人口下降导致日本废弃土地激增

The scenario was a landowner’s dream. A new trunk road was coming to Greater Tokyo and a small patch of scrubby grass, good for nothing much else, lay directly in its path. A bit of gumption, an able lawyer and Japan’s transport ministry would have to pay up.

这样的情景曾是一个土地所有者梦寐以求的。一条正在修建的通往大东京地区的干道，一小块没有其它大用、灌木丛生的草地正好处于干道的必经之路上。只需一些勇气，外加一位能干的律师，日本国土交通省就不得不支付征地补偿。

In fact, says Uichiro Masumoto of the ministry’s land and construction bureau, a stubborn landowner would have been great news. The reality was much worse: there was no landowner. The plot in question was last registered in 1904 to a woman born sometime in the reign of the Meiji emperor.

日本国土交通省土地建设产业局的正本一郎(Uichiro Masumoto)说，事实上，有一个顽固的土地所有者反而好一些。现实情况要糟得多：根本找不到土地所有者。上面说的那块土地最后的登记时间是1904年，所有人是一位出生于明治天皇时期的女性。

Bureaucrats burrowed into archives. They ultimately came out with 148 heirs — which was only the start of their difficulties, because eight of them had emigrated. Almost 200 letters and interviews later, the government gave up. A court order let the road go ahead. The process took three years.

官员们钻进历史档案中寻找。他们最终找到了148位继承人——这只是麻烦的开始，因为其中有八人已经移民国外了。后来在发出了近200封信函并进行了多次走访后，政府放弃了。一家法院裁决道路施工继续向前推进。整个过程耗费了三年的时间。

Masumoto’s roadblock is just one manifestation of a growing problem in ageing, urbanised Japan. Land that was once a feudal treasure, and is still protected by unshakeable property rights, is now so worthless that its owners are running away.

正本遇到的修路障碍，只是人口老龄化和城市化的日本面临的一个日益严重的问题的缩影。土地曾经是封建财富，今天仍受到不可动摇的财产权的保护，但现在有些土地却变得一钱不值，所有者弃之而去。

More than 20 per cent of Japan, an area the size of Denmark, has no readily contactable owner. By 2040 the projected area is bigger than the Republic of Ireland — a spreading nightmare for government, construction and the property industry, because if nobody knows who owns the land then nobody, except for flytippers, can use it.

逾20%的日本土地，相当于丹麦的国土面积，没有可以立即联络到的所有人。预计到2020年，这类土地的面积将超过爱尔兰的国土面积——对于政府以及建筑和地产行业而言，这是一个不断蔓延的噩梦，因为，如果没人知道土地的所有人是谁，那么除了乱倒垃圾的人以外，谁都无法使用它。

Forestry roads go unmaintained, solar farms are left unbuilt and taxes uncollected. According to a private sector working group on unowned land, by 2040 the annual economic cost will rise from ¥180bn ($1.6bn) to ¥310bn.

森林中的道路无人维护，太阳能发电厂成为烂尾项目，财产税收不上来。根据一民间无主土地工作小组统计的数据，到2040年，由此造成的经济成本将从每年1800亿日元(合16亿美元)上升到3100亿日元。

“Up until now, as the population boomed on these cramped islands, every bit of land was precious,” says Hiroya Masuda, chairman of the working group and a former governor of Iwate prefecture. “But with the population in decline there’s more and more land with no chance of using it.”

“过去，随着日本人口在这些面积狭小的岛屿上不断膨胀，每一块土地都很珍贵，”上述工作小组的负责人、曾任岩手县知事的增田宽也(Hiroya Masuda)说，“随着人口减少，越来越多的土地没有了使用的机会。”

Japan’s population fell by 403,000 in 2017. On current trends it will drop from 126.5m to 88m by 2065 and just 51m by 2115. The decline is fastest in rural areas, with northern prefectures such as Aomori, Akita and Iwate losing about 1 per cent of their people every year.

日本人口在2017年减少了40.3万。按照目前的趋势发展下去，到2065年总人口将从1.265亿降至8800万，到2115年仅剩下5100万。农村地区的降速最快，青森、秋田和岩手等北部县份的人口每年减少约1%。

Ownerless land was a big issue after the 2011 tsunami, says Masuda, as Iwate tried to find space for temporary homes. He cites his own experience of trying to build a prefectural road only to find an heir had migrated to Brazil in the 1950s. The Japanese embassy in Brasília drew a blank in its search. “In the end, we gave up and shifted the road,” he says.

增田说，2011年海啸过后，无主土地成了一个大问题，当时岩手县试图寻找土地搭建临时住所。他讲述了自己的一次亲身经历。当年岩手县要修建一条公路，但前提是必须找到一个在二十世纪五十年代移民到巴西的土地继承人。日本驻巴西大使馆多方搜寻无果。他说：“我们最终放弃了，公路改道。”

Small fields in isolated valleys, steep mountain forests in the interior or suburban housing plots in the regions: none of it is worth much any more. “If you own or inherit land, and you’ve no route to use it, then it’s a burden,” says Masuda. “You have to pay asset taxes, you have to maintain it. There are more and more cases of people begging for someone to take their land — even for free.”

偏僻山谷中的小块田地、内陆地区的陡峭山林，或者这些地区的郊区住宅用地，现在都不值什么钱了。“如果你拥有或者继承了这样的土地，又没有使用的途径，那它就成为一个累赘，”增田说，“你还得缴纳资产税，还得维护它。越来越多的人祈求他人拿走他们的土地——甚至不要一分钱。”

This year, Japan’s parliament will offer its first answer: a law letting public bodies make use of unowned land on leases that automatically renew every five years, with rent paid into trust for any owner who comes forward. That would solve the problem with roads.

今年，日本议会将首次就此问题给出答案：颁布一项法律，允许公共机构以租赁的方式使用无主土地，租约每五年自动更新一次，租金支付给信托，以待业主未来某一天出现。这将解决道路修建时遇到的问题。

But it will do nothing to address the underlying issue of land with no identifiable owner, says Shoko Yoshihara of the Tokyo Foundation, a think-tank. “It’s not that there’s no owner at all,” she says. “They’re just hard to find.”

但这无助于解决一些土地“所有者不详”这一根本问题，日本智库东京财团(Tokyo Foundation)的吉原祥子(Shoko Yoshihara)表示：“并不是没有业主，只是很难找到。”

The roots of the problem lie deep in Japan’s legal system. Land registration is not compulsory; rather, it is a civil law procedure designed to let owners protect their property rights and use them as collateral. Land left unregistered is not lost but simply unrecorded.

问题的根源在于日本的法律体系。土地登记不是强制性的。相反，它是一项民法程序，旨在让所有者能够保护其财产权并将资产用作抵押品。没有登记的土地并未丢失，只是没有记录。

When all land had value, all the owners registered it. But heirs to worthless parcels of land have no reason to register their interest simply so that the taxman knows where to find them. Add in an inheritance law modelled on France and Germany, which gives all children a statutory share of their parents’ assets, and land ownership quickly becomes hopelessly opaque.

过去，所有土地都值钱的时候，土地所有人都进行了登记。但当一块土地变得不值钱时，继承人没有理由去登记他们的所有权，那不过是让税务人员知道哪里能找到他们。再加上日本继承法效仿法国和德国模式，所有子女都有权继承父母资产中的法定部分，这导致土地所有权变得非常不透明。

Compulsory land registration is one option under government consideration. Yoshihara doubts even that would solve the problem, however, given the costs involved. “Even if it were a duty — if it doesn’t make financial sense, will everybody obey the rules?” she asks.

实行强制性土地登记是政府正在考虑的解决方案之一。不过，由于所涉及的成本，吉原怀疑即使这么做也无法解决问题。她说，“即使这是一项法律义务——如果不能产生经济效益，每个人都会遵守这些规定吗?”

The ultimate answer may involve something more profound: a fundamental shift in how the Japanese people relate to their mountainous island home. “Until 30 years ago, people thought of land as the greatest asset of all, something that always rises in value,” says Masuda. “Recently, with the fall in the population, the attitude to land has been transformed. But the system hasn’t evolved with it. What we need isn’t a minor change, it’s a full model shift.”

最根本的解决方案可能涉及某些更加深刻的东西：日本人与多山岛屿上的房产的关系需要发生根本性转变。“30年前人们都认为土地是最大的资产，其价值一直在增长，”增田说，“最近，随着人口下降，人们对土地的态度也发生了变化。但制度并没有与时俱进。我们需要的不是小调整，而是彻底转变模式。”

Such a shift could involve what Yoshihara calls a “receptacle” for Japan’s unwanted land. “When an elderly person owns a mountain or a field, and their children have moved to Tokyo, we need to provide more options,” she says.

这种转变可能包括建立一个吉原所说的接纳日本无主土地的管理机构。她说，“当一个老人拥有一座山或一块田地，而他的子女已经搬到东京时，我们需要提供更多的选择。”

At present, local governments usually refuse to accept gifts of worthless land, because of the legal liability and management costs that come with them. They could be obliged to take it, however, or the government could set up a public body to hold land. That could turn a problem into an opportunity. In an ever more crowded world, what could the nation do with new swaths of public land?

目前，地方政府通常会拒绝接受无价值土地的捐赠，因为需要承担随之而来的法律责任和管理费用。但是，他们可能不得不接受，或者政府可以成立一个公共机构来拥有这些土地。这可能会把问题转变成机遇。在一个日益拥挤的世界里，对于这些新拥有的大量公共土地，日本能做些什么呢?

“We’ve always had the principle in Japan that land should be privately owned — that it should belong to someone — but we may have to transform that to something else,” Masuda says.

增田说，“在日本，我们一贯的原则是，土地应该归私人所有——它应该属于某个人——但是，我们可能不得不改变这一原则。”

Japan’s environment paid a heavy price for its decades of rapid industrialisation. Almost everywhere on the islands is touched by human activity. Strong private property rights, laissez-faire development and an addiction to infrastructure projects let cheap apartments and factories spring up in even the quietest mountain valleys.

日本的环境为数十年的快速工业化付出了沉重代价。各个岛屿上几乎所有地方都有人类活动的痕迹。强大的私有产权，政府对开发采取放任态度以及对基础建设项目的痴迷，导致即使在最宁静的山谷，也能冒出价格低廉的公寓和工厂。

“If we can gather together as much of this land as possible in some kind of public body then we can make a big contribution to the environment,” says Masuda, citing the potential for nature reserves or forestry carbon sinks.

增田说，“如果我们可以通过某种公共机构将这类土地尽可能多地汇集起来，那么我们可以为环境做出巨大贡献。”他指出，一个潜在用途是建立自然保护区或森林碳汇。

That would make Japan a different kind of place. For Masumoto at the transport ministry it will be enough simply to avoid cases such as the former cemetery owned by 40 people — or rather by their 240 heirs. Three of them are still missing. The acquisition process has lasted more than two years. The negotiations continue.

那将使日本的现状大大改观。对于国土交通省的正本来说，这就能使他们避免道路建设过程中遇到的各种障碍，比如40个人——或者说由他们的240个继承人拥有——的一块前墓地。其中三人仍未找到。购买土地的过程已经持续了两年多。谈判仍在继续。

Robin Harding is the FT’s Tokyo bureau chief 译者/何黎