Renting versus buying in Japan
Japanese purchase taxes are charged on an assessed value, not on the price you pay. Real estate acquisition tax is 3% of assessed value for residential land and buildings, and registration licence tax adds another 1.5% to 2%. But the assessed value typically runs at only 50% to 70% of the market price, so the effective cost of a purchase works out at roughly 2% of what you actually hand over. The 2% used above is that effective figure rather than a statutory rate you will see quoted anywhere.
Japan is also the market here where the buyer pays a full estate agent commission of their own: 3% of the price plus ¥60,000, on top of the judicial scrivener and stamp fees. Germany splits a single commission between the two sides; Japan charges each side its own. That is why other buying costs come to 4%, the highest of any country in this tool, in a country whose transfer tax is among the lowest. The tax is small and the agent is expensive, which is the reverse of the usual arrangement.
The decisive number, though, is neither. Japanese rents and house prices have both been close to flat for three decades, which is why both defaults sit at 0.5%. With appreciation near zero the leverage argument for buying, that growth compounds on the whole house rather than on your deposit, disappears entirely, and the comparison turns almost wholly on the 1.5% mortgage rate against whatever the renter's portfolio earns.
Fixed asset tax is 1.4% of assessed value plus a city planning tax of up to 0.3%; because assessed value sits well below market price, about 1.0% of the purchase price is realistic.
Japanese mortgages carry no mortgage insurance. Lenders require group credit life insurance instead, and its premium is usually already built into the quoted rate.