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Japan's post-war housing system has been dominated by family-owned housing. However, the centrality of family home ownership has declined since the 1990s. Housing careers and family formation patterns have diverged leading to the re-organisation of boundaries separating owning and renting. Using Japan as a focus, this paper explores the role of individualisation and familisation in transforming homeowner societies. On one hand, the individualisation of younger generations in Japan has encouraged a notable increase in one-person households living in private rented housing. On the other hand, a growing number of young households have purchased houses with assistance from their parents. This has been interpreted as an intergenerational familisation of access to home ownership. There is also an increasing number of unmarried adults living in their parents’ homes, which reflects the individualisation of younger cohorts and simultaneously the familisation of adult children's early housing careers. Moreover, it has recently been pointed out that Japan's system of extended family households and the related practice of transferring family properties across generations, has not declined. This paper argues that individualisation and familisation are combining to reorganise the ‘edges’ of home ownership, by helping determine who can enter owner-occupied housing sectors, and who is excluded. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The housing system in post-war Japan has consistently driven the growth of the owner-occupied housing sector, where many people have followed a conventional life-course in terms of ascending the housing ladder towards homeownership. Since the 1990s, however, a more insecure economy combined with the reorientation of housing and social policies has led to divergence in people's housing pathways. The conservative nature of public policy has largely been maintained, advantaging middle-class family households in accessing homeownership. However, in response to economic stagnation and within the context of pervasive neo-liberalism, the government has moved sharply towards accentuating the role of the market in providing housing and mortgages. Neo-liberal policies have become more pronounced while conservative institutions have firmly been ingrained in Japan's post-war society. Conventional middle-class families, protected by conservative policies in moving up the housing ladder, have maintained their relatively advantageous positions in the market economy. Neo-liberal policy has especially affected the housing conditions of specific groups who have been beyond the protection of conservative institutions, i.e. unmarried individuals, low-income households and those in unstable employment. The combination of conservative and neo-liberal approaches in policy practices has thus had strong diverging effects on people's housing opportunities. This paper explores the fragmentation of housing paths in Japan's insecure economy with particular reference to transformations in housing and social policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past two decades housing pathways have become increasingly differentiated between generations, particularly in advanced societies dominated by owner-occupied tenure systems. Demographic transformations caused by aging and falling fertility rates, along with a more volatile economy and a neo-liberal reorientation of governance have combined to restructure housing conditions. Drawing on empirical research in Japan, this paper illustrates the social origins and impact of generation-based differentiations in housing patterns in that country. It considers the housing experiences of three cohorts: baby-boomers, baby-busters and the 'lost generation'. The contrast of housing pathways between these generations in Japan illustrates the contemporary dynamics of housing and social processes in homeowner societies.[image omitted] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]