The latest data on land prices across Japan suggests that the benefits of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's fight against deflation have yet to reach many of the nation's rural economies. While the recovery in land prices has become more evident in the three largest metropolitan regions in and around Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya, and prices are beginning to rise in some big cities outside of these regions, prices in many parts of rural Japan remain stagnant.
As Japan's population faces an accelerating downtrend, especially in rural areas, a nationwide increase in land prices such as the one experienced during the bubble boom of the late 1980s to the early 1990s is not expected in coming years.
The Abe administration has set an agenda of revitalizing the rural economies so that they share the fruit of the recent economic upturn. Such efforts should not end with the same old pork-barrel spending by the central government; they should be aimed at supporting the initiatives of local authorities to make their areas more attractive to people and businesses.