Akasaka Research Buys and Rebuilds the Haunted House

Akasaka Research Buys and Rebuilds the Haunted House is the concealed real-estate transaction through which a discredited Setagaya lot is acquired, rebuilt behind extraordinary security, and furnished with a newly excavated well. Reported in an investigative article and later implicated in Toru Okada’s rent-to-buy arrangement, the purchase makes the property’s history more than neighborhood superstition: the land’s ownership, price, and use are all difficult to see, even as its well becomes central to Okada’s life.

From Family Collapse to a Stigmatized Lot

The property’s history begins before Akasaka Research appears. Kojiro Miyawaki had owned restaurants, including a Ginza establishment, but a stock-market loss destroyed his businesses, house, and land. According to Okada’s uncle, Miyawaki had pledged the property as collateral while trying to open another restaurant; after losing everything, the family’s house remained empty. The uncle advised Okada not to touch the property, warning that its title and assets might be tangled up in frozen proceedings. The vacant building’s deteriorating shutters, rusted railings, weed-choked garden, and stone bird statue gave that financial history a visible, neglected form.

Miyawaki’s business failure was followed by catastrophe. After the family’s subsequent murder-suicide, the land became publicly associated with a string of tragedies. A newspaper investigation recounted that Miyawaki had bought the lot in April 1972 despite ominous rumors, dismissed them as coincidence, demolished the old house, and had a Shinto priest perform an exorcism before building a new two-story home. For a time, the family appeared peaceful and prosperous. Years later, debt and pressure from lenders ended in the deaths of Miyawaki, his wife Natsuko, and their younger daughter; their eldest daughter remained missing. The family’s fate intensified the stigma attached to the site and made the property difficult to sell even when its location and nominal market value were attractive.

The land’s legal and commercial history prolonged its vacancy. Miyawaki lost the mortgaged house in the fall of 1983, but creditors disputed the repayment order, delaying final disposition until a court-mediated settlement the following summer. A major Tokyo real-estate firm then bought the lot below market value, demolished the house, and attempted to sell the cleared site. Buyers withdrew after hearing its history, and the firm eventually accepted a substantial loss rather than keep paying interest on an unsalable property.

The Purchase and the Company Behind It

The investigative report identifies the buyer as Akasaka Research, a company registered in Minato Ward whose stated business was economic research and consulting. Its stated purpose for purchasing the lot was the construction of a corporate residence. The company appeared to be a paper entity: reporters found only a small plaque on the door of an apartment at its listed address, and nobody answered their bell. The buyer’s identity was therefore present in the registry but nearly absent from ordinary public view.

A local property agent’s account gives the land’s price a different measure. The lot covered a little more than 3,500 square feet, just under 100 tsubo, and an ordinary first-rate parcel in the area might command 1.5 million yen per tsubo. Because the Miyawaki property would not sell at an ordinary price, its rate had fallen to 1.1 million yen per tsubo; with further bargaining, the agent thought it might be acquired for 100 million yen. He expected the price to fall further and noted that the previous buyers had paid 900,000 yen per tsubo. These estimates underline the gap between the land’s desirable location and the stigma that depressed its exchange value.

The report could not establish the final purchase price or name the people behind the transaction. It says the seller declined to identify either, while real-estate sources believed the company had accepted considerably less than its asking price. The disclosed corporate name thus answers only part of the question of ownership: Akasaka Research appears in the official record, but the people who control or benefit from it remain obscured.

A Residence Built Behind Walls

The construction was carried out with speed and secrecy. Work began in May and finished in two and a half months, always hidden behind high fences. A caterer who delivered lunches described a small, plain, single-story structure, more like a concrete box or an air-raid shelter than an ordinary home: it had few windows and was never visible to neighbors behind its canvas screen. The stark building was accompanied by an expensive landscape. Contractors planted mature, carefully selected trees according to a supplied garden plan, and the landscaping firm accepted a high bid without bargaining.

Once completed, the residence was more enclosed than any other house nearby. A tall wall and solid black iron fence blocked sightlines, while a video camera sat atop the gate pillar. Reporters received no answer when they rang. Neighbors had seen an electric gate open and a black Mercedes-Benz 500SEL with tinted windows go in and out several times a day, but reported no other visible traffic or sounds. The contrast between the carefully cultivated grounds and the building’s sealed, nearly bunker-like appearance made the site look less like a normal household than a controlled space whose occupants and purpose were being withheld.

The car’s ownership also fits the transaction’s indirect structure. The Mercedes-Benz 500SEL belonged to a major leasing company and had been leased for a year beginning in July to a Minato Ward company. The leasing firm would not identify its customer. The report judged, from the sequence of events, that the customer was almost certainly Akasaka Research, but could not confirm it or determine whether the lease included a chauffeur. Even the vehicle associated with the residence therefore led toward an inference rather than a fully disclosed owner.

The Well and Okada’s Hidden Stake

The most consequential feature of the rebuilding was not visible from the street. During the landscaping work, a well-digging company was brought in to reopen the original well, which had been filled in. A landscaper saw the work from nearby while planting a persimmon tree. The crew raised soil from the excavation on scaffolding and retained the old concrete lining. The well was easy to restore because it had been filled only recently, but no water was found; it had been dry before and remained dry. The landscaper could not explain why the buyer went to the trouble of bringing it back.

That restoration connects the otherwise opaque purchase to Okada’s personal history. Years earlier, after entering the neglected Miyawaki yard, Okada had removed the stones covering the well, tested it with a pebble, and heard it land with a dry thud. He lowered a rope ladder into the darkness, unable to see whether it reached the bottom. Later, the house and yard were demolished, leaving only a flat, bulldozed stretch of earth behind a fence. Okada could hardly believe that the well he had climbed into had once stood there. Its later reconstruction thus reverses the physical erasure of the old yard without restoring the old home: the well returns inside a new, inaccessible property.

Okada’s interest in the lot also becomes a financial commitment. He first recognized that wanting to own it was not enough: he had almost no money, no job, and nothing to offer as collateral. He bought ten lottery tickets worth fifty million yen each, pinned them to the kitchen wall, and stared at them until he accepted that a windfall would not solve his problem. He tore them up and turned instead to finding a way to raise the money himself. Later, Ushikawa told him that he was renting the land and house through a lease with an option to buy, although his name did not appear publicly. Ushikawa estimated the total payments at roughly eighty million yen and said that, at the current rate, Okada could take title in less than two years. The man living at the site was therefore its de facto owner even while the formal arrangements concealed his name and the identity of the company receiving his payments.

A House That Conceals and Remembers

The acquisition transforms the lot without making it ordinary. The earlier empty house had seemed to detach itself from the family that built and cared for it, while the later demolition seemed to wipe away the house, trees, antenna, well, and bird sculpture alike. Akasaka Research’s project replaces that visible vacancy with a guarded corporate residence, yet the rebuilt site preserves the old well beneath its new landscaping. The property’s successive forms—family home, abandoned ruin, cleared lot, and sealed residence—record changes in possession while leaving the people behind those changes difficult to identify.

The transaction also makes land value unstable in a precise way. On paper, the property is a prime parcel with southern exposure; in the market, its stories drive buyers away and force successive owners to accept reduced prices. The stigma is not merely an obstacle that Akasaka Research overcomes: it is part of the conditions under which the purchase becomes possible, while the company’s paper identity and hidden construction keep its own stake obscure. By reopening a dry well on a lot whose visible past has been demolished, the new residence makes concealment itself part of the property’s design—and provides the setting for Okada’s hidden, long-term claim.