Japan zoning laws: the 13 use zones, building coverage and floor area ratio

The rules below are those in force as of October 2026, read from the City Planning Act (都市計画法, toshi keikaku ho) and the Building Standards Act (建築基準法, kenchiku kijun ho) as in force from 27 May 2026. Every calculation on this page uses made-up numbers.

Buying land and building on it are separate questions

Zoning does not decide who may own land. That question is covered in the guide on whether foreigners can buy land in Japan. Zoning decides what kind of building a site can carry and how large that building can be.

Three terms carry most of it. The use zone is 用途地域 (yoto chiiki). The building coverage ratio is 建蔽率 (kenpeiritsu), also written 建ぺい率. The floor area ratio is 容積率 (yosekiritsu). The sections below take them in turn, after first asking where zoning applies at all.

Where zoning applies

Article 41-2 of the Building Standards Act says that the chapter containing the use-zone, floor area and coverage rules (apart from its Section 8) applies only inside city planning areas (都市計画区域, toshi keikaku kuiki) and quasi-city planning areas (準都市計画区域, jun toshi keikaku kuiki).

Under Article 7 of the City Planning Act, a city planning area may be divided in two, and for city planning areas in certain metropolitan regions, which the article specifies directly or leaves to Cabinet Order, the division is mandatory. The urbanisation promotion area (市街化区域, shigaika kuiki) is land that is already built up or is to be urbanised with priority within roughly ten years. The urbanisation control area (市街化調整区域, shigaika chosei kuiki) is land where urbanisation is to be restrained.

Article 13(1)(vii) of the City Planning Act says that in an urbanisation promotion area use zones are to be designated as a minimum, and that in an urbanisation control area they are in principle not designated. Article 8(1) says only that use zones "may" be designated in a city planning area, so a city planning area that has not been divided can contain land with no use zone. The Building Standards Act has separate figures for such areas, and they appear in the tables below.

Urbanisation control areas have their own permission rules under the City Planning Act. The guide to buying an akiya (vacant house) covers them, so this page does not.

The 13 land use zones

Article 8(1)(i) of the City Planning Act lists 13 use zones, and Article 9(1) to (13) gives each a one-sentence purpose. The table shows Japan's land use zones in the order the Act lists them. The English names are those used in the translation of the Building Standards Act on the Ministry of Justice's Japanese Law Translation (JLT) website, in the version reflecting amendments up to Act No. 43 of 2020, spelled as they appear there. The JLT site states that its translations are not official texts and that only the Japanese originals have legal effect. Elsewhere this page shortens them, writing "zone" for "District" and "mid/high-rise" for "Medium-to-high-rise". The JLT translation of the City Planning Act reflects amendments only up to 2008 and still lists 12 zones.

The countryside residential zone (田園住居地域, den-en jukyo chiiki) is the newest. The version of the Act in force on 31 March 2018 lists 12 zones, and the version in force on 1 April 2018 lists 13. e-Gov attributes that revision to Act No. 26 of 2017. A page that says Japan has 12 zones is describing the list as it stood before that date.

The statutes do not sort the zones into "residential", "commercial" and "industrial" groups. The familiar split into eight residential, two commercial and three industrial zones is a convention, not statutory text.

How the use rules are written

Article 48 of the Building Standards Act has one paragraph for each zone (paragraphs 1 to 13), plus paragraph 14 for areas with no use zone other than urbanisation control areas. Each paragraph points to a row of Appended Table 2 (別表第二, beppyo dai-ni).

Appended Table 2 is drafted in two styles. For four zones (Category 1 low-rise, Category 2 low-rise, Category 1 mid/high-rise and countryside residential) it lists what may be built, and Article 48 prohibits everything else. For the other nine zones and for areas with no use zone it lists what may not be built, and a building that is not listed is not prohibited by Article 48.

Some entries from Appended Table 2 show the difference.

• ■In a Category 1 low-rise zone, the permitted list includes houses, apartment buildings, dormitories and boarding houses, schools other than universities and certain other types, libraries, shrines, temples and churches, and clinics. A stand-alone shop is not on it. A house combined with an office or shop is on the list only within the limits of Article 130-3 of the Order for Enforcement of the Building Standards Act, which is a Cabinet Order (政令, seirei): at least half of the total floor area is residential, and the other part is one of the listed uses and no more than 50 m².
• ■"Hotel or ryokan" (ホテル又は旅館; a ryokan is a Japanese-style inn) appears on the prohibited lists of the Category 2 mid/high-rise zone and the industrial zone, and the exclusive industrial zone incorporates the industrial list. It is absent from the permitted lists of the four zones drafted that way. In a Category 1 residential zone it is not on the prohibited list, but a separate item prohibits uses outside the Category 1 mid/high-rise permitted list once the floor area given over to those uses exceeds 3,000 m², subject to exceptions set by Cabinet Order. This is the use rule in the Building Standards Act only. Lodging licences and local ordinances are separate, and the guide to minpaku (private lodging) covers that side.
• ■In the exclusive industrial zone, houses and apartment buildings are on the prohibited list. In the industrial zone, houses are not.
• ■In areas with no use zone, the only entry is for theatres, shops, restaurants and similar facilities where the relevant floor area exceeds 10,000 m².

Every paragraph carries a proviso. The designated administrative agency (特定行政庁, tokutei gyoseicho) may permit an exception on the grounds stated for that zone. Article 2 of the Building Standards Act defines that agency as the mayor of a municipality that has a building official (建築主事, kenchiku shuji) or deputy building official, and the prefectural governor elsewhere, with an exception for certain buildings. Under Article 48(15), a permit normally requires a public hearing of interested persons and the consent of the building review council (建築審査会, kenchiku shinsakai).

Use zones are not the only layer. Special use districts, district plans and local ordinances can change what is allowed; they were not examined for this article.

Floor area ratio under Article 52(1)

The floor area ratio is the total floor area of a building divided by the area of its site. Article 52(1) of the Building Standards Act says it must not exceed the figure that applies to the zone. The Act states the figures in tenths; this page converts them to percentages.

The Act gives each zone a menu of figures, and the city plan picks one for each area (Article 8(3) of the City Planning Act).

For areas with no use zone, the figure is not set in the city plan. The designated administrative agency sets it after deliberation by the prefectural city planning council.

Article 52 also sets figures for several kinds of special district and, in later paragraphs, deals with floor area that is not counted. Those provisions were not examined for this article.

The narrow-road rule in Article 52(2)

Article 52(2) applies where the front road (前面道路, zenmen doro) is less than 12 m wide. If a site has two or more front roads, the widest one counts. The floor area ratio must then also stay at or below the road width in metres multiplied by a fraction. The paragraph opens with "in addition to the preceding paragraph", so both limits apply and the lower one governs.

The fraction has three tiers.

The second tier leaves out certain buildings in a high-rise residential attraction district (高層住居誘導地区): those whose residential floor area is at least two thirds of the total and, where the plan for that district sets a minimum site area, whose site meets it. Those buildings fall in the third tier. The short version often quoted, 0.4 in residential zones and 0.6 elsewhere, matches the defaults. The second and third tiers can be changed locally, so the multiplier for an actual site is a matter for the designated administrative agency.

The next two calculations use made-up numbers. They are not any real lot, city or zone.

In Example A the formula gives 160%, not the 200% in the city plan. On a made-up site of 100 m², that is 160 m² of total floor area as the ceiling from these two paragraphs alone. In Example B the formula gives 360% in place of 400%.

Article 52(9) adds a separate adjustment. It concerns a front road at least 6 m but under 12 m wide that connects to a road 15 m or wider. Where a site adjoins the part of that front road lying within 70 m of the wider road, measured along the front road, an amount set by Cabinet Order is added to the road width.

Other rules can lower or raise the result, so a figure from these two paragraphs is not a statement of what can be built on any site. Whether a site adjoins a qualifying road at all is a different rule, in Articles 42 and 43, and is covered in the akiya guide.

Building coverage ratio under Article 53

The building coverage ratio is the building area (建築面積, kenchiku menseki) divided by the site area. Where one site has several buildings, their building areas are added together. Article 2(1)(ii) of the Order for Enforcement of the Building Standards Act defines building area, in outline, as the horizontal projected area enclosed by the centre lines of the exterior walls or of the columns that take their place. The same item has adjustments for eaves and similar projections of 1 m or more, which are not set out here.

Article 53(1) sets the figures zone by zone, in the same way as Article 52. The building coverage ratio therefore differs between areas that carry the same zone name.

Article 53(3) raises the limit by 10 percentage points where one of two conditions is met, and by 20 where both are. The first concerns fire resistance and is met in either of two ways: (a) a fire-resistant building or its equivalent in a fire prevention district (防火地域, boka chiiki), other than a district where the limit is already 80%; or (b) a fire-resistant or quasi-fire-resistant building or its equivalent in a quasi-fire prevention district (準防火地域, jun boka chiiki). The second condition is a corner site, or a site treated like one, that the designated administrative agency has designated. Standing on a corner is not enough by itself, because the paragraph requires the designation.

Under Article 53(6), the coverage limit does not apply at all to a fire-resistant building or its equivalent in a fire prevention district where the limit is 80%.

With made-up numbers again, and no real lot, city or zone in mind: for a 100 m² site with a 60% figure, the formula gives 60 m² of building area as the ceiling under Article 53(1).

Height, setbacks and minimum site area

Several other articles of the Building Standards Act work alongside the two ratios.

• ■Article 55. In Category 1 and 2 low-rise zones and countryside residential zones, building height may not exceed 10 m or 12 m, whichever the city plan sets.
• ■Article 54. In the same three zones, where the city plan sets a wall setback, it is 1 m or 1.5 m from the site boundary.
• ■Article 53-2. A city plan may set a minimum site area for a use zone, of no more than 200 m².
• ■Article 56. The height of each part of a building is limited by its horizontal distance to the far side of the front road and to the adjoining boundary and, in some residential zones, by that distance measured due north. These are commonly called slant-plane limits (斜線制限, shasen seigen), a name that is not in the Act.
• ■Article 56-2. Shadow limits (日影規制, nichiei kisei) restrict the shade cast by mid- and high-rise buildings, measured on the winter solstice, and apply only in areas designated by local ordinance.

A site that straddles two zones

Article 91 of the Building Standards Act applies the rules of the zone that contains more than half of the site to the whole site and building. The use rules of Article 48 are among the rules it covers.

Article 91 expressly excludes Articles 52, 53 and 54 to 56-2 from that approach. The floor area ratio and the coverage ratio are instead weighted by area, under Article 52(7) and Article 53(2).

A made-up illustration, not any real lot, city or zone, using the city-plan figures only: a 100 m² site has 60 m² in a 200% area and 40 m² in a 400% area. The calculation is 0.6 × 200 + 0.4 × 400, and the formula gives 280%. Under Article 52(7), the road-width limit of Article 52(2) is also applied to each part before the weighting, which this illustration leaves out.

Older buildings that no longer match the rules

Article 3(2) of the Building Standards Act deals with a building that already exists, or is under construction, when a rule comes into force or starts to apply to it. If the building does not conform to that rule, the rule does not apply to it. The usual label is 既存不適格 (kison futekikaku, existing non-conforming). The term is not in the Act.

Article 3(3) lists what the protection does not cover: a building that already contravened the earlier rule; an extension, rebuilding, relocation, major repair or major remodelling started after the rule applied; and a building that has since come into conformity. Item (ii) of that paragraph refers expressly to the adoption or change of a use-zone city plan, so rezoning is one of the situations the article has in view. Article 86-7(1) relaxes the second of those three exclusions, and only that one. Where a building that Article 3(2) shields from a rule undergoes an extension, rebuilding, major repair or major remodelling within a range set by Cabinet Order, the provisions listed in Article 86-7(1), which include Articles 48(1) to (14), 52(1), (2) and (7) and 53(1) and (2), continue not to apply to it. A building that already contravened the earlier rule gains nothing from that paragraph. The range set by Cabinet Order was not examined for this article.

In general terms, a building larger than today's ratios would allow can exist lawfully, and once such a building is extended or rebuilt beyond the range that Article 86-7 allows, the building is judged under the current rules. Whether a particular building is in that position is decided case by case. The guide to renovating in Japan covers building confirmation (建築確認, kenchiku kakunin).

Who sets the zones, and where a Japan zoning map is published

Article 15(1) of the City Planning Act gives prefectures the city plans it lists, including the division into promotion and control areas, and gives municipalities the rest. Use zones are not on the prefectural list, so in principle the municipality decides them. Tokyo's special wards are treated differently: there, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government decides use zones (Article 87-3 of the Act and Article 46(i) of the Order for Enforcement of the City Planning Act). For the 23 wards, that is the body that decides the zones a Tokyo zoning map shows.

Under Article 14(1), a city plan is expressed in a general map, plan maps and a plan document. Under Article 20, the authority gives public notice when it decides a plan, the plan takes effect on the day of that notice, and the governor and the mayor must make the documents available for public inspection, by keeping them at their offices or by another appropriate method.

The record of a site's designation is therefore the city planning map (都市計画図, toshi keikaku zu) held by the local government. Article 12 of the Regulation for Enforcement of the City Planning Act adds that the documents are to be put on public inspection immediately and that the place of inspection is to be announced in the official bulletin or by other prescribed means. Neither provision mentions online publication, so this page does not say how any particular municipality publishes its map.

At national level, the Real Estate Information Library (不動産情報ライブラリ) of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT) is a web map at reinfolib.mlit.go.jp. Its manual lists a city planning category with a use-zone layer and a layer for city planning areas and their division into urbanisation promotion and control areas, and the site has a Japanese/English language switch. How much of the map is translated was not checked. The Library's own Q&A says that displayed content may not be the latest and that some content does not cover every area, so it is a place to start and not the record.

Where a licensed brokerage sells or brokers a sale, Article 35(1)(ii) of the Real Estate Brokerage Act requires an outline of statutory restrictions to be included in the explanation of important matters (重要事項説明, juyo jiko setsumei). The explanation is given before the contract by a licensed real estate transaction agent (宅地建物取引士, takuchi tatemono torihikishi, often shortened to takken-shi). Article 3(1)(ii) of the Order for Enforcement of the Real Estate Brokerage Act lists the Building Standards Act provisions concerned, among them Articles 48(1) to (14), 52(1) to (14), 53(1) to (8), 53-2(1) to (3), 54, 55(1) to (4), 56 and 56-2. For the lease of a building, paragraph 3 of the same article gives a much shorter list that does not include them.

Questions about a particular site belong elsewhere, and this site does not answer them. By way of example only: the designation and its figures are held by the municipal office responsible for city planning; the road-width multiplier and any corner-site designation are matters for the designated administrative agency; and what a given design can achieve under all of these rules together is the work of an architect (建築士, kenchikushi). These examples are not a complete list.

What changes next, and what this page did not check

Act No. 23 of 2026 has a part that is not yet in force. In the future text published by e-Gov, it inserts a new item into Article 52(1) of the Building Standards Act for a new type of district, so the item for areas with no use zone moves down by one place. The figures for the 13 zones, and Articles 48, 53, 55 and 91 and Appended Table 2, are the same in that text. The later pending revisions that e-Gov lists for the Act carry the same renumbering and, in one case, an updated cross-reference inside Article 52; none of them changes these figures. Commencement is on a date to be set by Cabinet Order within six months of promulgation. A search of e-Gov on 6 October 2026 found no Cabinet Order fixing that date. e-Gov can lag the official gazette, which was not searched. This page cites paragraphs and not item numbers for that reason.

The following were not checked: any municipality's actual designations, local multipliers, corner-site designations or ordinances; the floor-area exclusions in Article 52; and special use districts and district plans.

Sources

Statutory text was retrieved from e-Gov API version 2 with asof=2026-10-06. MLIT pages were read on the same date. The English descriptions are reference translations; the Japanese originals govern.

• Building Standards Act (建築基準法) — Arts. 2, 3, 41-2, 48, 52, 53, 53-2, 54, 55, 56, 56-2, 86-7, 91 and Appended Table 2

  Read through e-Gov API version 2 with asof=2026-10-06, revision 325AC0000000201_20260527_508AC0000000023 (in force 27 May 2026). In the text in force, Article 52 was read for paragraphs 1, 2, 7 and 9 only (the pending revisions were compared with it across the whole of Article 52); Article 56 and Article 56-2 for their scope only; Article 86-7 for paragraph 1 only. In Appended Table 2 the rows for the quasi-residential, commercial and quasi-industrial zones were searched for the words used on this page but not read line by line.

• e-Gov — revision history of the Building Standards Act

  Read on 6 October 2026. Used for the 31 March 2018 and 1 April 2018 versions (12 and 13 use zones) and for the not-yet-in-force revision 325AC0000000201_20261126_508AC0000000023 under Act No. 23 of 2026, which renumbers an item of Article 52(1). The three later pending revisions listed there (325AC0000000201_20270122_508AC0000000065, 325AC0000000201_20270526_508AC0000000023 and 325AC0000000201_20280730_508AC0000000075) were compared with it for the provisions cited on this page. The date shown for that revision is the outer limit of 'within six months of promulgation'; the Cabinet Order fixing the actual date was not found.

• Order for Enforcement of the Building Standards Act (建築基準法施行令) — Arts. 2(1)(ii) and 130-3

  Revision 325CO0000000338_20251201_507CO0000000377, read with asof=2026-10-06. Used for the definition of building area and for the combined house-and-shop limits in a Category 1 low-rise zone.

• City Planning Act (都市計画法) — Arts. 7, 8, 9, 13, 14, 15, 20 and 87-3

  Revision 343AC0000000100_20260527_508AC0000000023, read with asof=2026-10-06. The versions at asof=2018-03-31 and asof=2018-04-01 were compared to date the countryside residential zone; the revision in force from 1 April 2018 is attributed by e-Gov to Act No. 26 of 2017. The amending Act itself was not read.

• Order for Enforcement of the City Planning Act (都市計画法施行令) — Arts. 9 and 46

  Revision 344CO0000000158_20260401_508CO0000000066, read with asof=2026-10-06. Article 46(i) lists use zones among the plans the Tokyo Metropolitan Government decides in the special wards.

• Regulation for Enforcement of the City Planning Act (都市計画法施行規則) — Art. 12

  Revision 344M50004000049_20260527_508M60000800058, read with asof=2026-10-06. Requires the documents to be put on public inspection immediately and the place of inspection to be announced.

• Japanese Law Translation (Ministry of Justice) — Building Standards Act, English translation

  Read on 6 October 2026. The page gives its last version as Act No. 43 of 2020. Used only for the English names of the 13 zones in Article 2(xxi). The site's notice to users, read on the same date, says the translations are not official texts and that only the original Japanese texts have legal effect.

• Real Estate Brokerage Act (宅地建物取引業法) — Art. 35(1)(ii)

  Revision 327AC1000000176_20260401_507AC0000000068, read with asof=2026-10-06.

• Order for Enforcement of the Real Estate Brokerage Act (宅地建物取引業法施行令) — Art. 3

  Revision 339CO0000000383_20260401_507CO0000000388, read with asof=2026-10-06. Paragraph 1(ii) lists the Building Standards Act provisions for contracts other than leases; paragraph 3 gives the much shorter list for a lease of a building.

• MLIT — Real Estate Information Library, user manual

  Read on 6 October 2026. The manual lists a 'city planning information' category with a use-zone layer and a city-planning-area / area-division layer, described as data compiled by the City Bureau of MLIT.

• MLIT — Real Estate Information Library, Q&A (Q7)

  Read on 6 October 2026. States that displayed content may not be the latest, depending on when it was created and when the Library was updated, and that some content does not cover every area.

Thank you for reading a page that is mostly percentages and article numbers. We hope the three lines on a Japanese land listing are a little easier to place now.