Shinjuku moves to ban more than half of its short-term rentals

Shinjuku Ward, which hosts more registered private lodgings than any other municipality in Japan, plans to ban minpaku operations in residential-only zones and around schools. A ward official said on 7 September that more than half of the ward's short-term rentals would be covered. At the end of August the ward counted 3,928 notified homes. Officials and local reports put the number that could lose the right to operate at about 2,000.

The Japan Tourism Agency had 3,775 Shinjuku listings on 15 July, nearly a tenth of the national total of 42,070. The ward's own later count was higher. Shinjuku is both a night-time entertainment district and a dense place to live. That mix is the problem the ordinance is written to attack.

Complaints to the ward about rubbish, night noise, missing no-smoking signs and related nuisances rose from 82 in fiscal 2021 to 1,334 in fiscal 2025. The figure for fiscal 2024 was 792. Since December 2025 the ward has revoked licences for five operators and 15 facilities, locking them out for three years. It has also issued abolition orders where improvement notices were ignored, a first for Tokyo wards.

The planned rule would apply to existing businesses as well as new ones in the restricted zones. That is unusual. Most Japanese minpaku curbs have been written to stop fresh listings and leave current ones in place. Shinjuku will offer a grace period. Officials have not yet set its length. In commercial zones the cap on operating days would fall from 180 a year to 120. Homeowners who can show they run a property tightly may get a narrow exception.

The timetable is public. The ward will take comments from October and send an ordinance revision to the February assembly. Mayor Kenichi Yoshizumi is expected to announce the plan formally on Tuesday. Ota Ward, which includes Haneda, is studying a similar tightening.

Japan legalised a national minpaku framework in 2018 to absorb inbound tourism. The law capped stays at 180 days and left room for local governments to draw tighter maps. During the pandemic many listings went idle. The rebound in foreign arrivals filled them again, and filled residential side streets that were never designed as hotel corridors.

Shinjuku's complaint log is specific. Guests leave bags of rubbish on collection days that do not match the building's calendar. They smoke on balconies above family kitchens. They arrive after midnight in groups. Neighbours call the ward because the operator is often a company that does not live in the building. Five revoked licences have not changed the arithmetic of 3,900 listings.

A ban of this size will move demand, not delete it. Hotels in Kabukicho and around Shinjuku Station already run near capacity on many weekends. If 2,000 flats drop out, prices in the remaining legal stock and in neighbouring Shibuya and Nakano will rise. Some operators will try to reclassify as hotels or as weekly apartments. Some will keep taking bookings and wait to be caught.

For a city that has treated inbound tourism as an economic pillar, Shinjuku is drawing a line at the edge of the school gate and the quiet residential block. The ordinance still has to survive public comment and an assembly vote. The complaint numbers that produced it will not wait for that vote. They are already on the ward's books for the year that just ended.