Is Japan cracking down on Airbnb?

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Is Japan actually cracking down on Airbnb right now?

Japan is cracking down on Airbnb-style short-term rentals in several of its biggest tourist cities right now, although there is still no nationwide move to ban Airbnb.

The clearest changes are happening in Osaka, Kyoto and Tokyo. Osaka City has closed its unusually permissive Special Zone Minpaku scheme to new applications. Sumida now blocks weekday operation for many newly registered minpaku unless someone managing the property is actually on site. Shibuya has expanded the areas where operating days are restricted and made its exemptions harder for professional absentee operators. Taito has approved an even tougher rule that will soon stop new minpaku from operating on weekdays altogether. Kyoto, which was already one of Japan's toughest cities for short-term rentals, is preparing another round of restrictions.

These moves are happening independently, but they point in the same direction. Cities with heavy tourism and dense residential neighborhoods are becoming much less comfortable with apartments being run remotely as tourist accommodation.

Nationally, though, legal minpaku is still growing. Japan Tourism Agency data show that the number of active homes registered under the national Private Lodging Business Act recently reached 42,070, up by 1,325 in roughly two months. Guest nights are also rising quickly.

So the sharpest answer today is that Japan is tightening Airbnb where the political pressure is highest. That already covers some of the markets that matter most to Airbnb investors.

Area	What changed recently	Effect on new Airbnb-style operators	Existing operators
Osaka City	New Special Zone Minpaku applications closed	Major operating route gone	Existing approvals can continue
Sumida	Weekday limits for many new minpaku	Much harder to run full-time	Earlier properties treated differently
Shibuya	Restricted areas expanded and exemptions narrowed	Remote operators face tougher economics	Transitional treatment applies
Taito	Weekday ban approved for new registrations	New 180-day minpaku becomes heavily weekend-focused	Older registrations grandfathered from the new day limit
Kyoto	Another tightening under active review	Regulatory risk rising	Existing operators face tougher enforcement
Ota	Management requirements tightened	Higher operating burden	Legal minpaku still welcomed if compliant

Why does Airbnb regulation suddenly feel much tougher in Japan?

Airbnb regulation feels much tougher in Japan now because several cities have moved from cleaning up illegal minpaku to restricting perfectly legal ones.

Japan's original minpaku reform in 2018 was largely about bringing a chaotic short-term-rental market into the legal system. Hosts had to register, platforms had to verify properties, and the national 180-day operating limit became the baseline for ordinary minpaku.

The current debate is different. Local governments are increasingly asking whether legally registered tourist apartments themselves are causing too much disruption.

Osaka says complaints and disputes rose as Special Zone Minpaku multiplied. Ota says complaints from surrounding residents have increased year after year as inbound tourism recovered. Sumida introduced its new ordinance after rapid growth in minpaku and hotel-style accommodation raised concerns about local living conditions. Kyoto says noise, garbage and neighborhood disputes have become frequent enough to affect community life.

Kyoto's latest move makes the change particularly clear. The city created an expert panel this year specifically to review stronger minpaku regulation. After gathering resident and visitor surveys, it presented an initial package of tougher measures at the panel's second meeting and says it wants to move toward an ordinance revision during the current fiscal year.

This is the second phase of Japanese minpaku policy. Legalization settled whether hosts were allowed to operate. Cities are now deciding how much short-term accommodation residential neighborhoods should actually have to tolerate.

What counts as an Airbnb in Japan anyway?

An Airbnb listing in Japan can operate under several completely different legal systems, so saying that “Airbnb is restricted” can hide a huge difference between one property and another.

The most common route is the Private Lodging Business Act, usually called the minpaku law. A qualifying home can be registered for paid accommodation, but it normally cannot host guests for more than 180 nights during the statutory year. Municipalities can then impose stricter local limits.

Another route is the Hotels and Inns Act. A property with the appropriate lodging licence can generally operate throughout the year rather than being capped at 180 nights, although it has to meet more demanding building, fire, sanitation, zoning and operating requirements.

The third important route is Special Zone Minpaku. This operates in designated National Strategic Special Zones and historically allowed properties to avoid the national 180-night ceiling. Osaka City became the country's biggest example.

That distinction has become even more important lately. Osaka closed new Special Zone Minpaku applications, but it did not close its Hotels and Inns Act system or the national minpaku route. Ota, meanwhile, still accepts new Special Zone Minpaku applications even after tightening its rules.

An investor therefore cannot answer the question “Can I Airbnb this property?” by looking at Airbnb itself. The real question is which legal route the building qualifies for in that municipality.

Legal route	Main operating limit	Authorization	Can local government add restrictions?	Current position
Private Lodging Business Act	180 nights per year	Notification	Yes	Still expanding nationally
Hotels and Inns Act	No national 180-night cap	Lodging licence	Yes	Still available
Special Zone Minpaku	No national 180-night cap	Special-zone approval	Yes	Closed to new applicants in Osaka, still available in some other zones
Unregistered accommodation	No legal operation	None	Not applicable	Enforcement target

Is Osaka actually shutting down Airbnb?

Osaka has gone further than any other major Japanese city recently, because it has permanently closed the door to new Special Zone Minpaku applications while keeping existing properties under much heavier scrutiny.

The reason is scale. Osaka City had more than 7,000 approved Special Zone Minpaku facilities when it began its large compliance review. The city surveyed 7,312 facilities and received responses from 5,824, including properties that had already stopped operating.

Authorities then selected 2,817 facilities for priority monitoring. That group included 1,488 properties that had failed to answer the city's survey, 124 where potentially improper operation was identified, 256 associated with repeated environmental complaints and another 357 where an operator's survey response did not match complaints already recorded by the city.

Osaka subsequently strengthened its operating guidelines. Hosts are expected to explain noise and garbage rules directly to guests, keep complaint records for three years, maintain proper telephone coverage and have someone capable of reaching a property quickly when trouble occurs.

The biggest change came when new Special Zone Minpaku applications stopped being accepted after May 29. Applications to expand the number of rooms or floor area of existing approved facilities were also stopped.

Osaka's own explanation is unusually direct. The city says Special Zone Minpaku helped absorb rapidly growing inbound demand, but complaints and disputes increased as the number of properties grew.

That makes Osaka the strongest current evidence for a real crackdown rather than ordinary regulatory maintenance.

Osaka compliance review	Number
Approved Special Zone Minpaku surveyed	7,312
Survey responses received	5,824
Properties selected for priority monitoring	2,817
Properties that did not answer the survey	1,488
Properties linked to repeated environmental complaints	256
Properties with possible improper operation identified	124

Do existing Osaka Airbnb owners have to close?

Existing Osaka Special Zone Minpaku owners can still operate today, so the city's crackdown has created a sharp divide between properties already inside the system and investors trying to enter now.

Osaka explicitly says facilities approved before the application cutoff may continue operating under the existing Special Zone scheme. The city therefore froze new supply rather than cancelling thousands of existing authorizations.

That sounds attractive for current owners, and it could create some scarcity value. A new investor can no longer reproduce the same regulatory setup simply by buying another qualifying apartment or house and submitting a fresh Special Zone application.

But owners should be careful about assuming they now hold some permanent Airbnb franchise. Osaka has simultaneously strengthened inspections, complaint handling, emergency response and supervision of existing facilities. The city's “nuisance minpaku eradication team” continues monitoring approved properties.

The bigger transaction risk concerns what exactly survives when the underlying real estate changes hands. A buyer should confirm whether the relevant approval, corporate structure and operating setup can continue after the proposed transaction rather than assuming that an Airbnb authorization automatically follows the building.

For now, existing Osaka Special Zone Minpaku have become harder to replicate and harder to operate badly at the same time.

Is Tokyo cracking down on Airbnb too?

Several Tokyo wards are tightening Airbnb rules right now, and the pattern has become broad enough that investors should expect the ward to matter almost as much as the property itself.

Sumida made one of the sharpest recent moves. Its new rules stop many minpaku registered from April onward from operating between Sunday noon and Friday noon. An important exception exists when a manager actually stays on site. The ward has also created a dedicated minpaku unit, opened a complaint hotline and introduced formal standards for improvement orders, suspensions and business-closure orders.

Shibuya has tightened a different part of the system. More residential zones now fall under operating-day restrictions, while the exemption available to professionally managed properties has been narrowed. The favorable treatment is increasingly focused on genuine resident hosts who live in the same building, on the same site or immediately next door and manage only a small number of rooms.

Taito is about to go further. For minpaku registrations accepted from October 1 onward, weekday operation will be completely prohibited whether the host lives there or not. Existing properties registered before that cutoff are excluded from the new calendar restriction.

Ota has taken a softer approach but is also moving in the same general direction. New rules introduced this year require broader neighborhood communication, tighter waste collection and a much faster emergency response. The permitted response time was effectively cut from a public-transport journey of up to 30 minutes to roughly ten minutes on foot.

Tokyo therefore has no single Airbnb policy. It has a patchwork in which several wards are independently making remote residential minpaku harder.

Tokyo ward	Current rule direction	What changes economically
Sumida	New properties lose weekday operation unless on-site management condition is met	Full-time remote Airbnb becomes difficult
Shibuya	Restricted zones widened and exemption tightened	Investor-operated units lose flexibility
Taito	New registrations will lose all weekday operation	New national-law minpaku becomes heavily constrained
Ota	Management and neighborhood rules tightened	Higher staffing and operating cost
Shinjuku	Longstanding weekday restrictions in residential-only areas	Shows local calendar limits are already well established

Is Shibuya specifically targeting investor-owned Airbnb apartments?

Shibuya's latest Airbnb rules clearly make life harder for absentee investors while giving more room to genuine resident hosts.

The old system already restricted operating days in designated areas, but professionally managed properties could qualify for exemptions if they met conditions involving nearby management, neighborhood communication and rapid complaint response.

Shibuya has now narrowed that route considerably.

The newer exemption focuses much more heavily on an individual host who genuinely lives in the same building, on the same property or immediately nearby. The host also has to remain within a small-scale operating model.

That changes the business model, not just the paperwork. A professional operator could previously solve part of the regulatory problem by arranging sufficiently close management. Living beside the property is much harder to reproduce across dozens of investor-owned apartments.

Shibuya's approach also says something about the politics behind the wider crackdown. Local authorities appear much more comfortable with someone sharing a home than with an ordinary residential apartment quietly becoming a remotely operated hotel room.

For an owner occasionally renting part of a home, the distinction can help. For someone building a portfolio of centrally managed Airbnb units, it works in the opposite direction.

Is Kyoto about to make Airbnb rules even tougher?

Kyoto is currently preparing another Airbnb crackdown, and the latest official activity suggests the city is moving toward real rule changes rather than simply studying the issue.

Kyoto already describes its minpaku regime as one of the country's strictest. Its concern now is that the post-pandemic tourism recovery has brought back recurring noise, garbage and neighborhood problems.

Earlier this year, Kyoto created an expert panel specifically to consider stronger minpaku regulation and set a goal of proposing ordinance changes during the fiscal year.

The process has moved forward since then. The city conducted several surveys covering residents near minpaku facilities, a broader sample of Kyoto residents and tourists. At the panel's second meeting at the end of August, officials presented the survey results alongside a draft package of stronger regulatory measures. Kyoto's mayor said afterward that the city would accelerate work toward an ordinance revision.

Enforcement has already become tougher without waiting for those new rules. Minpaku operators must report their activity every two months. Kyoto found that only around half were submitting those reports on time, even though eventual compliance reached 100% after repeated chasing. Since February, the city has shortened that warning process and says late operators can move much faster toward improvement orders, fines, suspension and public disclosure.

So Kyoto deserves a different confidence level from places merely discussing minpaku politically. The city already runs a strict system, has tightened enforcement this year and is now actively drafting the next layer of regulation.

Is Japan mainly chasing illegal Airbnb listings?

Illegal Airbnb listings remain a major target, but Japan's current crackdown increasingly affects hosts who are completely legal.

Japan already has a fairly developed system for policing unauthorized listings. Airbnb and other registered booking intermediaries must verify legal authorization information, and listings are expected to display a minpaku notification number, hotel licence or another accepted approval.

Airbnb also provides property and host information to Japanese authorities under the regulated intermediary system. That makes operating anonymously much harder than during Airbnb's early expansion in Japan.

The newer municipal policies go beyond illegal listings.

Osaka closed an official application route that had previously been legal. Sumida limits the operating days of newly registered legal minpaku. Shibuya tightened exemptions for registered hosts. Taito is about to block weekday activity for new legal registrations. Ota strengthened management rules across licensed accommodation categories.

Authorities are therefore policing both ends of the market these days: illegal operators are being pushed out, while legal operators are being told that registration alone no longer guarantees broad operating freedom.

Operator type	Legal position	Current regulatory risk
Unregistered Airbnb	Illegal	Very high
Registered 180-day minpaku	Legal	Increasingly dependent on local ordinance
Remote investor-operated minpaku	Legal where compliant	High in several major tourist districts
Resident-hosted minpaku	Legal where compliant	Often receives more favorable treatment
Hotel-licensed Airbnb listing	Legal hospitality business	Less exposed to minpaku-specific day limits
Existing Osaka Special Zone Minpaku	Legal	Protected from supply freeze but under stronger supervision

Are Airbnb complaints in Japan really serious enough to drive regulation?

Complaints have become serious enough to change policy in several cities, although the evidence does not support the claim that most Japanese Airbnb properties cause problems.

Osaka gives us the best hard numbers. Its citywide review did not rely on a handful of angry neighbors. More than 7,000 Special Zone properties were examined, and 2,817 ended up in a priority-monitoring pool for reasons including non-response, suspected improper operation, repeat complaints and inconsistencies between operator reports and complaints already held by the city.

Kyoto has reached a similar conclusion through a different route. The city says noise and garbage disputes have multiplied since international tourism recovered and are now affecting neighborhood communities badly enough to justify another regulatory review.

Ota explicitly says complaints from surrounding residents have been rising year after year. Sumida cited concerns about noise, improper garbage handling and residential conditions when it introduced its tougher system.

The useful conclusion is narrower than saying Airbnb is universally unpopular. The problems are recurring often enough in dense tourist areas that several local governments have independently decided their old rules are too loose.

That is why the crackdown looks durable. It is being driven by local operating problems that keep reappearing, not by one national political campaign against Airbnb.

Is overtourism really behind Japan's Airbnb crackdown?

Overtourism is pushing cities toward tougher Airbnb rules, but the real conflict is about where millions of additional visitors sleep and how closely tourist accommodation mixes with ordinary housing.

Japan is still actively pursuing inbound tourism. JNTO reported about 3.44 million international visitors in July, another record for that month. The government's latest tourism plan continues to target more travel spending, more repeat visitors and more overnight stays outside the biggest gateway cities.

Short-term-rental demand is rising alongside that tourism.

According to the latest Japan Tourism Agency reporting period, legal homes under the national minpaku system recorded 624,088 occupied lodging-days during April and May, up 38.6% from a year earlier. Guest numbers rose 30.1% to 626,765, with foreign visitors accounting for 62.4%.

Tokyo alone generated 362,082 of those lodging-days, roughly 58% of the national total.

That concentration explains much of the political pressure. Japan wants more tourism, while specific residential neighborhoods in Tokyo, Osaka and Kyoto are being asked to absorb a disproportionate amount of tourist accommodation and its side effects.

Local regulation is becoming one way of changing where tourism demand lands. Hotels, professionally licensed lodging and better-managed minpaku remain welcome. An unattended apartment next to permanent residents is increasingly the model municipalities question first.

Is Airbnb still growing in Japan despite the crackdown?

Japan's legal minpaku market is still growing quickly today, which is the strongest evidence against calling this a nationwide Airbnb shutdown.

Japan Tourism Agency figures show 65,837 cumulative notifications under the Private Lodging Business Act as of its latest count. After subtracting 23,767 businesses that had ceased operation, 42,070 registered homes remained active.

That was 1,325 more active homes than roughly two months earlier.

Demand is rising faster still. During April and May, legal minpaku reported 624,088 lodging-days, 38.6% more than during the same period a year earlier. The number of guests increased 30.1%.

Those two trends can coexist with tighter regulation because the restrictions are highly local. A new apartment in parts of Tokyo may have become much less attractive as a short-term rental while registrations continue increasing elsewhere in Japan.

The more interesting question is what kind of supply survives. Strong tourist demand is still creating room for short-term accommodation, but cities are raising the operating standard. Properties with the right location, licensing route and management setup should continue to grow. Marginal projects that only worked because regulation was loose are the ones being squeezed.

Osaka is the clearest example: demand for tourist lodging remains huge even after the city decided that unlimited expansion of Special Zone Minpaku had gone too far.

Which Airbnb investors are most exposed in Japan now?

The riskiest Airbnb strategy in Japan right now is buying ordinary residential apartments and expecting to operate them remotely with minimal local presence.

Recent regulations repeatedly penalize that exact setup.

Sumida gives new operators much greater freedom when management is actually present at the property. Shibuya's revised exemption increasingly favors someone who genuinely lives beside the accommodation. Ota now expects emergency response within roughly ten minutes on foot. Osaka has tightened its own expectations around immediate complaint handling and local response.

These requirements eat directly into the economics of remote portfolios. One centralized manager covering properties spread across a city becomes less useful when local governments expect someone to arrive almost immediately.

Investors can still operate professional short-term accommodation in Japan, but the cleaner route may increasingly involve proper hospitality licensing, purpose-built lodging or a property where management can genuinely be kept on site.

That raises the entry cost, which is partly the point.

The cheap version of the Airbnb trade was to take normal housing, add furniture, outsource guest messaging and turn the apartment into accommodation. Several Japanese cities are now making that model much harder to scale.

Could existing legal Airbnb properties become more valuable?

Some existing Airbnb properties could become more valuable because new supply has been restricted, but investors should value the legal operating position much more carefully than the Airbnb revenue history.

Osaka offers the strongest case for scarcity. New Special Zone Minpaku applications have ended, while properties already approved before the cutoff can keep operating. An existing compliant facility therefore holds something a new property can no longer obtain through the same route.

Taito creates a smaller version of the same effect. Properties registered before the new weekday restrictions take effect are excluded from that particular calendar rule, while later registrations will be much more constrained.

That can create a premium, especially when two otherwise similar properties have very different operating rights.

The danger is assuming those rights are simple, permanent and automatically transferable. A change in ownership, corporate structure, floor plan or operating entity can affect what continues legally. The answer depends on the exact authorization and transaction.

Existing properties also remain exposed to tighter enforcement. Osaka proves that grandfathering can coexist with aggressive inspections.

So we would value a grandfathered Airbnb property more like a regulated operating business than an ordinary apartment with a high historical yield. The licence position, ownership structure, compliance history and future transferability can matter as much as the real estate.

So, is Japan cracking down on Airbnb?

Yes. Japan is clearly cracking down on Airbnb-style short-term rentals in its most pressured tourist cities, and the trend is stronger now than it was even a year ago.

The national government is still allowing legal minpaku to expand. Active registrations are rising, guest nights are growing by nearly 40% year on year in the latest reporting period, and Japan continues to pursue more inbound tourism.

Local policy is moving the other way in several high-demand markets.

Osaka has gone furthest by ending new Special Zone Minpaku applications. Shibuya is making professional exemptions harder. Sumida is restricting weekday operation and has created a more aggressive enforcement structure. Taito is about to impose an even tighter weekday rule on new registrations. Ota has substantially raised its management requirements. Kyoto has already toughened enforcement and is currently preparing another regulatory revision.

The common thread is hard to miss. Cities are increasingly comfortable with properly supervised lodging and genuine home-sharing, while they are much less comfortable with ordinary residential apartments being operated remotely as full-time tourist businesses.

That distinction changes the investment case.

Someone renting part of a home can still find plenty of room within Japan's minpaku system. A professionally licensed accommodation business can also work. But an investor buying apartments in Osaka, Kyoto or central Tokyo and assuming Airbnb can simply turn them into high-yield hotel rooms now faces much more regulatory risk.

Our judgment is that the claim is mostly true and getting more true where it matters most.

Airbnb remains legal and continues to grow in Japan. What is disappearing is the assumption that a legal residential property can automatically be converted into a lightly managed short-term rental. These days, the exact municipality, licensing route, grandfathering status and management setup can determine whether the same Airbnb idea is profitable, barely viable or impossible.

Who is the author of this content?

BAMBOOROUTES

A team specialized in real estate investing in APAC countries (Japan, Thailand, Indonesia, Australia, etc.).

We are a team of financial experts, legal professionals, developers, and local real estate specialists dedicated to helping people like you avoid mistakes when investing in real estate in a foreign place, particularly in Japan. If you’d like to learn more about us, you can check our presentation page.