22OCT

Shinjuku drafts ban on new home-shares

3 min read

16:46UTC

Shinjuku City, the Tokyo ward with more registered home-shares than any other Japanese municipality, wants to bar new ones across its residential districts.

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SocietyAssessed

Key takeaway

Shinjuku's draft would bar new home-shares across its residential zones and reach existing hosts after two years.

Shinjuku City opened public comment on 15 October on rules that would ban new minpaku (registered home-share lets) across most of its residential land. The Tokyo ward has 3,749 notified minpaku, which it says is more than any other Japanese municipality⁠¹. Comment closes on 13 November.

Today the ward only stops minpaku operating from Monday to Thursday in exclusively residential zones. The draft widens the restricted area to all residential zones, quasi-industrial zones and school districts, and bars new minpaku inside it. Homes where the owner lives on site may still let for up to 120 days a year, in spring, summer and winter school holidays only. Commercial zones drop from the 180-day ceiling set by Japan's national Private Lodging Business Act, in force since 2018, to the same holiday days.

Existing hosts are not spared for long: the zone ban reaches them two years after the ordinance takes effect. A companion ryokan (inn) ordinance requires new inns to exceed 200 square metres with a front desk and resident staff.

Shinjuku logged 1,525 complaints about minpaku and ryokan combined in the 2025 fiscal year and has issued 163 improvement orders, 67 suspension orders and 15 closure orders⁠². Shinjuku is cutting supply as arrivals to Japan fall. The Japan National Tourism Organization (JNTO) put September arrivals at 3,103,700, down 5.0%, a smaller fall than August's⁠³. Chinese arrivals fell 44.5% to 430,800, Korean arrivals rose 25.6% to 842,300, and January to September is down 2.9%.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

In Japan, a minpaku is a private home or flat let to visitors, much like an Airbnb. A national law lets anyone register one, but caps lets at 180 nights a year and allows local councils to set tighter rules. Shinjuku is one of Tokyo's 23 central wards, home to a major railway hub and the Kabukicho nightlife district. It wants to stop new minpaku in nearly all its residential areas. People who live in the home themselves could still take guests, but only during school holidays and for up to 120 days a year. The ward says neighbours have complained about noise, rubbish and strangers coming and going. Residents can comment on the plan until 13 November before the ward decides.

Deep Analysis

Root Causes

Article 18 of the national minpaku law lets a prefecture, or a Tokyo special ward acting as its own authority, restrict home-shares by area and period through ordinance. Shinjuku's existing weekday ban used that power narrowly. The new draft uses it across most residential land.

Japanese zoning sorts land into use zones under the national building law, and minpaku count as dwellings, so they can enter any residential zone unless an ordinance stops them. A ward that wants to keep them out has to write the ban itself, zone by zone.

The companion ryokan rule closes the obvious escape route. Without it, operators blocked from minpaku could re-register small flats as inns under the hotel business law, which has no annual night limit.

What could happen next?

Precedent
A Shinjuku zone ban may give other central Tokyo wards a template, shrinking home-share supply across the city centre.
Medium term · Suggested
Consequence
Existing hosts in residential zones face closure two years after the ordinance takes effect, so many may sell or convert flats to long-term lets.
Long term · Assessed
Risk
Restricting cheaper lodging while national targets assume growth may push visitor prices up in central Tokyo.
Medium term · Suggested

Source Landscape

This story draws on neutral-leaning sources

Primary parallel: Kyoto used the same local power when the national minpaku law took effect in 2018. It confined minpaku in exclusively residential zones to the low season from 15 January to 15 March and required a manager able to reach the property within about ten minutes, which kept home-shares scarce in the city's residential districts.

Counter-parallel: Osaka City took the opposite route, using a national special-zone scheme that let home-shares operate outside the 180-day ceiling. It became one of Japan's largest home-share markets, then said in 2025 that it would stop accepting new special-zone applications, after complaints grew alongside the stock.

September's JNTO data show the slump is wider than China: arrivals from Thailand fell 12.6% and from Germany 12.7%, while arrivals from the Middle East rose 27.0%. Shinjuku is restricting supply in a market where demand has softened across several source regions, China among them.

The two-year transition for existing hosts gives operators time to recover fit-out costs, but it caps the resale value of a flat bought for home-sharing. The ryokan floor of 200 square metres with a front desk and resident staff prices small operators out of the inn route, leaving the hotel sector as the main beneficiary.

Consensus view: Shinjuku City frames the rules as protection of the living environment, the ground the national minpaku law gives local governments for restricting lets by area and season. Its case rests on complaints and orders, so the rules answer resident pressure rather than visitor volume.

Counter-view: The national government's target of 60 million foreign visitors a year by 2030, pursued through the Japan Tourism Agency, assumes lodging supply will grow. Cutting home-shares in a ward next to one of Tokyo's busiest stations removes cheaper beds at the point where demand concentrates, while Tokyo Metropolitan Government plans a 3% accommodation tax from April 2027 that brings minpaku into the tax base.

Key tension: Whether other Tokyo wards copy Shinjuku's zone ban, leaving the national 180-day ceiling as a rule few central districts still apply.

Sources:Shinjuku City·Japan National Tourism Organization

Mentions:Shinjuku City →Private Lodging Business Act →Japan National Tourism Organization →China →South Korea →Tokyo →Japan →Kyoto →Osaka City →Japan Tourism Agency →Airbnb →Middle East →Tokyo Metropolitan Government →

First Reported In

Update #15 · Spain prices the owner, not the listing

Shinjuku City· 22 Oct 2026

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Written with AI from Lowdown's published reporting. Not individually reviewed by an editor. Editorial standards.