A death in a house once meant a vigil, not a discount. They remembered
Do not rush to mock what Japan is doing, for they have remembered something the modern West filed under superstition and threw out with the elders: a dwelling is not drywall and floor area. Things happen in houses, and houses keep them. Every old people knew this. We built rituals for it — wakes in the parlour, windows opened for the departing soul, a year of mourning before the room was used again. Then we invented the deep clean and called ourselves advanced.
The Japanese hold the line: a house where death came wrongly is 'jiko bukken', marked, and the law itself — the LAW — requires the full history be told to any buyer. A country where the estate agent is compelled to honesty about the dead. Note it well.
And when the mark must be lifted, they do it the correct way: with ceremony and with witness. A Shinto priest cleanses. Investigators keep vigil through the night — ten at night to six in the morning, the honest hours, the hours a wake was always kept. That they bring thermography instead of candles is merely the costume of the age. The structure is ancient: sit with the house, all night, and in the morning declare it ready.
One correction the old ways would demand: 9 million houses stand empty while the young go unhoused. A house left empty rots — a house needs breath in it, fires lit, floors walked. Grieve properly, cleanse properly, then FILL them. A house is healed by living. Keep vigil. Then rest.