Tokyo residents have taken to the streets with a message that resonates in metropolitan areas around the world: “Rent is too high.”
On the 14th of March, two citizen groups, The Housing Poverty Network and The Greater Tokyo Metropolitan Youth Union, organized a protest where they called for the metropolitan government to take action on rapidly increasing rent prices. Their demands include regulation on rent increases and the implementation of a “rent brake system.”
People in the streets
The demonstration was staged in the Plaza in front of Shinjuku Station. A group of 150 people walked near the station for an hour, holding banners, before pausing to address the gathered observers. One organizer, Inaba Tsuyoshi of the Tokyo Repair Fund, said:
“They say rent should be 20% of your income. That means if you’re making 200,000 yen [$1,255 a month], your rent should be 40,000 yen [$251]. If you’re making 150,000 [$941], it should be 30,000 [$188]. But is there actually any apartment you can rent for 40,000?”
Songwriter Wada Shizuka, a protest participant, also spoke, saying:
“High rent would be okay if wages were also rising. Do you feel like it’s your fault you can’t afford rent? That’s wrong. It’s the government’s responsibility to make sure rents don’t rise too much.”
Clouds on the economic horizon
It’s no surprise that people are feeling the economic pressure: Japan’s infamously stagnant wages are coming to a head against the steady price increases in Tokyo’s rental market, a decades-long trend that has only accelerated post-COVID.
According to materials distributed at the protest, last year the average cost of a single-occupant one-bedroom apartment broke 100K yen (approx. $600) for the first time ever, reaching almost 150K (approx. $960) during November of 2025. Housing for couples reached 170K ($1,100); for families, 250K ($1,600). This puts average housing costs firmly above 30% of average disposable income across demographics.
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Housing ownership prices have sharply increased as well. The price of a new apartment within Tokyo reached 130 million yen ($800K). That’s 18 times the average yearly income.
Author of the protest pamphlet Satō Kazuhiro, an associate professor of local policy at Takasaki City University of Economics, says that there are 3 main factors contributing to this housing crisis:
- Rising costs of building materials are increasing the cost of construction
- Pressure on the rental market from wealthier tenants who have been driven away from ownership by astronomical prices.
- Real estate has become a major speculative investment market, especially in Tokyo proper.
Stories from the ground
These economic forces are putting pressure on Tokyo residents and throwing wrenches in their plans for the future.
One woman participating in the protest recounted, “The renewal fee went up at the same time as the rent. The cost of living keeps rising while my salary stays the same. I’m worried that I won’t be able to keep living in my place.”
A man in his thirties described how the economic pressure was affecting his relationship, “The person I’m dating and I are trying to move in together, but every place for two people is over 100K yen rent. We can’t start our new life.”
The protest’s official homepage also lists two case studies of participants that initially inspired the political action:
- One call center worker was laid off after downsizing, cutting their monthly income in half. At the same time, their landlord raised their rent. In spite of living in one of the cheapest areas of the city, they could no longer afford their housing, through no fault of their own.
- One office worker was a victim of harassment so severe that they had a mental breakdown. Afterwards, the lingering mental illness put them on disability benefits, which have an upper limit on rental assistance payments. When their rent went up, they were ordered to move, so they sought out a new apartment. However, guidelines that guarantee housing within these limits are unenforced, so they were forced to accept a run-down building with poor maintenance and shady financial practices.
Altogether, the demands of the protest focus on citizens being squeezed by rising rents, stagnant wages, and government programs that are failing to meet the needs of Tokyo’s lower-income residents. In particular, they are calling for government reforms to enforce existing policies and establish systems that support affordable housing.
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Japan’s way forward
Professor Satō cites other countries as potential policy models for the Mayor’s office to emulate. One is Germany’s “rent brake” system that sets a reference rent in tight markets and only allows new rentals to be priced 10% above the reference. This is a more flexible form of rent control than Satō’s other example: Zohran Mamdani’s promise of rent freezes in New York City.
These are only two of a myriad of housing strategies from around the world – public housing reform, direct rent assistance programs, better regulation enforcement – that Mayor Koike Yuriko could bring to the city. The real question is: will Koike break from the LDP’s policies that have overseen these long-term trends?
At the national level, the party is only moving further right, away from the types of politics that serve rent relief, and Koike herself is coming off her years in Abe’s cabinet, the exact cabinet whose deregulatory policies opened Japanese real estate up to international speculation markets.
Koike has undertaken a number of initiatives in recent years to make living in Tokyo easier and more affordable, such as providing financial support for parents. However, she’s also been roundly criticized for expensive tourist-oriented projects such as the projection mapping light show.
For the sake of all the residents of Tokyo, we can at least hope that the voices raised in this month’s protest reach the Mayor’s office.
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Sources
家賃たかすぎぃぃぃ」都内ワンルーム平均10万円超 市民らが政策的解決を求め新宿駅でデモ 弁護士JPニュース
「家賃高すぎ。なんとかしろ！デモ」開催！ 首都圏青年ユニオン
