Land, property rights, and planning in Japan: institutional design and institutional change in land management

Abstract

Although clearly a key institutional framework that structures planning systems, there has been remarkably little attention by planning historians to the comparative study of institutions of property rights in land as a factor shaping approaches to urban planning. Conversely, planning has clearly functioned as a key site of institutional innovation shaping the evolution of property rights. This relationship between planning and property rights deserves greater attention. Although property rights are often entrenched in written constitutions as is the case in both Japan and the USA, and do exhibit considerable continuity over time, they are in fact seldom static, being subject to evolving interpretations and constraints. This paper employs a historical institutionalist approach in the examination of the evolution of institutions of property rights in Japan during the modern period, from just before the Meiji Revolution of 1867–1868 to the early twenty‐first century. The paper shows that the strong protection of landed property rights in Japan is a product of the Meiji period, not the post‐Second World War occupation, and argues that institutional choices in framing landed property rights have multiple and varied long‐term impacts that may have little to do with the original policy goals.