[usrusr]

Housing prices are trivial to explain: urbanization is much faster than population decline. Housing in rural areas beyond the commute horizon (and outside of tourist zones) can be had for close to nothing just about everywhere on the planet, I'd be surprised if Japan was an exception.

This also explains why opening the doors to immigration is such an unattractive "solution" (quotes, because I refuse to consider taking a break from exponential population growth a problem) : immigration rarely comes without urbanization and even shrinking countries (or maybe especially them?) are still seeing growing cities, all the shrinkage is happening in the increasingly abandoned countryside. Thinking of this, it might not even be a new phenomenon: historically, non-urbanizing immigration was so rare that one would typically sideline the border-crossing aspect and just call them settlers, no matter where they came from.