What Was “Shikikin” Originally? | Room Hunting, Then and Now: Meiji ①

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

The Meiji period (1868–1912) starts here. The first topic is shikikin, the deposit you hand over when you rent a home in Japan.

I opened the dictionary to check where the word comes from, and stopped. It had six meanings.

Six meanings for one word

The Nihon Kokugo Daijiten (concise edition) lists these senses for 敷金:

1. In the Edo period, earnest money in market trading
2. In the Edo period, an advance paid by a wholesaler to producers
3. A warehouse storage fee
4. Money given in thanks; reikin
5. Money a tenant hands to the landlord in advance when renting a house
6. A dowry

The deposit we know is number 5.

A dowry and key money were “shikikin” too

For number 6, the dowry, the dictionary quotes a book from 1715: a wife who brings shikikin “sits on” her husband. The verb for laying something down, shiku, is the first half of shikikin. It seems people enjoyed wordplay 300 years ago too.

Number 4 surprised me: “money given in thanks; reikin”, quoted from a puppet play of 1637. Today shikikin (deposit) and reikin (key money) are charged separately. In the dictionary they sit inside the same word.

What the senses seem to share is “money you hand over first”. That is my own guess.

The rental deposit appears in a story by Higuchi Ichiyō

For number 5, the rental deposit, the dictionary quotes Utsusemi, a story by Higuchi Ichiyō published in the Yomiuri newspaper in 1895 (Meiji 28).

The story opens with a house for rent near the botanical garden in Koishikawa, Tokyo. A notice has been on the gatepost for about three months and no tenant has been found. The terms: a deposit of three months’ rent, and a rent of 7 yen 50 sen.

That makes the deposit 22 yen 50 sen.

Then a man comes to the sahai, asks to see the house, and decides on the spot. He will rent it from today, he says, and leaves the deposit right away.

It is fiction, not a record of a real deal. Still, it shows the steps of room hunting in Meiji Tokyo: see the notice on the gate, speak to the manager, view the house, leave the deposit.

A sahai is a person who manages rental houses on behalf of the owner (Digital Daijisen). That is the same role as the yamori in Edo ⑥. The notice on the gate is the for-rent sign from Edo ①. The era had changed, but the tools of room hunting were still those of Edo.

The Civil Code defined the deposit only in 2020

Japan’s Civil Code was enacted in 1896 (Meiji 29).

Yet a Ministry of Justice pamphlet says that before the recent revision, the Code had no provision defining the deposit or saying when it must be returned.

The definition arrived with the revision that took effect in April 2020, about 120 years after the Code was made.

Today the deposit is money you leave in trust

The Civil Code now defines the deposit as money the tenant hands to the landlord, whatever it is called, to secure the payment of rent and other obligations under the lease (Article 622-2, in my plain wording).

Because it is held as security, when the lease ends and you return the property, you get back what remains after unpaid rent and similar amounts are deducted. The same revision also made it explicit that the tenant does not have to restore ordinary wear and tear or ageing.

When you sign, check not only how much the deposit is, but also what the contract says will be deducted when you move out. Unlike Ichiyō’s house about 130 years ago, today you receive the explanation in writing.

I could not find out when the custom of leaving a deposit for a rented house began. 1895 is the year of the example the dictionary cites, not the year the custom started. A related dictionary entry, shikigane, also lists the sense of money deposited when renting property, so the custom may well be older.

Sources (in Japanese): Kotobank, 敷金 / Aozora Bunko, Higuchi Ichiyō, Utsusemi / Ministry of Justice pamphlet on the Civil Code revision / Ministry of Justice, Civil Code revision.

The next Meiji episode is about boarding houses, geshukuya, which grew up in student districts. Tomorrow’s “Today” episode is about move-in costs, which continues the deposit story.

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