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This chapter contains statistics on inhabitancy, ownership and utilization of dwellings by households, their geographical distribution, as well as the ownership and utilization of land by corporations. The sources of data are "Housing and Land Survey" by the Statistics Bureau, Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications and "Corporations Survey on Land", "Corporation Survey on Buildings" and "Survey of Land Acquisitions by Corporations" by the Land and Water Bureau, Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism.
The Housing and Land Survey is the most fundamental statistical survey on housing conditions conducted for the purpose of obtaining basic data for various policy measures on housing life by investing actual situations and trends of dwellings and other occupied buildings and the inhabiting households for the whole country, major metropolitan areas, and prefectures. It had been conducted every five years since 1948 as Housing Survey until the tenth in 1993, then the scope of the survey was extended to include questions on land and the name was changed to Housing and Land Survey in 1998.The 2008 Survey is the thirteenth in the series.
For the 2008 Survey, approximately 210 thousand enumeration districts (ED) of 2005 Population Census were randomly selected. Then, a larger ED with 70 or more dwelling units was split to form a unit district, and a smaller ED was treated as a unit district. The 2008 Survey was conducted as of October 1, 2008, on the dwelling units and other buildings where persons live that are sampled from the selected unit areas, and on the households who live in the targeted dwelling units and buildings, through the channel of Statistics Bureau, Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications; prefectures; shi(cities), ku(ward), machi(town) or mura(village). The questionnaires were filled out by the household members (partly by enumerators).
For the details of sampling and estimation methods, refer to the reports of the survey.
A dwelling is defined as a permanent building or a perfectly separated part of a building, such as a detached house or an apartment of an apartment house, built or reformed for habitation by one household.
"Perfectly separated" means that the dwelling is separated by fixed concrete or wooden walls.
A dwelling for habitation of one household must satisfy following four conditions with regard to facilities: <1> at least a room, <2> sink for cooking for exclusive use, <3> toilet for exclusive use, and <4> doorway for exclusive use (i.e. it may be a direct access to the street, or an access to the hallway which occupants and visitors can use). For conditions <2> and <3>, facilities for joint use are included, if they can be used at any time and can be accessed without passing through a floor of any other household.
Households living in a dwelling are classified into principal households and lodging households. If a household is occupying an entire dwelling, the household is defined as "principal household." In case two or more households are living together in a dwelling, the main household (such as owner or tenant) is defined as "principal household," and others are defined as "lodging households." When two or more single persons are living together in a dwelling, for example, an unmarried person living together with his/her friends, one of them is defined as "principal household," and each of the other persons is defined as "lodging household." An "ordinary household" is defined as a group of persons, such as a family, sharing a living quarter and living expenses. A lodging household living with its family and a one-person household are also defined as "ordinary households." All principal households are regarded as "ordinary households."
This survey has been conducted every five years to obtain basic national and regional data concerning the corporations’ ownership of land by surveying the actual state of tenure, use and other relevant information. The first was conducted in 1993 with a name "Basic Survey on Land", covering corporations and households throughout the country. The second survey in 1998, for which the name was changed to the present one, covered all corporations owning land of one million square metres or more (as of the 1993 survey) and companies with capital of 100 million yen or more, and samples of companies with capital of less than 100 million yen and corporations other than company. The 2003 Corporation Survey on Land is the third in the series. It is conducted as a mail survey as of January 1, 2003, and questionnaires were sent to the corporations from the Land and Water Bureau, Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism.
Land owned for the purpose of selling to the third party regardless of whether the land is listed as such in the financial or accounting reports.
Land owned in the name of the corporation, including joint ownership.
Average land area owned of all the corporations who own land.
This survey has been conducted in conjunction with the Corporation Survey on Land since 1998 to supplement the data on land use by surveying corporations' ownership and use of buildings which are closely related to the land use. The survey in 2003 is the second one.
Statistics on households' ownership and use of land are prepared to provide basic information for policy measures on land. The present statistics are derived from the results of the 2003 Housing and Land Survey.
If a household owns two or more separate units of land, the household is counted as one by each type of land respectively.
This survey has been conducted annually since fiscal 1973 to investigate the ownership of land by corporations as a part of improvement of the basic information on land. The first survey covered about 1,300 companies is listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, while the subsequent surveys covered all private corporations with capital of 100 million yen or more based on the corporation list of the Corporation Survey on Land as updated properly. The survey has been conducted by the mailing method on the basis of updated basic survey list of corporate land. The first and second surveys were conducted by Ministry of Construction (now, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism), and the third and subsequent ones by the National Land Agency (now, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism).
