What actually happens

Japanese brokerage legislation requires a broker handling a sale or lease to explain specified matters to the buyer before the contract is concluded. The explanation is called the important matters explanation (jūyō jikō setsumei, 重要事項説明), and it has three fixed conditions.

• It is given by a registered transaction specialist (takken-shi, 宅地建物取引士), who presents their licence card
• A written statement is delivered to you
• All of it happens before you sign anything

Take it seriously as a piece of consumer protection. A qualified person, personally accountable, compiles a document setting out what is wrong with the property and what you are not allowed to do with it, hands it to you, and reads it to you. Many countries have nothing comparable.

What is in it

Two of those rows were added recently, and both are worth knowing as history rather than as static facts.

The flood hazard row has only been required since 2020. It covers water: river flooding, inland water and storm surge. Landslide and tsunami appear only as to whether the property lies in a formally designated alert zone, and liquefaction and earthquake hazard carry no duty to explain at all, which is the asymmetry set out in Japan's hazard maps and what your broker must show you.

The building condition row has been required since 2018, and what it requires is disclosure of whether a survey exists, not that one was carried out. Most transactions do not include one, and the standard mediation agreement now states expressly that a survey does not determine whether defects exist. That is covered in the two rooms nobody opens during a viewing.

So this document is where most of the disclosures discussed across these guides finally land, in one place, on one afternoon.

Why it is the hardest half hour of the purchase

The system is excellent. The difficulty is that it operates entirely in Japanese.

The document is in Japanese. The reading is in Japanese. Questions and answers are in Japanese. And the content is not conversational Japanese but the technical vocabulary of property law, planning regulation and disaster designation.

Most overseas buyers hear it through an interpreter. Understanding thirty pages of that, in real time, by ear, is not realistic for anyone. Interpreters are not the problem. The format is.

There is a second difficulty that compounds the first. In customary practice the contract follows immediately after the explanation, on the same day, often within the hour. Asking to take the document away and consider it is entirely possible, and it is not what the room is arranged for.

Saying you were not told is difficult afterwards

Having received the explanation and signed is treated as a statement that you received it and understood it. Arguing later that nobody mentioned a restriction is hard to sustain when the restriction is written in a document you signed.

This holds whether or not you read Japanese. The obligation to explain sits with the professional. The obligation to understand sits with you.

That is not a complaint about the system. It is the reason the practical steps below matter more than they look.

Two changes that work in your favour

Recent reform has given overseas buyers two things, and almost nobody uses them.

The documents can now be sent to you electronically

Legislation in force from May 2022 removed the requirement for the specialist to seal these documents, their printed name now being sufficient, and permitted the documents to be provided by electronic means where the recipient consents. The mediation agreement, the important matters statement and the post-contract statement are all covered.

Read that as a practical tool rather than a piece of administrative trivia. It means there is now a normal, established, regulated route by which the document reaches you as a file, in advance, rather than as paper on the day. Consent is yours to give, which means the timing is yours to influence.

The explanation can be given by video call

Conducting the explanation remotely has been in full operation for rentals since 2017 and for sales since March 2021. The specialist appears by video, having sent the document in advance, and shows their licence card on camera.

This genuinely helps if you are abroad. But be clear about what it solves. It removes the requirement to be in the room. It does nothing at all about the language. The explanation is still in Japanese, the document is still in Japanese, and your responsibility to understand is unchanged.

What to do before you sign

Four things, in order. None of them is unusual and none of them is an imposition.

1. Ask for the draft document in advance, electronically. Give whatever consent is needed for electronic delivery. Then take the time to have it translated properly rather than interpreted live.
2. Put your questions in writing and ask for written answers. An answer given verbally in a meeting is not something you will be able to rely on later.
3. Have somebody independent read it. Somebody with no interest in whether the transaction completes.
4. Do not let the contract follow immediately. Say at the outset that you will sign on a later date. Said in advance it is a scheduling preference. Said on the day it is an obstacle.

The fourth is the one people find hardest, and it is the one that protects you most.

Five things to read for

When the document does reach you, these five decide whether the purchase works.

The first row is the question running through almost every article on this site, and here is the thing worth knowing: the answer is written in this document. It has been compiled by a qualified professional who is accountable for it. It is sitting in front of you, in Japanese, for about thirty minutes.

Everything else you can check yourself before reaching this point is set out in what you must verify yourself before buying. Arriving at this meeting already knowing most of the answers changes it from an ordeal into a confirmation.