What changed

Japan has an enormous quantity of land whose owner cannot be identified, because generations of heirs never bothered to register. The registry names somebody who died in 1974 and nobody knows who holds it now.

The response took effect on 1 April 2024. A person who acquires ownership of real property by inheritance must apply to register it within three years of the day they learn of that acquisition. Failing to do so without a legitimate reason can attract an administrative penalty of up to 100,000 yen.

This is not a tax. It is a duty to put your name on the register, and it exists independently of whether you intend to keep, sell or demolish the property.

It reaches backwards

Here is the part that catches overseas heirs, and it catches them precisely because they have no reason to be watching Japanese legislation.

The duty applies to inheritances that occurred before it existed. A house inherited in 1998 and never registered is within scope. The starting point is whichever is later: the day you learned you had acquired it, or 1 April 2024.

Read the first row against today's date. If you inherited Japanese property at any point in the past and never registered it, you are inside a grace period that is now well under way.

If the estate is not settled

The common obstacle is that the heirs have not agreed how to divide anything, and agreement is slow when they are in different countries.

A simplified procedure was introduced alongside the duty for exactly this. An heir can notify the Legal Affairs Bureau that they are an heir of the deceased, which discharges the registration duty for the time being and avoids the penalty.

It is a holding measure, not a substitute. It does not transfer ownership. Once the estate is divided, a proper registration is still required within three years of that agreement. But it buys time, and it costs very little.

The second duty, which began this year

A related change took effect on 1 April 2026 and has had almost no English coverage at all.

An owner whose registered address or name changes must register that change within two years. The penalty for failing to is up to 50,000 yen. Where the change happened before April 2026, the deadline is 31 March 2028.

Consider what that means if you live abroad. You own a Japanese property, the register carries your address in Milan or Taipei or Vancouver, and you move house. That move now creates a Japanese registration obligation, on a timetable, enforceable by penalty, for a change that has nothing to do with Japan.

It also matters practically rather than only legally. The registered address is where Japanese tax correspondence is sent, and what happens when that correspondence reaches nobody is the subject of its own guide.

Why this is harder from overseas

The procedure itself is ordinary. The inputs are not.

• Documents. Japanese registration relies on family register records tracing the deceased from birth to death. Obtaining those from abroad takes time.
• No seal certificate. Without a Japanese residence registration you cannot obtain one, and a notarised affidavit takes its place. Same document problem as a purchase.
• Co-heirs in several countries. Agreement requires everyone, and everyone is somewhere else.
• You may not know the property exists. Overseas heirs routinely discover a Japanese property years after the death, from a tax notice or a relative.

Registration is handled by a judicial scrivener, and the cost is modest set against the penalty and against the position you are in if the property has to be dealt with while the register still names somebody who died.

What you cannot do until it is registered

The duty is one reason to act. The practical consequences are the stronger one.

The last row is the one that turns a small problem into an unsolvable one. Each generation that passes without registration multiplies the number of people whose signature is eventually needed, and some of them will be untraceable.

Meanwhile the property is still there

Registration is paperwork. The building is not.

An inherited house standing empty continues to deteriorate, continues to attract fixed asset tax, and continues to be your responsibility if something falls off it. If its condition declines far enough, the tax reduction on the land can be withdrawn. And liability for a structure on land sits with the owner whether or not the register has caught up.

So the two things run in parallel. Sort the register, and arrange for somebody to look at the building.

If you do not want it

Registration assumes you are keeping the property. Two other routes exist, and both have conditions. Renouncing the inheritance is possible within three months of learning that you are an heir, through the Japanese family court, and it applies to the whole estate rather than to one property. And since April 2023, an heir can apply to transfer unwanted land to the state, subject to conditions on the land itself and a fee; land with a building on it is not accepted, so the building generally has to be demolished first. Neither is a quick exit, and the first has a short clock, so whether you want the property at all is the question to settle first.

What to do now

1. Establish whether Japanese property was inherited, and when the person you inherited from died
2. Obtain a copy of the register and see whose name is on it
3. Identify who the heirs are and where they are
4. If agreement will take time, consider the simplified heir notification to stop the clock
5. Engage a judicial scrivener and start collecting documents, which is the slow part
6. Separately, arrange for the building itself to be checked

Step two is often the surprise. Overseas heirs frequently find the register names a grandparent, which means an earlier generation's registration was skipped too and there is more to unwind than expected. Better to discover that now than in the final months of a deadline.