Apartment/house hunting/discrimination

[KCLenny]

Hi all, I’m sure some of you may have encountered this problem before and I had certainly heard of it happening but was naive or optimistic enough to think it wouldn’t happen to me.
I’ve been searching for a new apartment/house to get a better deal, and sent off a few enquiries. But have had 2 rejected to even view them because, and I quote “they only accept Japanese/they don’t accept foreigners”.

I can’t believe this kind of open discrimination is still happening. And I’m really disheartened by the response I get from talking about it to many people, which is usually just “well that’s just how it is”. How is that acceptable as a response to open discrimination/borderline racism?

Is this even still legal? Or are there loopholes they use to get around it? Of course I don’t want to complain to make someone allow me to live there. I just don’t feel like I can sit back and say “oh well that’s just how it is here” and accept it without trying to change it.
(And I don’t want to here any nonsense like “well if you don’t like it you can leave”).

[seb]

If I remember when I researched that is there is no law protecting minorities in Japan (this year the law to protect sexual minorities before the olympics got quietly skipped), so it is essentially legal.

In Tokyo there are so many listings that I still found what I needed. It's not like Paris where my white French colleagues had issues renting an apartment because they were working for a startup and the owner thought that was not a stable enough situation. There if you lose any chance because of racism and xenophobia, it becomes a much bigger deal. So yes, I did go "what are you gonna do about it" and just went with the flow.

Now, what CAN you do about it? One way is to do like Arudo Debito who go confront those "Japanese Only" restaurants, sento, etc... and tries to provoke change in some way. I don't know what else can be done, especially if it's legal then we would need to change the law, and LDP probably doesn't care about this at all.

[Beaglehound]

It’s legal as far as I know. Infuriating for sure to experience such outright discrimination, and to know the law is not on your side.

In practical terms it probably doesn’t matter, such landlords would find a reason not to rent to you regardless of the law, and you are better off not being involved with them.

[RetireJapan]

I believe it is still legal for landlords to reject prospective tenants for any reason they choose to give.

About 15 years ago when my wife and I were trying to rent a house we found it almost impossible in Sendai. I had a government job and a Japanese family, and we still got the no foreigner treatment. Think we looked at about 40 places, only one guy was happy to rent to us (he'd lived in the US for many years -lovely guy but the house was a bit too small for the five of us).

Ended up renting from a friend of my wife's

[KCLenny]

The whole “foreigners could just leave and not pay or leave it in a mess”, is the racism part. Because the implication is foreigners would do that, but Japanese people are nice and never would.
What is stopping a Japanese person from renting an apartment then trashing it and just leaving the country? Probably not a fat lot.
Plus the whole point of the guarantor system (specifically ensuring it’s a Japanese guarantor) is to negate this “problem” anyway. If I am paying deposits and key money and present money and probably paying a Japanese guarantor company then for them to say “well you might just leave and not pay some rent” is firstly, racist/discrimination, and secondly hardly a big problem for someone who has enough money to just rent out houses anyway. Oh no, someone who rented your apartment left after paying you key money and present money and you got to keep the deposit…and now all you have to do is clean out the apartment and rent it out again? However will you cope with that? May as well just limit the apartment to the pure Japanese.
Nah, rubbish.

[eyeswideshut]

Back when I was renting I would always tell the RE agent to check beforehand whether they would rent to foreigners before showing them to me. Nothing grinds my gears more than finding a nice place and then have the racist landlord coming back with the 'no foreigners' line. Having the RE agent only show me places that would accept foreigners helped avoid the anguish up front. Now that I am a landlord with properties in Canada, I always wanted to impose a "no Japanese policy" out of revenge but ... that would be illegal in Canada because we are not a racist backwater.

[KCLenny]

Back when I was renting I would always tell the RE agent to check beforehand whether they would rent to foreigners before showing them to me. Nothing grinds my gears more than finding a nice place and then have the racist landlord coming back with the 'no foreigners' line. Having the RE agent only show me places that would accept foreigners helped avoid the anguish up front. Now that I am a landlord with properties in Canada, I always wanted to impose a "no Japanese policy" out of revenge but ... that would be illegal in Canada because we are not a racist backwater.

The thing is we are searching online, finding places that we think are good then messaging the RE agent to arrange a viewing, only for them to say “sorry that one is only Japanese people”.
And that’s the thing about it here, if everyone knows it’d be massively and abhorrently racist in other countries to refuse foreigners something because of the fact that they were foreign, why does everyone just give japan a pass on it and be like “oh well, can’t change it”.
Like, what the hell?! Imagine if that was MLK’s attitude or BLM’s attitude or hundreds of other people fighting against discrimination. But for some reason everyone just accepts discrimination as okay in japan. I honestly can’t believe it and it’s actually making me both angry and sad (not the racism/discrimination itself..but everyone else just excusing it).

And as I said, the whole “if you don’t like it why are you here?” Attitude is such a terrible one to take. I want to live in Japan, I love the country and many people within the country. I am setting up my life here. I shouldn’t have to just accept and ignore racist and discriminatory laws just cause I want to live here. I can want to live here and want to see it get better too, without changing the culture of the entire country.

[Teflon]

You just have to accept that as a non-Asian foreigner in Japan you will always be viewed as "the other" and that's not going to change in your lifetime. It was part of the deal when you decided to live here and for some people it was part of the appeal.

In my experience, about 99.99% of my interactions with Japanese shop/business owners have been overwhelmingly positive despite my outsider status. They are generally very polite and full of omotenashi and go out of their way to help me. The negative or discriminatory interactions are so exceptional that it's not really something I ever think about. I certainly would not compare the plight of the foreigner in Japan to the plight of African-Americans and several hundred years of slavery, violent oppression, and Jim Crow laws.

But bringing this back to investing...

The easiest way to give the middle finger to discriminatory landlords is to buy your own property and get out of the rental market altogether. As long as you have a bank loan lined up (or your own cash) and can pay the asking price, people are more than happy to sell you their property. It's also a great feeling to have the option of putting nails in the walls so you can finally hang up all your pictures! Some people also say it's a good investment but that's a different topic for a different thread.

[fools_gold]

You sometimes bump up against discrimination here, but not everyone is like that. Your best bet would be to to the agency in person and work with them to find some gaijin friendly landlords.

[eyeswideshut]

So far we have learned that Japan is racist - since it is not against the Japanese law to refuse renting based on nationality - but Canada is not - since it is against Canadian law to refusing renting based on nationality. Of course if you have two applications one from Canadian and one from foreigner and you chose the Canadian you are not racist. You are only racist if you say it openly not if you apply it daily without saying it.

Wondering what compels someone to live in a racist country where he cannot even rent a place?

The key difference is: if you are a foreigner in Japan and you suspect you are being denied due to your ethnicity you have no viable legal recourse; in Canada you do. Proving the discrimination is a separate issue but the bottom line is Canada offers legal protections against discrimination whereas Japan does not. With regard to your other comment, I could not disagree more. If you have the legal right to live in Japan then you should have the same access to housing as a Japanese person of similar credit-worthiness would.