Average Apartment Size in Tokyo and in Japan

Average apartment size in Tokyo: the short answer

Japan measures its housing stock every five years through the Housing and Land Survey (Jūtaku Tochi Tōkei Chōsa), and the 2023 edition was published in September 2024. It counts 55,665,000 occupied dwellings and gives the average floor area of each category. Here are the four figures worth memorising.

Figure	Area	In sq ft	What it covers
Japan, all dwellings	91.66 m2	987 sq ft	Houses and flats, owned and rented
Tokyo prefecture, all dwellings	64.02 m2	689 sq ft	Includes the western suburbs and the islands
Tokyo 23 wards, all dwellings	60.04 m2	646 sq ft	The central city
Tokyo 23 wards, rented flat	38.16 m2	411 sq ft	What most newcomers actually live in

The last line is the one that matches what people mean when they ask about the average apartment size in Tokyo. A rented flat in the 23 wards averages 1.98 rooms and 14.94 jō (tatami, the tatami-mat unit used to describe room size) of living space. In other words, the typical central Tokyo rental is a one-bedroom or a studio, not a two-bedroom.

The same numbers in Japanese units

Japanese listings rarely stop at square metres. Two other units appear constantly, and both convert cleanly.

Unit	Conversion	Used for
Square metre (m², heibei)	1 m2 = 10.76 sq ft	The legal standard, on every listing
Tsubo (tsubo)	1 tsubo = 3.3058 m2 = 35.6 sq ft	Land, and price per unit area
Jō or jō written 帖 (tatami)	1 jō = at least 1.62 m2 in advertising	Individual room size

So the average Tokyo dwelling of 64.02 m2 is about 19.4 tsubo or 40 jō, and the 38.16 m2 rented flat is about 11.5 tsubo or 24 jō. Our glossary of Japanese property vocabulary covers the rest of the units you will meet.

Tokyo versus the rest of Japan: a 2.2 times gap

Tokyo is the smallest-housed prefecture in Japan, and the gap with the largest is not marginal. Toyama prefecture, on the Sea of Japan coast, averages 140.01 m2 per dwelling against Tokyo's 64.02 m2: 2.19 times more space, in the same country, under the same building code.

Prefecture	Average dwelling	In sq ft
Toyama	140.01 m2	1,507 sq ft
Fukui	136.71 m2	1,472 sq ft
Yamagata	134.44 m2	1,447 sq ft
Akita	132.33 m2	1,424 sq ft
Niigata	130.13 m2	1,401 sq ft
Japan average	91.66 m2	987 sq ft
Kyoto prefecture	85.20 m2	917 sq ft
Fukuoka prefecture	83.46 m2	898 sq ft
Kanagawa	76.51 m2	824 sq ft
Osaka prefecture	75.53 m2	813 sq ft
Okinawa	74.92 m2	806 sq ft
Tokyo	64.02 m2	689 sq ft

City by city, the differences are smaller than you would expect

Once you compare city centres rather than whole prefectures, the ranking tightens. Osaka City averages 60.05 m2, almost exactly the same as Tokyo's 23 wards, while Sapporo reaches 79.47 m2 and Kyoto City 72.84 m2.

City	All dwellings	Rented flat
Tokyo, 23 wards	60.04 m2	38.16 m2
Osaka City	60.05 m2	37.78 m2
Fukuoka City	64.08 m2	40.97 m2
Kyoto City	72.84 m2	36.23 m2
Yokohama	73.71 m2	39.93 m2
Nagoya	76.86 m2	44.01 m2
Sapporo	79.47 m2	44.36 m2

Kyoto is the interesting case: its overall average is high because the city keeps a large stock of old family houses and machiya (machiya, wooden townhouses), but its rented flats are the smallest of any major Japanese city at 36.23 m2. A student city with a protected historic core produces exactly that shape. If the old houses are what interest you, our machiya for sale listings and the Kyoto prefecture page are the place to start.

Rented or owned, house or flat: four very different averages

The single biggest error in every article written about this subject is quoting one national average. The survey breaks the stock down, and the categories are three times apart.

Category	Japan	Tokyo prefecture
Owner-occupied (持ち家)	118.25 m2	90.52 m2
Rented (shakuya)	45.39 m2	39.80 m2
Detached house (一戸建)	126.89 m2	107.79 m2
Flat in an apartment block (共同jūtaku)	50.33 m2	48.12 m2
Rented flat	42.13 m2	38.67 m2

Read the table the way a buyer should. An owner-occupied home in Japan averages 118.25 m2 (1,273 sq ft), which is a comfortable family house by European standards, and a detached house averages 126.89 m2. The 38 m2 figure that shocks foreign readers describes the rental market in the densest wards, not what people buy.

Why the stock splits this way

Of 55.67 million occupied dwellings, 29.32 million are detached houses and 24.97 million are flats in apartment blocks. The detached stock sits mostly outside the big city centres, which is why the national average of 91.66 m2 lands so far above what a Tokyo renter experiences. It is also why the empty-house stock we list is large: a rural detached house that nobody inherits stays standing and stays big. You can see the effect directly in our akiya listings, and in the houses under 50,000 dollars selection, where three-figure floor areas are the norm rather than the exception.

What the advertised floor area actually measures

Two listings can quote the same number and describe different amounts of usable space. This is where foreign buyers lose money, and it has nothing to do with the averages above.

Wall-centre against inner-edge

Japanese practice uses two ways of drawing the outline of a home.

• Kabeshin (壁芯, wall-centre): the area is measured to the middle of the walls. This is the figure used in sales brochures for new build and for detached houses.
• Uchinori (内法, inner-edge): the area is measured inside the walls. This is the figure recorded in the property register for a flat in a condominium.

For the same flat, the registered inner-edge area is smaller than the advertised wall-centre area, typically by a few square metres. It matters beyond vanity: tax reliefs and loan conditions that use a 50 m2 threshold are assessed on the registered figure, so a flat advertised at 51 m2 can fail a 50 m2 test. Always ask which basis the number uses, and check the tōki bo (tōki簿, property register) before signing. Our article on the Japanese property register explains how to read it.

The tatami unit is a floor, not a fact

When a room is described as "6 jō", the advertising code (fudōsan no hyōji ni kansuru kōsei kyōsō kiyaku, the fair competition code for real estate advertising) requires that one jō represent at least 1.62 m2. It is a legal floor, not a measurement: the real mats vary by region.

Tatami standard	Region	Area per mat
Kyōma (京間)	Kyoto and the Kansai	about 1.82 m2
Chūkyōma (Nakagyō間)	Nagoya, Hokuriku, Tōhoku	about 1.66 m2
Edoma (江戸間)	Tokyo and the Kantō	about 1.55 m2
Danchima (団地間)	Post-war apartment blocks	about 1.45 m2

A six-mat room in Kyoto is therefore around 10.9 m2 while the same six mats in a Tokyo block can be 8.7 m2, a fifth less, for an identical description. For everything else on a listing sheet, from madori (madori (floor plan), floor plan codes such as 1LDK) to access times, see our guide to reading a Japanese property listing.

Japanese homes have been shrinking for seventy years

This is the finding that no English-language article reports, and it comes straight out of the same survey. Sorted by the period in which the dwelling was built, the average floor area falls almost without interruption.

Built	Average floor area	In sq ft
Before 1950	137.65 m2	1,482 sq ft
1951 to 1970	105.77 m2	1,138 sq ft
1971 to 1980	96.77 m2	1,042 sq ft
1981 to 1990	91.50 m2	985 sq ft
1991 to 2000	93.29 m2	1,004 sq ft
2006 to 2010	85.99 m2	926 sq ft
2016 to 2018	80.97 m2	872 sq ft
2022	79.99 m2	861 sq ft
2023 (January to September)	77.17 m2	831 sq ft

A home built before 1950 is 78 % larger than one built in 2023. In Tokyo the same curve runs from 89.22 m2 before 1950 to 56.05 m2 for dwellings built in 2022, and in the 23 wards from 83.00 m2 down to 51.46 m2.

The average is falling too, not just new build

Between the 2018 and the 2023 surveys the whole national stock lost ground: 93.04 m2 to 91.66 m2. Tokyo fell from 65.90 m2 to 64.02 m2, Osaka prefecture from 76.98 m2 to 75.53 m2, and Toyama, the roomiest prefecture, from 145.17 m2 to 140.01 m2. Smaller new units are being added faster than large old ones are being replaced.

For a foreign buyer this reverses the usual instinct. In Japan, age buys space: the pre-1980 stock is where the square metres are, and it is exactly the stock that is emptying out. That is the arithmetic behind our kominka for sale listings, where 150 m2 farmhouses are routine. The counterpart is that the building itself is treated as a depreciating asset, which our article on why Japanese houses lose their value explains in detail, and that pre-1981 construction predates the current earthquake code, covered in our piece on the 1981 seismic standard.

How much space the official standards say you need

Japan does not leave "enough space" to opinion. The Basic Plan for Housing, adopted by the cabinet and maintained by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (Kokudo Kōtsū-shō, MLIT), sets two published benchmarks.

Household	Minimum standard	Target, urban	Target, general
One person	25 m2	40 m2	55 m2
Two people	30 m2	55 m2	75 m2
Three people	40 m2	75 m2	100 m2
Four people	50 m2	95 m2	125 m2

The minimum standard is the floor below which a dwelling is considered unfit for a healthy and cultured life. The two targets are what policy aims at: the urban figure for dense city living, the general figure elsewhere.

Now compare. The average rented flat in Tokyo's 23 wards, at 38.16 m2, sits below the 40 m2 urban target for a single person. It clears the 30 m2 minimum for a couple but falls short of the 40 m2 minimum for a household of three. This is not an anomaly of the cheap end of the market: it is the average. Anyone moving a family of four to central Tokyo should treat 50 m2 as a hard floor and 95 m2 as the realistic comfort level, and price accordingly. Our article on the cost of living in Japan puts those rents in context.

These standards are also the best yardstick for judging a narrow city house on a 40 square metre plot; see our guide to the tiny house in Japan.

What 100,000 yen a month actually buys, city by city

The same survey publishes rent per square metre per month for rented homes, which turns the space question into a budget question. The figures below are averages across the whole rental stock of each area, not a price list: small units cost more per square metre than large ones, so treat these as an order of magnitude.

Take a budget of 100,000 yen a month (about 641 dollars at the fixed rate of 156 yen to the dollar that we use across the site). Here is roughly what it rents.

Area	Rent per m2, monthly	Space for 100,000 yen
Tokyo, 23 wards	2,497 yen	40.0 m2 (431 sq ft)
Tokyo prefecture	2,274 yen	44.0 m2 (473 sq ft)
Kanagawa	1,726 yen	57.9 m2 (624 sq ft)
Osaka City	1,619 yen	61.8 m2 (665 sq ft)
Kyoto City	1,590 yen	62.9 m2 (677 sq ft)
Fukuoka City	1,368 yen	73.1 m2 (787 sq ft)
Sapporo	1,149 yen	87.0 m2 (937 sq ft)
Okinawa	1,075 yen	93.0 m2 (1,001 sq ft)
Toyama	963 yen	103.8 m2 (1,118 sq ft)
Akita	861 yen	116.1 m2 (1,250 sq ft)

Worked example: the price of one extra room

A couple living in a 38 m2 flat in central Tokyo pays roughly 95,000 yen a month at the ward average. Moving to 55 m2, the general target for two people, costs around 137,000 yen at the same rate: 42,000 yen more a month, or about 504,000 yen a year (some 3,230 dollars). Over a five-year posting that single extra room costs 2.5 million yen in rent, with nothing owned at the end.

The same 55 m2 in Sapporo would rent for about 63,000 yen, and in Akita for about 47,000 yen. This arithmetic is why buyers looking for space leave the centre: our price map and yield simulator lets you test the trade-off on real listings, and the houses under 100,000 dollars selection shows what the same annual rent buys outright in the regions.

Five mistakes to avoid when reading Japanese floor areas

1. Quoting the national average to judge a city flat. The 91.66 m2 national figure includes 29 million detached houses. For a Tokyo rental the relevant number is 38.16 m2, less than half.
2. Comparing an advertised area with a registered one. Wall-centre and inner-edge are different outlines. A condominium advertised just above 50 m2 may be registered just below it, which changes eligibility for tax relief.
3. Treating jō as a fixed size. Six mats means at least 9.72 m2 in an advert, but the physical mats range from 1.45 to 1.82 m2 depending on the region and the age of the building.
4. Forgetting that balconies do not count. A balcony in a Japanese condominium is common property allocated for exclusive use, so it is excluded from the quoted area, unlike the practice in several European markets.
5. Assuming new means bigger. The stock has shrunk for seventy years. If floor area is your priority, the pre-1980 market is where it is, with the seismic and renovation questions that come with it, which is precisely what the buying guide is built to walk through.

One last practical point. Buying a home in Japan is open to non-residents, with no visa requirement and no residence right attached to the purchase, and total purchase costs stay at or below 6 % of the price. A Japanese mortgage, however, is in practice reserved for people who both live and work in Japan, so plan for a cash purchase. If you would rather have the search, the negotiation and the signing handled on the ground, that is what our buyer support package covers. Space in the regions is affordable in cash terms precisely because of that.

In short: pick the number that matches your situation

The average apartment size in Tokyo is 38.16 m2 if you mean a rented flat in the 23 wards, 48.12 m2 if you mean any flat in the prefecture, and 64.02 m2 if you mean any dwelling at all. Nationally the equivalents are 42.13 m2, 50.33 m2 and 91.66 m2, and an owner-occupied detached house averages 126.89 m2.

Three conclusions follow for anyone buying. Space is concentrated in the older stock, since a pre-1950 home is 78 % larger than a 2023 one. Space is concentrated outside the metropolitan prefectures, with Toyama at 2.19 times Tokyo. And the advertised area needs checking against the register before it means anything. Browse the current listings with those three filters in mind, or read the full breakdown of what a house costs in Japan to put a price on the square metres.

Frequently asked questions

What is the average apartment size in Tokyo?

A rented flat in Tokyo's 23 wards averages 38.16 m2 (411 sq ft), and any flat in Tokyo prefecture averages 48.12 m2. Across all dwelling types, including detached houses, the Tokyo prefecture average is 64.02 m2. The figures come from the 2023 Housing and Land Survey.

How big is the average home in Japan?

91.66 m2 (987 sq ft) across all occupied dwellings in 2023. That splits into 118.25 m2 for owner-occupied homes and 45.39 m2 for rented ones, and into 126.89 m2 for detached houses against 50.33 m2 for flats.

How many square metres is a 1LDK apartment in Japan?

There is no legal size for a 1LDK, only a layout: one bedroom plus a combined living, dining and kitchen room. In practice a 1LDK runs from roughly 30 to 50 m2, which brackets the 38.16 m2 average for rented flats in central Tokyo.

How many square metres is one tatami mat?

In advertising, one jo must represent at least 1.62 m2. Physical mats vary by region: about 1.82 m2 in Kyoto, 1.66 m2 around Nagoya, 1.55 m2 in Tokyo and 1.45 m2 in post-war apartment blocks.

How do you convert tsubo to square metres?

One tsubo equals 3.3058 m2, or about 35.6 sq ft, and corresponds to two tatami mats. To convert a price per tsubo into a price per square metre, divide by 3.3058.

Are Japanese apartments getting smaller?

Yes, and the trend is seventy years old. Dwellings built before 1950 average 137.65 m2 against 77.17 m2 for those built in 2023, and the national stock average fell from 93.04 m2 in 2018 to 91.66 m2 in 2023.

Which prefecture in Japan has the largest homes?

Toyama, at 140.01 m2 per dwelling, followed by Fukui, Yamagata, Akita and Niigata. Tokyo has the smallest at 64.02 m2, so a Toyama home is 2.19 times larger on average.

Is 40 square metres enough to live in Tokyo?

It meets Japan's official urban target of 40 m2 for a single person and comfortably clears the 30 m2 minimum for a couple, but it falls below the 40 m2 minimum standard for a household of three. For a family of four the minimum is 50 m2 and the urban target 95 m2.