The morning after a typhoon, the damage is not where you are looking
You walk around the house. No broken tiles, windows intact, nothing down in the garden. From that you conclude there is no damage. It is the conclusion that costs the most, because Japan compensates for storm damage and the right to claim it does not last.
In short
- Most typhoon damage surfaces over days or weeks, not on the morning after. Inspect twice: immediately, and again a month later.
- Japanese fire insurance commonly includes wind damage, and the right to claim is extinguished after three years. Nothing is paid unless you file.
- Photographs taken before the storm are what separate storm damage from deterioration. Without them the distinction cannot be made afterwards.
Typhoons have a season
Typhoons approach and make landfall in Japan broadly from summer into autumn, roughly July to October, with the concentration in August and September. For about a third of the year, one is possible at any time.
The damage arrives in several forms. Wind strips roofing, breaks gutters and topples fences, carports and garden trees. Heavy rain starts or worsens leaks, floods beneath the floor, overwhelms drainage and puts pressure on retaining walls and slopes. On the coast, salt-laden water accelerates corrosion of anything metal. And debris travels: things blown from other properties, and things blown off yours.
That last point becomes the second half of this article.
What twenty-four hours of warning buys you
A typhoon's track is forecast days in advance. Whether anybody can act inside that window changes the outcome.
| Item | What to do |
|---|---|
| Loose items outside | Store or secure them. Pots, drying poles, bicycles, bins, step ladders, leftover building materials. Items abandoned at a vacant house are the most dangerous of all |
| Gutters and drains | Clear leaves and debris. A blocked gutter sends water straight down the wall and can break under the weight |
| Garden trees | Remove dead branches, cut back growth. A falling tree reaches a neighbour's house or car |
| Storm shutters | Close them. Check they still move on a calm day, not on the day of the storm |
| Records | Photograph the condition before the storm. This is what decides the insurance claim |
The last row deserves expanding, because it is the one people skip.
After the event, nobody can distinguish a roof damaged by the typhoon from a roof that had been failing for ten years. Insurance responds to damage caused by a natural event, not to deterioration. Whether a record exists showing how the building looked the week before is frequently what decides whether a claim succeeds. That is a further reason for keeping photographs on a schedule rather than only when something has gone wrong.
Afterwards, and then again a month later
| Place | What to look for |
|---|---|
| Roof | Slipped or cracked tiles, lifted flashing, a distorted ridge. One slipped tile admits water indefinitely |
| The ground | Fragments of roofing, flashing, mortar. What is lying on the ground is evidence that something left the roof |
| Gutters and eaves | Detachment, sagging, dropped soffit boards. A missing soffit is an entry point for animals |
| Exterior walls | New cracks, lifting render, and whether existing cracks have widened |
| Ceilings and walls inside | Staining, discoloration, lifting wallpaper. This appears last |
| Underfloor | Traces of flooding, trapped moisture. Left alone this leads to decay and termites |
| Boundary | Leaning walls and fences, fallen trees, anything now crossing the line. Includes checking you have not damaged a neighbour |
| Retaining wall or slope | Bulging, cracking, unusual discharge from the weep holes, washed-out soil |
One inspection is not enough. Water entering at the roof is absorbed by insulation, travels along the substrate and takes time to reach the interior surface. A house that looked untouched on the morning after can show a ceiling stain three weeks later. That is ordinary, not unusual, and it is covered in by the time it shows on the ceiling, the wood has been wet for a while.
Look twice. Once when the storm has passed, and once a month later.
Fire insurance covers wind damage
Despite the name, Japanese fire insurance is not confined to fire. Cover for wind damage is commonly included, often bundled with hail and snow. Scattered roofing, a broken gutter, a toppled carport can fall within it.
Four things about that cover matter more than the cover itself.
The right to claim lasts three years. Under Japanese insurance legislation the right is extinguished by prescription after three years. Noticing too late is a real way for a valid claim to disappear.
Deterioration is not covered. The policy answers for damage from an event, not for age. The more time passes, the harder it becomes to demonstrate which one you are looking at.
There is usually an excess. Policies set an amount borne by the policyholder, and damage below it cannot be claimed.
Nothing is paid unless you claim. The insurer does not find your damage and write to you.
Line those four up against owning from abroad. Nobody notices the damage, nobody photographs it, and three years pass quietly.
A warning about the contractors who arrive afterwards
After a storm, people come to the door offering to repair the property at no cost by using the fire insurance. Trouble arising from this kind of approach is well documented in Japan and the insurance industry has issued warnings about it. Owners have been charged high fees, drawn into claims that were not accurate, or held to cancellation penalties.
An owner who is not in Japan has no idea such callers are in the neighbourhood. Your contact on a claim is the insurer or your agent, never the person who arrived at the door.
For a vacant house, check the policy itself
A building nobody lives in may not be underwritten as an ordinary home. The classification can change, the premium can rise, and cover can become harder to obtain. Inherited property with the previous owner's insurance left untouched is common.
At minimum, establish four things.
- Is the policy still in force, or did a renewal lapse?
- Has the insurer been told the building is unoccupied?
- Is wind damage within the cover, and what is the excess?
- Who holds the policy document, and where do the Japanese notices arrive?
How the classification works, and why it decides what you can attach to a policy, is set out in insuring a house in Japan that nobody lives in.
When you are not the one damaged
This is the part overseas owners do not anticipate.
Your roofing lands on a neighbour's car. Your block wall comes down on a passer-by. A dead tree in your garden breaks the roof next door. In each case the person answerable is you.
Japanese law deals with harm caused by a defect in the construction or maintenance of a structure on land, and the owner's position is not framed in a way that lets having been careful excuse it. Being overseas and not knowing is not an argument that works. Depending on the scale, and particularly where somebody is injured, the amount can exceed what the property cost several times over. How that liability is structured is worth reading before a storm season rather than after one.
There is one way to reduce it, and it is not insurance. It is not leaving dangerous conditions in place. A leaning wall, a dead tree, lifted roofing. Whether anybody is there to see those and act before the storm arrives is what determines the size of the legal exposure.
What this article does not decide
Cover, excesses and claim procedures differ between policies and insurers. Whether a particular loss is covered is a question for your insurer or agent, not for this article.
Whether legal liability arises in a given case is judged on its own facts. This is general information. En Beau lo does not sell or solicit insurance, does not carry out construction, and introduces qualified professionals where they are needed.
If you are still deciding on a property
How a house stands up to a typhoon varies enormously: the shape and material of the roof, the condition of the exterior, whether there is a retaining wall, the surrounding terrain, and any history of flooding at that location.
None of that is in a listing photograph. Some of it is on the public record and can be checked from anywhere, and the rest has to be seen on site. Which is which is set out in what you must verify yourself before buying.
Once before it arrives, once after it passes
Alongside the monthly visit, we attend after major weather events. We record with photographs whether anything was damaged, assemble what an insurance claim requires, and arrange repair contractors where work is needed.
Talk to us about property careSources and notes
The three-year prescription on the right to claim an insurance benefit arises under Japanese insurance legislation. Wind damage cover, excesses and claim procedures are set by individual policies and differ between insurers. Warnings about solicitation for repairs funded by insurance claims have been issued by the non-life insurance industry and by consumer authorities. Liability for harm caused by defects in structures on land arises under the Civil Code. Typhoon seasonality follows published meteorological records.