluntary negotiation | 3–12 months | Tachinokiryō, attorney's retainer (typically on the order of JPY 300,000–900,000, approx. USD 1,900–5,800) |
| Civil mediation | 3–6 months | Filing fee, attorney's fees |
| Litigation | 6–18 months | Court costs, attorney's fees |
| Compulsory execution | 1–3 months | Execution costs, costs of storing or disposing of belongings |
For a building with many units, it is not unusual for full vacant possession of every unit to take two to three years to complete. Financing plans and construction schedules should be built around this longer horizon from the start — an assumption that will feel unfamiliar to investors used to markets where a redevelopment timeline can be set with much more certainty. Every plan that underestimates this timeline ends up forcing the owner into unfavorable concessions at the negotiating table.
The INA&Associates Perspective, and a Summary
At INA&Associates, we do not treat a possession case as an exercise in legally forcing a tenant out. We treat it as a process of coordination that lets everyone involved move forward with a sense that the outcome was fair. For a tenant, their home or shop is their life itself, and a negotiation that treats that weight lightly only ends up costing more time and money for everyone, including the owner.
What we prioritize is designing for the long view from the start. Concretely, that means: choosing the right lease type with the eventual exit already in mind, at the moment of acquisition; documenting early signs of building deterioration from day one rather than waiting; and fixing a tachinokiryō budget before negotiation even begins. Settling these three points in advance, on their own, tends to shorten the negotiation considerably. In my view, what supports good judgment here is not statutory knowledge alone, but the accumulated field experience of the people — jinzai (人財), a term we use deliberately in place of the more common word for "personnel" to signal that we see our staff as human assets and talent, not interchangeable resources — who actually carry out the negotiation on the ground.
It is also our basic stance to tell an owner honestly when the outlook is unfavorable to them. We will never promise that "the tenant will be out quickly" for a case where the legitimate grounds are weak. Instead, we share the likely cost and timeline candidly, and we ask the owner to consider every option, including the possibility of postponing redevelopment altogether. We also publish ongoing coverage of related market conditions and management thinking in the INA Network category.
A tenant's refusal to vacate is, in a sense, an unavoidable phase for any owner in Japan. But once you understand the framework of the Act on Land and Building Leases, assemble the materials supporting legitimate grounds, organize the basis for a tachinokiryō, and work alongside qualified professionals, a landing point does come into view. Following the correct sequence patiently, without rushing, looks like the long way round but is in fact the shortest path. For any specific case, always consult a qualified attorney or other professional.
Frequently Asked Questions
If a tenant is asked to leave without legitimate grounds, can they refuse?
Yes. A refusal to renew, or a notice of termination, that lacks legitimate grounds has no legal effect, and the tenant is under no obligation to vacate. For the landlord to actually obtain possession, they must go through a legal process such as mediation or a lawsuit for surrender of the building. As a practical matter, an owner should assemble the documentation supporting legitimate grounds before ever communicating the request to leave, not after.
How is the amount of the moving-out payment (tachinokiryō) decided?
There is no statutory formula. The amount is built up from items such as moving costs, the rent gap versus a replacement unit, the initial costs of a new lease, and business compensation, and is then settled through negotiation between the parties. If the matter goes to litigation, the court may set out the amount it considers appropriate to supplement the legitimate grounds. Because the level differs dramatically between residential and commercial tenants, we recommend organizing the calculation basis together with an attorney or real estate professional before presenting a figure.
Are there fixed rules on the timing of an eviction notice?
Yes. To decline renewal of a standard lease, Article 26, Paragraph 1 of the Act on Land and Building Leases requires notice to be given between one year and six months before the term expires. Missing this window means the lease is deemed renewed on its previous terms — and, further, that the renewed term becomes undefined, with no fixed end date. The safest way to give notice is a method that proves delivery, such as certified content-proof mail with a certificate of delivery. Separately, to terminate a lease with no fixed term, Article 27, Paragraph 1 of the same Act requires six months to pass from the date notice of termination is given.
Can a property management company handle the eviction negotiation?
No, not as the negotiating agent. Article 72 of the Attorney Act reserves the handling of legal affairs undertaken for a fee, as a business, to licensed attorneys and law firms, so a management company cannot act as the negotiating representative. The appropriate structure is for the management company to provide practical support — serving as the point of contact, organizing documentation, and helping identify replacement housing — while the negotiation itself is handled by an attorney.
