Home insurance in Japan
22 Oct 2025 | #housing | #japan | #moneyWe are building our house in Tokyo, and as the construction is coming to an end, we looked into home insurance.
Is it mandatory?
No, home insurance is not mandatory in Japan, although the mortgage lender might require it (source). Our bank (SMTB, 三井住友信託銀行) requires it for the mortgage.
Earthquakes are special
There are two major types of coverage: earthquake, and everything else. The reason for this distinction is that if a big earthquake would to hit a major city (e.g. Tokyo), then insurance providers could face bankruptcy. So the government re-insures the earthquake insurances, however as a result of this, they also enforce some additional rules (source):
- earthquake insurance can only be bought together with fire insurance
- coverage is limited to 30-50% of the coverage of the fire insurance. This means that while fire insurance might pay the entire value of the house, earthquake insurance will only pay half or less
- fire, tsunami, vulcanic eruptions, etc. that happen as a result of an earthquake will be covered by the earthquake insurance (with the lower limits)
- pre-defined damage classifications and corresponding payouts (e.g. partial loss of 3-20% will pay 5% of the insured value)
- if the overall (country-wide) damage is truly huge (exceeds a government defined amount based on the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake), then all payouts will be scaled down by the same percentage
This does mean that if your house gets destroyed in an earthquake, the insurance won’t cover the cost of rebuilding. Some insurance companies offer additional insurance to bring the coverage up to 100%, but those can be expensive, and as they are not part of the government reinsured scheme, they might not get paid if the insurance company becomes insolvent.
Fireproof houses
Since fire insurance is the mandatory, basic block of the home insurance, a lot depends on how fireproof the house is. This depends on the building structure (建物の構造). For the calculation there is a common flowchart used by many websites:
Which comes down to the following for single-family houses:
- Are the pillars “Concrete structure” or “Steel frame structure”?
- Yes → T-Structure (Fire-resistant Structure)
- No → Is it fire-resistant (耐火建築物), semi-fire-resistant (準耐火建築物), or quasi-fire-resistant by ministerial ordinance (省令準耐火)?
- Yes → T-Structure (Fire-resistant Structure)
- No → H-Structure (Other Structures)
All Ichijo houses are “quasi-fire-resistant by ministerial ordinance” (省令準耐火) so we fall into the T-Structure category resulting in a lower insurance premium.
Ichijo introduced insurance (Tokyo Marine)
Ichijo sent us a letter back in May (around the time they started building the foundation) telling us that we don’t need to worry about home insurance, they will introduce a great deal for us at a later time. It felt a bit too much to send a paper letter just for this, but I guess they had people ask about it, or get their own insurance before the introduction.
Then in August (so about 2.5 months before the house was ready) we got the details in the mail: red big letters saying that we will save 80% thanks to this great deal. The insurance company is 東京海上日動, Tokyo Marine Nichido one of the 3 big non-life insurance companies of Japan (三メガ損保).
Details of the quote:
- Insured amounts for fire insurance (everything other than earthquake)
- House: 35.6 million yen
- Personal belongings: 5 million yen
- Insured amounts for earthquake (half of the above)
- House: 17.8 million yen
- Personal belongings: 2.5 million yen
- Length: 5 year
- Deductible (amount to pay out of pocket): 0 yen, except for damage caused by other people (neighbor, break-in) or ourselves. These have a deductible of 50,000 yen
They included 3 potential plans. All amounts are for the full 5 years to be paid at once at the start.
| Name of the plan | Content | Price (5 year) |
|---|---|---|
| Basic plan (基本しっかりプラン) | Fire, wind, water (flooding), and earthquake damages. | 230,200 yen |
| Solid and secure plan (がっちり安心補償プラン) | The above and also damages by other people - break-ins, neighbor damaging your place (feels more relevant for apartments) | 238,880 yen |
| Complete peace of mind plan (まるごと安心補償プラン) | The above and damages by ourselves (e.g. dropping an expensive vase, breaking the wall when carrying heavy things) | 249,430 yen |
The plans are not that different in price, but also the coverage doesn’t really increase (remember, the additional coverages of #2 and #3 all come with a 50,000 yen deductible).
Long phone calls
A few weeks after receiving the letter with the above information, I got a phone call from Tokyo Marine wanting to discuss the insurance. It took about 40 minutes mainly because both me, my wife, but also the insurance person was unprepared (e.g. I was surprised by earthquake insurance covering only half and wanted to know the reason, which the person didn’t know).
One optional extra that I wanted to add was the personal liability insurance (個人賠償責任補償特約). This covers cases where someone from my family injures another person or causes damage to their property (e.g. kids dropping something in a store, breaking a friend’s TV, scratching a car). I was told that this costs 10,050 yen (coverage limit of 100 million yen) or 11,300 yen (without limit) for the 5 years. Pretty reasonable. So I asked them if I can just add this when I scan the QR code on the paper to apply for the insurance. I was told no, they will have to send me a new paper letter with a new QR code. On the QR code I can only pay for the insurance detailed in the letter.
We asked if insurance claims are also handled over the phone, and they told us that no, they have a website for that. They also said that generally they pay the insurance claims within 30 days, but if there is a major earthquake in Tokyo, then it would likely take longer.
Our address wasn’t finalized yet, so they asked if they could call us a week later to get that updated (again, sending another letter with the new contract). They said they can’t do this via e-mail, only on the phone, so we agreed. Second phone call also took longer than 20 minutes.
By this point my wife was pretty unhappy with the whole process: having mostly pointless long phone calls, having to reissue the quote on paper for all minor change, etc. I was also concerned that this is the process where they want to take our money, and if this process is so bad, then imagine the insurance claims process where we are trying to take their money. I have very little hope that it would be more user friendly.
Later they called us a third time. The caller person was different, and he was okay to send us the new quote via email this time, so maybe we just got unlucky with the first person? Still, we were loosing confidence in them.
Kakaku to the rescue
Similar to my car insurance experience I took a look at 価格.com, the popular price comparison website. On their home insurance section I searched for the same content as we got from Tokyo Marine:
And the results didn’t look very good:
Was the Ichijo-special Tokyo Marine offer actually a good deal? It was the cheapest but not by a big margin, so I decided to take a look on the insurance website to see if I can remove some unnecessary coverage and get it down to be competitive with Tokyo Marine.
Sony insurance
I had great experience with Sony travel insurance in the past (and also this was the cheapest company that I recognized the name of), so I decided to check them out. Kakaku also listed that they pay claims within 2 business days in general (4 business days in some cases), which is much better than the 30 day promise of Tokyo Marine.
I go through the Sony insurance wizard and get an estimate of 201,420 yen (for the full, everything included plan). How did the Kakaku 336,783 yen go down this much? I believe it’s because Kakaku didn’t ask for the earthquake resistance of the building, and since Ichijo houses have the highest (level 3) earthquake resistance, that saves 50% of the earthquake insurance part of the quote.
Make earthquake insurance cover 100%
Sony has the additional option to increase the earthquake coverage to 100% (technically it is a separate insurance that pays out the same amount as the earthquake insurance if at least half the house is destroyed). The cost of this is an extra 182,290 yen for 5 years, almost doubling the price of the insurance.
Since our house is pretty earthquake and fire resistant, we decided not to take this. (Even if a big earthquake would to hit, it is unlikely that our house would get damaged to an extent where we would need this payout. If there is only minor damage, then both the cost of fixing and the insurance payout are lower, and we can cover the other half of the cost out-of-pocket.)
Fine-tuning
We don’t really have expensive belongings, so decided to limit the coverage to the house-only (the original quote had a coverage of 5 million yen for things inside the house). The site also showed us the breakdown cost of each option. This gave us the option to fine-tune the coverage and get what we think is necessary.
In the end we decided to get these:
| Coverage | Premium for 5 year | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Earthquake (incl. volcanic eruptions and tsunami) | 114,900 yen | Required by our bank |
| Fire, lightning, rupture/explosion | 9,445 yen | Mandatory |
| Wind, hail, snow | 6,837 yen | |
| Water (typhoon, storm, floods, landslides) | 32,014 yen | We are not in a flood zone, but included it for typhoon and storm coverage |
| Water damage from burst pipes, collision with external objects, vandalism | 4,966 yen | Included it for a potential leaking washing machine or burst pipes |
| Break-in | 720 yen | It was cheap |
| Personal liability compensation (for the entire family, up to 300 million yen) | 7,161 yen |
We skipped on the following options:
| Option | Premium for 5 year | Reason |
|---|---|---|
| Increasing earthquake insurance to 100% | 182,290 yen | Too expensive; major damage unlikely even if a ‘big one’ hits |
| Extra insurance for fire spreading from our house to others | 3,650 yen | House is fire-resistant; neighbors not close |
| Damage or stains from our own mistakes (walls, furniture, etc.) | 20,441 yen | Has 50,000 yen deductible; We don’t own expensive items |
| 10% extra payout for any insurance payout | 3,290 yen | Up to 1 million yen; Feels unnecessary |
We got an additional 500 yen discount for agreeing to only get the documents electronically.
This brought our end price to 175,633 yen for the 5 years, saving us 55,000-75,000 yen compared to the quote from Tokyo Marine.
Documents for the application
During the application process Sony asked for 3 documents to upload:
- Documents proving building information (建物情報を証明する書類):
- Confirmation notice and confirmation certificate (確認通知書・確認済証)
- Documents proving fire resistance (耐火性能を証明する書類). One of the following:
- Building confirmation application form (建築確認申請書)
- Design specifications, blueprints, etc. (設計仕様書・設計図面など)
- Documents issued by the construction company, house manufacturer, or seller that indicate fire resistance. Please note that these documents cannot be used if the main structural components of the building are fire-resistant or semi-fire-resistant. (施工業者・ハウスメーカーまたは販売者が発行した書類のうち、耐火性能を示す記載があるものです。なお、建物の主要構造部が「耐火構造」「準耐火構造」等の場合はご利用いただけません。)
- Building structure (fire resistance standard) certificate (建物構造（耐火基準）証明書)
- This document is created by having construction companies and home builders fill out the insurance company’s designated form. (施工業者・ハウスメーカーに、当社所定の用紙を記入いただいて作る書類です。)
- Existing insurance policy from another company (他社の保険証券等) - when switching from an existing insurance
- Documents proving eligibility for earthquake insurance discounts (地震保険割引の適用対象を証明する書類). One of the following:
- Housing performance evaluation report (住宅性能評価書)
- Certificate of Compliance for Flat 35S (フラット35Sに関する適合証明書)
- Long-term quality housing technical inspection certificate (長期優良住宅の技術的審査適合証)
- Existing insurance policy from another company (他社の保険証券等) - when switching from an existing insurance
We had the first (Confirmation notice and confirmation certificate) and third (Housing performance evaluation report) already. For the second, we had the Building confirmation application form (建築確認申請書), but that didn’t indicate our house’s fire resistance (quasi-fire-resistant by ministerial ordinance, 省令準耐火), so we couldn’t use it. We also couldn’t find this information on any other document from Ichijo, so we asked them to provide it. (We found another blog where they talk about the same situation.)
Ichijo filled out and sent us the template provided by Sony in a few days, and we attached that to the application.
After finalizing all the inputs and uploading the 3 documents, we were presented with this timeline:
- Within 2 days SONY will check the uploaded documents
- Then we can choose the payment method
- Within 2 days SONY confirms the payment method
- We need to pay (in case of credit card, they just charge it so this step is not necessary)
- Everything is done
It took them exactly 48 hours for the initial confirmation, then I registered my credit card on the website. The next morning they charged the card and sent the “everything is done “ (契約手続完了) email.
The email said that they will send the insurance certificate by mail. If you chose paperless documents (what we did), then they will send a postcard about the completion. We got the post card the next week.