Edo vs. Today: What Has Changed in Room Hunting? | Room Hunting, Then and Now: Edo ⑩

This is the English edition of our Japanese series 「お部屋探し今むかし」 (Room Hunting, Then and Now). 日本語版はこちら ／ All English articles

For nine episodes I have been looking into how people rented homes in Edo, the city that became Tokyo. This is the wrap-up. Compared with today, what changed and what did not?

What has not changed

You need someone to vouch for you. To rent a home in Edo you needed a guarantor called a tanaukenin. For people with no one to ask, a business appeared: guarantors for a fee. In Osaka, 53 of them were officially recognized as an association in 1732 (Edo ②). That is today’s guarantee company.

The landlord checks you first. The Edo landlord questioned the applicant and the family in detail, and is said to have gone to ask around the previous neighbourhood (Edo ③). Today it is an application form, documents and a guarantee company’s screening. The question is the same.

The owner and the manager are different people. The row-house “landlord” was a yamori, a manager hired by the owner (Edo ⑥). Today we call that a property management company.

Shared spaces come with rules. Once a year all the residents cleaned the shared well together. Dumping rubbish in rivers was banned in 1655 (Edo ⑦).

Rent it instead of buying it. A shop called a sonryōya lent out clothes, bedding and utensils (Edo ⑧). It is a distant ancestor of furnished apartments and rental services.

What has changed

How you search. A paper “for rent” sign on an empty house was the signal (Edo ①). Today you see photos and floor plans on your phone.

Size and equipment. The smallest room, kushaku-niken, was about 10 square metres, with a little over four tatami mats of floor. No bath. The well and the toilet were shared (Edo ④).

The weight of rent. That room cost about 300 mon a month, roughly 19 bowls of soba. In one carpenter’s household budget, rent was about 8% of income (Edo ⑤).

Preparing for fire. Edo had more than 100 great fires in 264 years (Edo ⑨). Today we have fire insurance.

What I think after nine episodes

This part is my own impression.

The tools have been replaced completely. The paper sign became a smartphone, the guarantor became a guarantee company, and asking the neighbours became paperwork. But the core has hardly moved. The landlord checks: can I trust this person? The tenant checks: can I live in this room? Room hunting has been a process of checking each other for 300 years.

Screening, guarantee fees and piles of documents were not invented to annoy anyone. Learning that alone made the research worth it.

Homework I still owe

To be honest, there are two things I could not find out.

First, why the for-rent sign was pasted at an angle (Edo ①). Second, how much it cost to hire a guarantor in Edo (Edo ②). I have not found reliable sources for either. If I do, I will write about it.

What comes next

From tomorrow I am starting a “Today” series: no guarantor, high move-in costs, worries about screening. I will check each one against government and city sources.

The history continues too. Next is the Meiji period, starting with the deposit, shikikin. The dictionary lists six meanings for that word.

From now on, “Today” and “Then” will alternate, one day each.

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Please note: Lease contracts and the legally required explanation of important matters (jūyō jikō setsumei) are provided in Japanese.