Shikikin, reikin and move-out charges: the lease rules that entered Japan's Civil Code in 2020

What the Civil Code calls a deposit

Money a tenant hands to a landlord to secure what the tenant may owe under a lease is the shikikin (敷金). Since 1 April 2020 the Civil Code has said what that word means. The definition sits inside a bracket in the first sentence of Article 622-2.

Two things in that bracket do the work. The first is いかなる名目によるかを問わず — whatever name it goes by. The definition is written so that the label on the invoice does not decide the question. The second is the test it puts in the label's place: 担保する目的で, for the purpose of securing the tenant's monetary obligations to the landlord under the lease. Money handed over for that purpose is within Article 622-2 whatever the lease calls it, and money handed over for some other purpose is not.

That is a functional definition, and it is worth reading it as one. What the article turns on is the purpose the money was handed over for. A sum recorded under a different heading — hoshokin (保証金), a guarantee sum, is one such heading — is inside Article 622-2 if it was handed over to secure the tenant's monetary obligations, because the bracket says in terms that the name does not decide the question.

Scanning every Article node of the Civil Code as in force on 25 August 2026, the word 敷金 appears in four articles and nowhere else: Article 316, Article 605-2, Article 619 and Article 622-2. Three of those four cross-refer to the definition in Article 622-2(1) by name, which is what a definition introduced later into an existing code looks like from the inside.

Article 316 is the least visible of the four and worth a line. A landlord has a statutory lien over certain of the tenant's movables, and Article 316 limits it: その敷金で弁済を受けない債権の部分についてのみ先取特権を有する — the lien covers only the part of the claim the deposit does not satisfy.

Which lease the 2020 articles apply to

A provision that entered a code on a given date does not automatically reach agreements made before it. The amending act whose supplementary provisions govern the transition for leases is 民法の一部を改正する法律, Act No. 44 of 2017, promulgated on 2 June 2017. It commenced in stages — the revision list for the Civil Code gives that act four commencement dates, of which 1 April 2020 is the last — and the reading of Articles 621, 622-2 and 605-2 across asof dates set out above is what places these particular provisions on the 2020 date. The supplementary provisions say what happens to contracts concluded before the enforcement date.

Paragraph (1) names 賃貸借, lease, in a list of contract types and says that for such a contract concluded before the enforcement date なお従前の例による — the former rules continue to govern. Paragraphs (2) and (3) then carve out two provisions of the new law by name, and only two: Article 604(2), on the term of a lease where a renewal is agreed on or after the date, and Article 605-4, on interference with possession by a third party.

Article 622-2 is not among the carve-outs. Neither is Article 621, nor Article 605-2. So the date a lease was concluded is a fact that bears on which text applies to it, and it is a different fact from the date the lease is running on.

The sections below describe the provisions in force on 25 August 2026. Where a lease predates April 2020, the provision that governs it may be the former text rather than the one quoted.

Reikin, and why that article does not reach it

reikin (礼金) — rendered into English as key money — is the other Japanese term for a sum a tenant pays at the start of a lease. The two words look like a matched pair, and under the Civil Code they are not a pair at all.

We searched the full text of three acts as in force on 25 August 2026, with whitespace removed and ruby readings dropped. The word 礼金 appears zero times in the Civil Code, zero times in the Act on Land and Building Leases and zero times in the Consumer Contract Act. So does koshinryo (更新料), the renewal fee. So does 権利金 in the Civil Code, and 敷引 in all three.

The reason reikin falls outside Article 622-2 follows from the bracket rather than from the silence. Article 622-2 attaches to money handed over 担保する目的で, to secure obligations. A sum handed over as consideration rather than as security is not securing anything, so there is no debt for it to be set against and no balance for the article to order returned. The article never has to mention reikin by name to leave it outside.

Two events make the balance returnable, not one

Item (i) of Article 622-2(1), quoted above, is a compound condition joined by かつ — and.

The lease has to have ended, and the landlord has to have received the property back. The end of the term on its own does not open the balance; handing the flat over on its own does not either. The Code puts the return of possession second, and the obligation it triggers is to return the amount received から賃貸借に基づいて生じた賃借人の賃貸人に対する金銭の給付を目的とする債務の額を控除した残額 — the amount received less the monetary obligations arising under the lease.

Item (ii) covers the other route: the tenant lawfully transfers the leasehold right (賃借人が適法に賃借権を譲り渡したとき). Lawfully matters, because Article 612 requires the landlord's consent to assign a leasehold or sublet, and its second paragraph lets the landlord terminate if a third party is given use of the property without it.

Article 622-2 sets no number of days for the return. There is no deadline in it to quote. What the Code fixes is the order of events, not the calendar.

A renewal does not consume the deposit

Article 619 deals with a lease where the tenant carries on using the property after the term expires and the landlord says nothing. Its second paragraph extinguishes security given for the former lease when the term ends, and then makes one exception.

The deposit is carved out and carries across. Reading the same paragraph at asof=2019-04-01 shows the proviso in its older form, saying only 敷金 with nothing behind it. The word was in the Code before 2020; what 2020 added was the sentence that says what it means.

The set-off runs one way only

The second paragraph of Article 622-2 has two sentences, and the second one takes something away.

The landlord may apply the deposit to an unperformed monetary obligation. The tenant 請求することができない — may not demand that it be applied. The idea of running out the last month of a lease against the deposit is the thing the second sentence is written to exclude, and it is written as a flat prohibition on the demand rather than as a matter for the lease to settle.

The two things Article 621 takes out of restoration

What a tenant owes at the end is set by the restoration duty, genjo kaifuku (原状回復) — putting things back to their original state. Article 621 states the duty and then, in a bracket, removes two categories from it.

The bracket names them separately:

• ■通常の使用及び収益によって生じた賃借物の損耗 — wear to the property arising from ordinary use and enjoyment of it.
• ■賃借物の経年変化 — change in the property with the passage of years.

These are two different ideas joined by 並びに. The first is caused by the tenant living there; the second happens whether anyone lives there or not. Both sit outside the word 損傷, damage, as Article 621 uses it, and the bracket closes with 以下この条において同じ — the same meaning throughout the article.

Then the proviso adds a third exclusion in a different register: where the damage arises from a cause not attributable to the tenant (賃借人の責めに帰することができない事由), the duty does not apply. That one turns on responsibility rather than on the type of deterioration.

A note on vocabulary. The compound 通常損耗 is a convenient short form for the first of the two categories, and searching the Civil Code as in force on 25 August 2026 it appears zero times: the Code uses the longer phrase quoted above and not the compound. The compound 経年変化 does appear, exactly once in the entire Civil Code, and the one place it appears is Article 621.

What Article 621 does not do

Article 621 states a rule. It does not state that the rule cannot be varied, and the two provisions in the Act on Land and Building Leases that make lease rules mandatory do not list it. The section further down sets out what those two lists contain.

Where a term in a lease departs from a rule of this kind and the tenant is a consumer, the provisions that address it are in the Consumer Contract Act. Article 10 is the general one, and it is built as a two-part test.

The first limb compares the term against what would happen under 法令中の公の秩序に関しない規定 — provisions of law that do not concern public order. The second limb asks whether the term unilaterally harms the consumer's interests contrary to the basic principle in Article 1(2) of the Civil Code, which is good faith. Article 10 renders void a term that fails both limbs.

Which provisions fall inside that first limb is a question of legal classification, and this page does not answer it for Article 621. What can be measured is narrower, and the next section sets it out: Article 621 is not named in either of the two lists in the Act on Land and Building Leases that make lease provisions unwaivable in the tenant's favour.

Whether a particular term in a particular lease fails the two limbs of Article 10 is decided by a court on that term's wording and the circumstances around it. This page does not reach that question, and nothing above should be read as reaching it. Ministry guidance on the restoration of rented dwellings exists; it is guidance rather than statute, and Article 10 does not refer to it.

The 14.6 per cent ceiling, and a duty to explain

Two provisions of the Consumer Contract Act carry figures rather than standards. Article 9(1) has two items, and the second one gives a rate.

A term fixing damages or a penalty for late payment is void 当該超える部分 — as to the excess — over an amount computed at 14.6 per cent a year on the unpaid balance, day by day, from the day after the due date. The provision voids the excess rather than the whole term, and the rate is written into the statute rather than left to a court.

Item (i) of the same paragraph works differently. It addresses a term fixing damages or a penalty on termination, and voids the part exceeding 当該条項において設定された解除の事由、時期等の区分に応じ、当該消費者契約と同種の消費者契約の解除に伴い当該事業者に生ずべき平均的な損害の額 — the average loss that would arise to that business on termination of a consumer contract of the same kind, taken by reference to the grounds, the timing and the like (解除の事由、時期等) that the term itself distinguishes. 同種 attaches to the contract, not to the business. There is no number in item (i): it sets a benchmark and leaves the figure to be established.

Article 9(2) attaches a duty to that benchmark. Reading the Consumer Contract Act at asof=2023-05-31 and at asof=2023-06-01, Article 9 consists of a single unnumbered paragraph in the first and has a second paragraph in the second. It is the newer of the two.

The operative verb is 努めなければならない — must endeavour — rather than the plain しなければならない, must. Both forms are used in this act: searching its text as in force on 25 August 2026, the first appears 7 times and the second 19. What Article 9(2) covers is the outline of the basis on which a penalty was calculated, on a request from the consumer, where the business is claiming under such a term.

Renewal happens by operation of law

A Japanese residential lease with a fixed term does not simply stop at the end of it. Article 26(1) of the Act on Land and Building Leases turns silence into a renewal.

The window is fixed: from one year before expiry to six months before it. A party who wants the lease not to renew, or not to renew on the same conditions, has to give notice inside that window. If neither does, the lease 更新したものとみなす — is deemed renewed on the same conditions.

The proviso is the part that changes the shape of the tenancy: ただし、その期間は、定めがないものとする. The renewed lease has no term. A two-year lease that renews under Article 26(1) does not become another two-year lease; it becomes a lease with no fixed term, which is a different legal object with different exit rules.

Article 26(2) covers the case where the notice was given but the tenant carries on using the building after expiry and the landlord raises no objection without delay: the same result follows. Article 26(3) extends that to a subtenant's continued use.

Article 29(1) sets a floor underneath all of this: 期間を一年未満とする建物の賃貸借は、期間の定めがない建物の賃貸借とみなす — a building lease for less than a year is deemed to be a lease with no fixed term. Article 29(2) disapplies Civil Code Article 604, which otherwise caps a lease at fifty years.

The renewal fee — 更新料 — has no part in any of this. As measured above, the word does not appear in the Act on Land and Building Leases, in the Civil Code or in the Consumer Contract Act. It is a creature of the lease document alone, and where it appears in a consumer lease it is a contract term like any other, testable under the provisions in the previous section.

The two sides are not symmetrical

Once a lease has no fixed term — whether from Article 26(1)'s proviso, from Article 29(1), or because it never had one — either party may give notice to terminate. The two notices are not alike.

The tenant's side sits in the Civil Code.

Three months for a building lease, running from the day notice is given. Article 618 extends the same treatment to a lease that does have a term where a party has reserved a right to terminate within it.

The landlord's side sits in the Act on Land and Building Leases, and it is longer and harder.

Six months rather than three. And Article 28 puts a condition in front of both the landlord's Article 26(1) notice and the landlord's termination notice.

正当の事由 — just cause. The article does not define it; it lists what has to be weighed in deciding whether it exists. The circumstances in which each side needs the building. The history of the tenancy. How the building has been used and what condition it is in. And, last in the list, an offer by the landlord to make a payment (財産上の給付) as a condition of vacating or in exchange for it. The statute treats a payment offered to end a tenancy as one of the factors bearing on just cause, rather than as something separate from it.

Nothing corresponding to Article 28 applies to a notice from the tenant. A tenant terminating a lease with no fixed term is not required by these provisions to show a reason.

If the tenant dies without heirs

Article 36 addresses a residential lease where the tenant dies leaving no heir, and someone was living with them in a relationship that was never registered.

The cohabitant succeeds to the tenant's rights and obligations, unless they say otherwise to the landlord within one month of learning of the death. Article 36(2) attaches the claims and debts arising from the tenancy to whoever succeeds under paragraph (1). The test the provision applies is a factual relationship equivalent to marriage or to adoptive parent and child, not a registered one.

Two lists of mandatory provisions, and what is not on them

The Act on Land and Building Leases makes some of its rules unwaivable in the tenant's favour. It does so twice, in two separate provisions with two different scopes, and both are short enough to quote whole.

Article 30 refers to この節 — this Section — which is the Section it sits at the end of, running from Article 26 to Article 30. Since Article 30 is the provision doing the voiding, the provisions of that Section that a term can be contrary to are Articles 26 to 29. Article 37 names three provisions individually: Articles 31, 34 and 35. In both, the trigger is the same pair of conditions: the term must be contrary to the provision, and it must be disadvantageous to the tenant. A term that departs from these provisions in the tenant's favour is not caught.

The provisions of the building lease chapter that appear on neither list are as informative as the ones that do. Article 32, on demanding an increase or reduction of rent, is not on either. Nor is Article 33, the right to require the landlord to buy back fixtures.

Tatami mats, fittings and other 造作 added with the landlord's consent may be required to be bought at market value when the lease ends by expiry or by termination notice. Because Article 33 is on neither mandatory list, a lease term excluding that right is not caught by Article 30 or Article 37.

Article 40 sets the outer boundary of the whole chapter: この章の規定は、一時使用のために建物の賃貸借をしたことが明らかな場合には、適用しない — the chapter does not apply where it is clear the lease was made for temporary use.

Fixed-term leases, and the paragraph numbers that moved

Article 38 creates the one kind of residential building lease that ends when it says it ends. It is called a teiki tatemono chintaishaku (定期建物賃貸借), a fixed-term building lease.

Paragraph (1) sets the condition on which a lease may say it will not renew: 公正証書による等書面によって契約をするときに限り — only where the contract is made in writing, such as by notarial deed — and it does so 第三十条の規定にかかわらず, notwithstanding Article 30, which is the provision that would otherwise void the term. Paragraph (2) treats a contract recorded in an electromagnetic record as made in writing.

Then paragraph (3) adds a second document, separate from the contract in what it must contain.

あらかじめ — in advance. A document stating that there is no renewal and that the lease ends on expiry has to be delivered, and the landlord has to explain it. Paragraph (4) allows that document to be provided electronically with the tenant's consent, in which case it is deemed delivered. Paragraph (5) states the consequence of not doing it.

What is void is the no-renewal term specifically, not the lease. A lease that loses that term is a fixed-term-of-years lease of the ordinary kind, and Article 26(1) applies to it.

Paragraph (6) requires the landlord to notify the tenant, in the window from one year to six months before expiry, that the lease ends on expiry, for a fixed-term lease of a year or more; without that notice the landlord cannot assert the termination against the tenant, though the proviso lets a late notice take effect six months after it is given.

The escape hatch under 200 square metres

Paragraph (7) gives the tenant of a small residential fixed-term lease a way out that the lease itself cannot remove.

The conditions are stacked, and each one narrows it:

• ■The lease is a fixed-term lease under paragraph (1), and it is for residential use.
• ■The floor area is under 200 m². Where part of a building is let, the area of that part is what counts.
• ■A job transfer, medical treatment, care of a relative, or other unavoidable circumstances (転勤、療養、親族の介護その他のやむを得ない事情) — a named list closed by a general category.
• ■Those circumstances make it difficult for the tenant to use the building as the base of their own life (自己の生活の本拠).

Where they are met, the lease ends one month after notice. And paragraph (8) makes both paragraph (6) and paragraph (7) mandatory in the tenant's favour: 前二項の規定に反する特約で建物の賃借人に不利なものは、無効とする.

What the fixed-term lease gives up in exchange

Article 32(1) lets either party demand an increase or reduction in rent, for the future, where rent has become unreasonable through tax changes, movements in land or building values, other economic shifts, or comparison with rents for similar nearby buildings — 契約の条件にかかわらず, regardless of the terms of the contract. It then closes with a proviso that gives one term back its force: ただし、一定の期間建物の借賃を増額しない旨の特約がある場合には、その定めに従う。 — where there is a term not to increase the rent for a set period, that term is followed. The regardless-of-the-contract wording runs in one direction and the proviso in the other. Its second and third paragraphs let a party who has received such a demand pay, or continue to receive, what they consider reasonable until a judgment becomes final, with interest at ten per cent a year on the shortfall or the excess once it does.

Paragraph (9) of Article 38 switches that off.

Where a fixed-term lease contains a term on the revision of rent, Article 32 does not apply to it. The right to demand a reduction and the right to demand an increase both go, and what governs is the term in the lease.

If the building is sold while the lease is running

A tenancy does not end because the landlord sells. Article 31 of the Act on Land and Building Leases makes the lease effective against the buyer without any registration of it.

Delivery of the building is the trigger. Civil Code Article 605 provides for registering a lease, and Article 31 makes that unnecessary for buildings — which matters, because Article 37 puts Article 31 on its mandatory list.

Civil Code Article 605-2 then works out the consequences. Under paragraph (1), where a lease has satisfied a requirement of that kind and the property is transferred, the position of landlord moves to the transferee. Paragraph (3) attaches a condition to that move.

The transfer of the landlord's position cannot be asserted against the tenant until the transfer of ownership is registered. Our guide to the property register describes what that registration is and who may order a copy of the record.

Paragraph (4) settles where the deposit goes.

The obligation to return the deposit under Article 622-2(1), and the obligation to reimburse expenses under Article 608, are succeeded to by the transferee. The obligation follows the building rather than staying with the person who took the money.

Article 605-2(2) covers the arrangement where seller and buyer agree that the seller keeps the landlord's position and leases the building back from the buyer; there the position does not move, and it moves later when that arrangement ends.

Article 34 sits alongside these for subtenancies: where a building is sublet and the head lease ends by expiry or termination notice, the landlord cannot assert that ending against the subtenant without notifying them, and the sublease then ends six months after that notice. Article 37 puts Article 34 on the mandatory list.

What the notice lets an agency take on a lease

The last piece is not in either lease statute. Article 46 of the Real Estate Brokerage Act sets what a licensed agency may charge by referring the question out to the Minister, forbids exceeding it, and requires the figure to be posted where the public can see it.

The amount itself is in a notice of 23 October 1970, last amended on 21 June 2024 with effect from 1 July 2024. Item 4 of it covers brokerage of a lease.

Two ceilings, one inside the other:

• ■From both parties together, no more than 1.1 months' rent. The 0.1 is consumption tax: Item 1 of the notice defines 消費税等相当額, and the figures in the notice are inclusive of it while the rent used as the base is exclusive of it.
• ■From one party to a residential building lease, no more than 0.55 months' rent — unless that party's consent was obtained 当該媒介の依頼を受けるに当たって, at the point of accepting the brokerage engagement. The timing is part of the exception, not incidental to it.

Item 5 caps agency, as opposed to brokerage, at 1.1 months' rent. Item 6 allows non-refundable key consideration to be treated as a sale price so that the sale scale in Items 2 and 3 may be used instead — and it opens by excluding residential buildings: 宅地又は建物（居住の用に供する建物を除く。）. Item 6 does not reach a lease of a dwelling.

Item 9, added by the 2024 amendment, covers brokerage of a 長期の空家等 — a property not currently in residential, business or other use, or with no prospect of such use. There, the total from both parties may go up to 2.2 months' rent, and the item builds two conditions into that. The amount taken from the party who is the tenant must stay within 1.1 months' rent, or within 0.55 for a residential long-vacant property absent consent obtained when the engagement was accepted. And the excess over the Item 4 figure is available 当該媒介に要する費用を勘案して, having regard to the costs the brokerage requires. The higher ceiling sits on the landlord's side of the ledger.

What has to be explained before signing

Article 35(1) of the Real Estate Brokerage Act lists the matters a licensed agency must have one of its qualified agents explain, with a written document, before a contract is concluded. Item (vii) is the one that reaches the sums this page is about.

Money passing other than the price, the exchange difference and the rent — its amount, and the purpose for which it passes. The purpose is in the provision alongside the amount, which is the same distinction Article 622-2 turns on.

What this page does not settle

The limits below are part of the article rather than a qualification bolted to the end of it.

• ■We have read no case law. Not one judgment. Where a provision leaves a standard to be applied — just cause under Article 28, the two limbs of Article 10 of the Consumer Contract Act, average loss under Article 9(1)(i) — the content of that standard has been worked out in litigation we have not read, and this page stops at what the provision says.
• ■Nothing here evaluates any lease or any clause. Whether a particular term binds a particular tenant is decided by a court on that term's wording and the circumstances around it.
• ■We have not read the ministry guidance on restoration. It exists, it is not a statute, and none of the provisions quoted above refers to it. Its contents are outside what we checked.
• ■Guarantor companies are outside this page. The fee charged by a rent guarantee company, and what its own contract permits, are governed by that contract and by provisions we have not examined.
• ■The dates come from one source. The comparisons across asof dates are measurements of what e-Gov returns. We have not checked them against the official gazette, so an error in e-Gov's data would be an error here.
• ■Our English is a reference rendering. Japanese statutory terms are given in Japanese with a reading and a plain-English gloss on first use. The Japanese text governs.

Sources

Every statutory text below was read on 25 August 2026 through the e-Gov law search service maintained by Japan's Digital Agency, at the version in force on that date, except where a different asof date is stated because the point being made is a change between two versions. The brokerage fee notice is not on e-Gov and was read from the ministry's own PDF. Where a date or a count is our own measurement rather than something printed in a source, we say so both here and in the body.