Heating in Japan: How to Heat a House and What It Costs

Japanese houses are heated one room at a time

The single fact that surprises every foreign buyer is that the Japanese housing stock was not designed to be heated as a whole. The industry calls the two approaches bubun danbo (部分暖房, partial heating) and zenkan danbo (全館暖房, whole-house heating), and outside Hokkaido the first one is the norm. There is no boiler, no radiator circuit, no thermostat for the building. Each room has its own appliance, switched on when someone walks in and off when they leave.

That choice has a history. Traditional houses were built for the summer, open to the air, with sliding paper partitions and deep eaves, and the cold season was handled with local heat sources: an irori (囲炉裏, sunken hearth), a brazier, later a kerosene stove. The modern insulation grades only became mandatory for new builds in 2025, so the 30 to 60 year old houses that make up most of the resale market were built under voluntary standards or none at all. Reading our guide to insulation in Japanese houses first will explain why the heating bill of an unrenovated house is what it is.

In practice, a January morning inside an uninsulated house looks like this.

Room	Typical morning temperature	Why
Living room, heater running	18 to 22 C	The one room actively heated
Bedroom on waking	6 to 12 C	Heating off overnight, single glazing
Corridor and stairs	5 to 10 C	Never heated, open to the entrance
Bathroom and toilet	4 to 10 C	Often an unheated extension on an outside wall
Genkan entrance	3 to 8 C	Concrete floor, direct contact with outside

Those differences are not a comfort detail: they are the reason the genkan is cold enough to store vegetables, the reason condensation forms on bedroom windows and feeds the mould problem described in our article on damp and mould in Japanese houses, and the reason Japan has a public health campaign about moving between a warm room and a cold bathroom.

The five heating systems you will actually meet

Whatever the listing says, the heating in a Japanese house comes down to five appliances. Most homes combine two or three of them.

1. The reverse-cycle air conditioner, called eakon

An eakon (エアコン, air conditioner) is an air-to-air heat pump: the same wall unit that cools in August heats in January. It is the default in every region south of Tohoku, it needs no fuel delivery and no flue, and it is the cheapest system to run because it moves heat rather than making it, delivering roughly three to five units of heat per unit of electricity in mild weather. Its weakness is the cold: output falls and the unit pauses to defrost itself when outdoor temperatures approach and pass zero, which is exactly why the north burns kerosene instead.

2. The kerosene fan heater

The sekiyu fan hita (石油ファンヒーター, kerosene fan heater) burns toyu (灯油, kerosene) from a refillable tank and blows hot air. It heats a cold room in minutes, which no heat pump can match, and it works during a power cut apart from the fan. It is a flued-free appliance burning fuel indoors, so it puts water vapour and combustion gases into the room and must be used with the window cracked open.

3. The kotatsu

A kotatsu (こたつ, heated table) is a low table with a heating element under the top and a quilt trapping the warm air. It heats people, not rooms, for about a tenth of the cost of heating the air around them. It is not a heating system, it is the reason a Japanese family can spend an evening in a 14 C room without complaining.

4. Underfloor heating

Yukadanbo (床暖房, underfloor heating) runs hot water or electric mats under the floor of the living room. It is common in flats and in houses built since about 2000, silent, and pleasant because it heats the surface you sit on. Retrofitting it into an old house means lifting the floor, so it is a renovation decision, not a heating decision.

5. The northern systems: central kerosene boilers and wood stoves

Hokkaido genuinely does have whole-house heating: a central kerosene boiler feeding panel radiators or warm air, fed from a 400 to 500 litre outdoor tank that a tanker refills through the winter. Wood stoves are a minority choice in mountain areas and old farmhouses, romantic and effective, but they need a certified flue and a supply of dry wood.

System	Equipment cost, installed	Running cost	Heats	Watch out for
Eakon heat pump, 2.2 kW	60,000 to 90,000 yen (385 to 575 dollars)	12 to 25 yen/hour	One room, 10 to 12 m2	Weak below 0 C, defrost cycles
Eakon heat pump, 4.0 kW, 200 V	130,000 to 200,000 yen (830 to 1,280 dollars)	20 to 45 yen/hour	Living room, 16 to 20 m2	Needs a dedicated 200 V line
Kerosene fan heater	15,000 to 40,000 yen (95 to 255 dollars)	24 to 48 yen/hour	One room, fast	Ventilation, fuel handling
Kotatsu	15,000 to 40,000 yen (95 to 255 dollars)	3 to 10 yen/hour	The people around it	Does nothing for the room
Underfloor heating, retrofit	600,000 to 1,500,000 yen (3,850 to 9,600 dollars)	30 to 60 yen/hour	Living room floor	Floor must come up
Central kerosene boiler, Hokkaido	400,000 to 900,000 yen (2,560 to 5,770 dollars)	15,000 to 40,000 yen/month	The whole house	Outdoor tank, annual servicing

Equipment prices are for supply and installation by a local contractor in 2026; running costs are calculated in the next section and assume an uninsulated to averagely insulated room.

What heating actually costs per hour and per month

Two prices drive everything. Household electricity in Japan sits at roughly 30 to 35 yen per kWh (0.19 to 0.22 dollars) once the fuel adjustment and renewable levy are included, and kerosene has traded around 110 to 130 yen per litre (0.70 to 0.83 dollars) in recent winters. The Agency for Natural Resources and Energy publishes the kerosene price weekly, prefecture by prefecture, and it is worth checking before you commit to a kerosene-heated house: the gap between Hokkaido and Kyushu is real, and so is the gap between a delivered tank and an 18 litre can bought at the petrol station, which usually runs around 2,000 to 2,300 yen (13 to 15 dollars).

Appliance	Consumption	Cost per hour	8 hours a day for 30 days
Kotatsu	100 to 300 W	3 to 10 yen	720 to 2,400 yen (5 to 15 dollars)
Eakon 2.2 kW, mild weather	400 to 700 W	12 to 25 yen	2,900 to 6,000 yen (19 to 38 dollars)
Eakon 4.0 kW, living room	0.7 to 1.4 kW	20 to 45 yen	4,800 to 10,800 yen (31 to 69 dollars)
Kerosene fan heater	0.2 to 0.4 L/hour	24 to 48 yen	5,800 to 11,500 yen (37 to 74 dollars)
Electric fan or halogen heater	0.8 to 1.2 kW	25 to 40 yen	6,000 to 9,600 yen (38 to 62 dollars)

The lesson of that table is the one nobody expects: the portable electric heater sold in every home centre is the most expensive way to heat a room in Japan, roughly twice the cost of the heat pump that is probably already on the wall above it. It converts one unit of electricity into one unit of heat, where the eakon converts it into three or more.

The monthly bill, in orders of magnitude

Household energy spending is surveyed monthly by the Statistics Bureau, and the seasonal shape is consistent: bills roughly double between October and January, and the January peak is far higher in the north, where kerosene is a separate line of its own. For a detached house of about 100 m2 with single glazing, budget 15,000 to 25,000 yen (95 to 160 dollars) of electricity in January in the Kanto and Kansai regions, and add 20,000 to 40,000 yen (130 to 255 dollars) of kerosene on top in Tohoku, Nagano or Hokkaido. A well insulated house in the same place will land at half of that, which is the whole argument for spending money on windows before spending it on appliances.

Climate zones: Hokkaido is a different country

Japan is divided into eight climate zones by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, numbered 1 in the far north to 8 in Okinawa, and the insulation standards are written zone by zone. Heating needs follow the same map. A house in Kagoshima is heated for six weeks a year with one appliance; the same floor area in Aomori is heated for five months and may consume 800 litres of kerosene over a winter.

Region	Zone	Heating season	Usual system	Indicative winter budget, 100 m2
Hokkaido	1 to 2	Late October to April	Central kerosene boiler	30,000 to 60,000 yen/month (190 to 385 dollars)
Tohoku, Nagano, Niigata	2 to 4	November to March	Kerosene plus eakon	25,000 to 45,000 yen/month (160 to 290 dollars)
Kanto, Kansai, Chubu plains	5 to 6	December to March	Eakon plus kotatsu	15,000 to 25,000 yen/month (95 to 160 dollars)
Kyushu, Shikoku, coastal Chugoku	6 to 7	December to February	Eakon alone	10,000 to 18,000 yen/month (64 to 115 dollars)
Okinawa	8	Rarely	None, or a small heater	Negligible

This is a real criterion for choosing where to buy, and it cuts both ways. The cheap houses are in the cold zones, but a house in Hokkaido is usually better insulated than an equivalent house near Tokyo, because the north has built to a real standard for decades. The worst combination is not the coldest region: it is a zone 4 or 5 house, cold enough to need five months of heating and built as if it were in Kyushu. Our articles on buying a house in Hokkaido and on investing in Nagano go into each market in detail.

Five checks to make on the viewing, before the first winter

None of these appear in a listing. All of them decide what heating will cost you, and four of the five are cheap to fix before you move in and expensive afterwards.

1. The contracted amperage

In the Tokyo, Tohoku, Chubu, Hokuriku and Hokkaido supply areas, a household subscribes to a keiyaku anpea (keiyakuアンペア, contracted amperage), usually between 20 and 60 A, and the standing charge follows it. Older houses are often on 30 A, which trips as soon as two heaters and a kettle run at once. Check the main breaker in the consumer unit: the figure is printed on it. Raising it is a free breaker swap with most suppliers and a few hundred yen more per month, but it has to be requested. In the Kansai, Chugoku, Shikoku and Kyushu areas there is no amperage to choose, which is one less thing to check.

2. Whether there is a 200 V line

Any air conditioner above roughly 3.6 kW, the size a real living room needs, runs on 200 V and wants its own circuit. Old houses have 100 V sockets only. Pulling a dedicated 200 V line costs 15,000 to 30,000 yen (95 to 190 dollars) per outlet if the consumer unit is close, considerably more if it is not.

3. Mains gas or bottled propane

Two thirds of rural Japan runs on puropan gasu (プロパンガス, bottled propane) rather than toshi gasu (都市ガス, mains gas), and propane commonly costs one and a half to two times more per unit of energy. The distributor is tied to the property and the tariff is not regulated. If the house has gas underfloor heating and propane bottles at the side wall, price the gas before you price the house. This matters as much as the purchase price itself on a small property, a point we develop in how much a house costs in Japan.

4. The kerosene logistics

A kerosene-heated house needs somewhere to keep fuel, and in the north a delivery contract. Look for an outdoor tank and its condition, a covered place for 18 litre cans, and ask whether the local supplier still delivers to the street. In the remote valleys where the cheapest houses are, some rounds have been cut.

5. The chimney holes and the old appliances

Round patches at skirting level in the wall are old flue holes for a stove. They are useful, and they are also draughts. A kerosene appliance left in place by the seller is not a gift: units more than about ten years old should be replaced, and the product safety institute publishes accident data on exactly this category every winter.

These checks belong in the same visit as the structural ones. Our guide to buying a house in Japan sets out the full viewing sequence, and if you cannot be there in person, our Signature support package covers the inspection visit.

Case study: heating an empty akiya in Nagano

Take a real configuration: a 1985 detached house of 100 m2 in a valley of Nagano prefecture, zone 3, bought empty for 4,000,000 yen (25,600 dollars). It has one 100 V socket per room, a 30 A main breaker, an ageing kerosene stove left behind, aluminium single glazing and no air conditioning. Here is what bringing it up to a liveable winter costs.

Item	Cost	Comment
Eakon 4.0 kW in the living room	160,000 yen (1,025 dollars)	200 V unit, supplied and fitted
Dedicated 200 V line	25,000 yen (160 dollars)	Consumer unit on the same floor
Eakon 2.2 kW in the main bedroom	75,000 yen (480 dollars)	100 V, standard installation
Two kerosene fan heaters	60,000 yen (385 dollars)	Replacing the unit left behind
Kotatsu and quilt	25,000 yen (160 dollars)	The cheapest comfort in the house
Raising the supply from 30 to 50 A	0 yen	Free breaker change, about 4,000 yen (26 dollars) more per year
Total equipment	345,000 yen (2,210 dollars)	8.6 percent of the purchase price

The January bill in that house, heating the living room all day and the bedroom in the evening, lands around 20,000 yen (130 dollars) of electricity plus 120 to 200 litres of kerosene as a back-up, so 34,000 to 44,000 yen (220 to 280 dollars) in the month. Over a five month season, heating costs roughly 110,000 to 150,000 yen (705 to 960 dollars) a year.

Now the comparison that matters. Fitting secondary inner windows to the eight main openings, at about 400,000 yen (2,565 dollars) before the national window grant, typically cuts that bill by 30 to 40 percent and makes the bedrooms usable. Spending on the envelope beats spending on appliances every time, and the arithmetic is set out in our article on renovation costs for machiya and kominka. Browse what those budgets buy on our akiya listings and among the kominka for sale.

Safety: ventilation, fires and thermal shock

Heating is the leading seasonal cause of domestic accidents in Japan, and two of the three risks are specific to the way houses are heated here.

Combustion appliances need air

Kerosene stoves and fan heaters used indoors are unflued: everything they burn stays in the room. Manufacturers require ventilation every hour or two, and that instruction is not decorative. Never run one in a sealed room, never in a bedroom overnight, and never refuel a hot appliance indoors. The National Institute of Technology and Evaluation publishes the accident statistics for these products, and the recurring causes are ageing units, the wrong fuel poured into the tank, and objects left to dry too close to the grille.

Fire

The combination of a combustion heater, tatami, paper sliding doors and a futon airing nearby is exactly how winter house fires start. Keep a metre of clear space in front of any combustion appliance, and remember that a house bought for holidays is a house nobody watches.

Thermal shock

Hito shokku (ヒートショック, thermal shock) is the sudden blood pressure swing caused by moving from a heated room to a cold bathroom and then into a hot bath. The Consumer Affairs Agency runs a campaign on it every winter, because bath-related deaths are counted in the thousands each year and concentrate among people over 65, in the coldest months. The prevention is architectural, not medical: heat the changing room before bathing, keep the bath water below about 41 C, and put a small heater in the bathroom. If you are buying a house for parents or for your own retirement, this is a real design criterion, as we note in our guide to retiring in Japan.

And the empty house in winter

In zones 1 to 4, a house left unoccupied must be drained. Mizunuki (水抜き, draining the pipes) means shutting the stopcock and emptying the pipes, the water heater and the toilet cistern before the first hard freeze; a burst pipe in an empty house floods for weeks before anyone notices. Any holiday home in the north needs either the procedure or a neighbour who runs it, a point covered in our article on holiday homes in Japan.

The mistakes that cost the most

• Buying the appliances before the windows. A powerful heater in an uninsulated room raises the bill and not the temperature. Glazing first, appliances second.
• Heating with portable electric heaters. Twice the running cost of the heat pump on the wall, for less heat. They are for the bathroom and for five minutes, not for the winter.
• Sizing the eakon from the box. Manufacturer room sizes assume an insulated house built to modern standards. In a 1985 house with single glazing, take one size up, or the unit will run flat out and never reach the set temperature.
• Ignoring the meter and the breaker. Discovering the 30 A limit on the first cold evening, when everything trips, is a rite of passage that a two minute check on the viewing avoids.
• Forgetting the propane contract. An unregulated propane tariff can add tens of thousands of yen a year on a small house, and it does not appear anywhere in the sale price.
• Counting on the kotatsu alone. It keeps people warm; it does nothing for the walls, the pipes or the damp, and a house kept at 10 C grows mould.
• Leaving a northern house full of water. A frozen pipe is the most common insurance claim on an unoccupied second home in the snow country.

Conclusion: heating is a purchase criterion, not a detail

Heating in Japan is not a system you inherit with the house, it is a set of appliances you choose, and its cost is decided long before you switch anything on: by the climate zone, by the state of the windows, by the amperage on the breaker and by whether the gas bottle at the side of the house is propane. A house in zone 5 with single glazing and a 30 A supply will cost 60,000 to 100,000 yen (385 to 640 dollars) a year to heat badly. The same house with inner windows and a correctly sized heat pump costs half that and is comfortable.

Look at these five points on the viewing, price the equipment before you make an offer, and treat the first winter budget as part of the purchase price rather than a surprise in January. Every listing in our akiya catalogue gives the construction year and the prefecture, which is enough to place a house on the climate zone map and to know, before you visit, whether you are buying a heating problem or a house.

Frequently asked questions

Do Japanese houses have central heating?

Almost none do, outside Hokkaido. Japanese homes are heated room by room with individual appliances, mainly reverse-cycle air conditioners and kerosene heaters, and corridors, bathrooms and entrance halls are usually not heated at all.

How much does it cost to heat a house in Japan in winter?

For a 100 m2 detached house with single glazing, budget 15,000 to 25,000 yen (95 to 160 dollars) of electricity in January in the Tokyo or Osaka regions, and 25,000 to 45,000 yen (160 to 290 dollars) all in for Tohoku, Nagano or Hokkaido, where kerosene is a second bill on top of the electricity.

What is the cheapest way to heat a Japanese house?

The reverse-cycle air conditioner, at roughly 12 to 25 yen per hour for a bedroom-sized unit, because a heat pump delivers three to five units of heat per unit of electricity. A heated table is cheaper still at 3 to 10 yen per hour, but it warms people rather than the room.

Are kerosene heaters safe to use indoors in Japan?

They are the standard appliance in the north, but they are unflued, so they must be used with the room ventilated every hour or two, never overnight in a bedroom, and never refuelled while hot. Replace any unit more than about ten years old rather than keeping the one the seller left behind.

Why does the breaker trip when I turn on two heaters?

Because older houses in the Tokyo, Tohoku, Chubu, Hokuriku and Hokkaido supply areas are often on a 30 A contracted amperage. Raising it to 50 or 60 A is usually a free breaker change with the electricity supplier, for a few hundred yen more on the monthly standing charge.

Is underfloor heating worth installing in an old Japanese house?

Rarely as a first move. Retrofitting it costs 600,000 to 1,500,000 yen (3,850 to 9,600 dollars) because the floor has to come up, and in an uninsulated house most of that heat leaves through the windows. Insulate the openings first, then consider it during a full floor renovation.

How many air conditioners does a Japanese house need?

One per room you actually use in winter, so typically two to four in a family house: a 4.0 kW unit for the living room and 2.2 kW units for the bedrooms. Count 60,000 to 200,000 yen (385 to 1,280 dollars) installed per unit, and check that a 200 V line exists for the living room.

How do I stop the pipes freezing in an empty house in the north?

Drain the system before the first hard freeze: close the stopcock, empty the pipes, the water heater and the toilet cistern. This procedure is routine in Hokkaido and Tohoku, and it is the single most common cause of insurance claims on unoccupied second homes in the snow country.