Loading ...It’s like a global coup d’ etat by weak links and communist sympathizers from within. She hopes the new woman elected will address this issue because the others were like Biden.
The driver is Kimi Onoda — the minister Takaichi handed the foreign-resident portfolio to last October.
Here is what the Cabinet Office found when it finally looked.
In a single year, foreign individuals and corporations bought 3,498 properties sitting within one kilometer of Japan’s most sensitive facilities — military bases, US installations, government buildings, power plants, ports.
Nearly half — 1,674 cases — came from one country: China.
Taiwan was a distant second at 414. South Korea, 378. The United States, 211.
Tokyo alone accounted for 1,558 acquisitions. The hottest cluster was land ringing the JSDF medical school and the New Sanno US military center in Hiroo.
Think about what that means in practice.
A building owned by Beijing-linked interests, sitting on a hilltop with a clear sightline into a Japanese radar station. An apartment block beside a missile defense unit, with windows facing the gate.
A forest parcel uphill from a water source feeding a JSDF base. Land near a runway used by US fighters scrambling toward Taiwan.
In a Taiwan-contingency scenario — the one every Japanese defense planner now wargames — those parcels become forward observation posts, signal-jamming sites, or staging ground for the kind of “civilian” pressure China has rehearsed against the Philippines and Lithuania.
Until now, Japan didn’t even require buyers to disclose their nationality at the deed office. The country couldn’t answer the most basic security question: who is on the other side of the fence.
The new rule changes that. Every foreign buyer — individuals, corporations, overseas-based investors — must register their citizenship at purchase.
Companies acquiring “important land” must also reveal the nationalities of their executives and majority shareholders, closing the shell-company workaround Chinese capital has used for years.
The Cabinet is weighing whether to make the records public.
The previous coalition with Komeito at the transport ministry slow-walked this for years. That coalition no longer exists.
Should a country be allowed to know who is buying land next to its own military bases?