Earthquake Insurance (Jishin Hoken)
Japanese fire insurance does not cover earthquakes, and earthquake insurance cannot be bought without fire insurance. The 地震保険 (jishin hoken, "earthquake insurance") fills exactly that gap: a government-backed rider on your fire policy that pays out when quakes, eruptions, or tsunamis damage your home or belongings.1
Procedures, fees, and requirements can change. Confirm current details at the Ministry of Finance earthquake-insurance pages or your insurer. This article is general information, not financial advice; for your specific case, consult a licensed insurance agent.
Overview
Earthquake insurance indemnifies damage from fire, destruction, burying, or washing away caused by earthquake, volcanic eruption, or the tsunamis following them.1 It covers residential buildings and household goods only, and its purpose is livelihood restoration after disaster, not full replacement of what you lost.2
The government reinsures the system and caps total payouts per event (12 trillion JPY as revised in April 2021), with pro-rata reduction if claims ever exceed the cap.2 That ceiling is the reason coverage itself is capped the way the next sections describe.
Rider-only mechanics
You cannot buy earthquake insurance standalone. By law it attaches only to a fire-insurance policy covering a residence, and signing a fire policy without it requires ticking the opt-out box on the application.2 If you already hold a fire policy, you can add the rider mid-term while the principal contract runs.2
This structure decides the renter's move too. Renters insure household goods rather than the building, attaching the rider to the contents portion of their fire policy. Owners insure both structure and contents.
Coverage and the caps
Set the earthquake insured amount between 30 and 50 percent of the fire policy's amount, with hard statutory caps of 50 million JPY for the building and 10 million JPY for household goods.12 A condominium's building cap totals exclusive and common areas together.2
Payouts follow a fixed scale for current contracts: total loss pays 100 percent of the insured amount, large half loss 60 percent, small half loss 30 percent, and partial loss 5 percent, each limited to that share of market value.1 Damage below the partial-loss threshold pays nothing, which is why small cracks from a distant quake produce no claim.
Excluded from the start: non-residential buildings, valuables above 300,000 JPY per item, currency, securities, deposits, stamps, and automobiles.1 Art collections and cash holdings need different products.
What premiums depend on
Standard premium rates vary on two axes: the prefecture's seismic risk zone and the building's structure.1 Tokyo, Kanagawa, Chiba, and Shizuoka sit in the highest bands; wooden structures pay well above reinforced concrete and steel for the same coverage.2 Terms run 1 year or 2 to 5 years with fixed long-term coefficients (as of the October 2022 standard rates; confirm current rates with your insurer).1
Discounts reward resistant construction, with confirmation documents required: 10 percent for post-June-1981 buildings, 10 to 30 percent for rated seismic grades, and up to 50 percent for base-isolated construction (as of 2022 insurer disclosures; confirm current discounts with your insurer).2 The discount list is effectively the 1981 building-code story expressed as money.
The fire-after-quake trap
Read this line twice: fire insurance does not cover fire caused by an earthquake or fire that spreads because of one.1 The earthquake rider covers quake-caused fire instead.
Without the rider, a quake fire is uninsured on both sides of the divide. With it, the fire damage assesses onto the earthquake scale. For wooden neighborhoods with kitchens full of gas burners, this single clause is half the product's value.
The under-insurance reality
Rider attachment keeps climbing: 70.4 percent of new residential fire policies carried earthquake coverage in FY2024, the highest since statistics began and 22.3 points above FY2010 (as of August 2025 GIROJ release; confirm current figures with the GIROJ databank).3
Household penetration tells the soberer story. Policies in force cover only the mid-30s percent of all households, and the count excludes mutual-aid contracts that protect further families outside the statistics (as of end-2024; confirm current figures with the GIROJ databank).4 Roughly speaking, two buyers in three add the rider, but only one household in three holds the cover.
Is it worth it: the general calculus
The product favors owners over short-stay renters, long tenures over brief ones, high-risk prefectures over low ones, and older wooden buildings over new concrete ones.2 A renter with a futon and a suitcase insures little worth covering; an owner with a mortgaged house and a decade of possessions insures the loan's collateral and the household's restart fund.
Set the ratio at the 50 percent maximum unless the premium genuinely strains the budget. The saving from a 30 percent setting is small against the coverage surrendered, because every payout tier scales off the insured amount.1
Whether the premium is worth it depends on your building, zone, savings, and mortgage terms. Use the general calculus above to frame the question, then put your numbers to a licensed insurance agent.1
Find your municipal hazard map
Your prefecture sets your premium, but your municipal map sets your personal risk picture. Two homes in the same rate zone can sit in very different tsunami and landslide exposure.
Start at the national Hazard Map Portal run by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism at https://disaportal.gsi.go.jp/, which overlays national risk data on one map.5 Then follow the portal to your own municipality's published map and weigh the rider decision against your actual zone.5
Good to know
The 50 percent cap means partial rebuilding, not replacement
Even a total loss pays at most half the fire-policy amount within the statutory caps. The product restarts your livelihood; it does not rebuild your house. Size your savings and mortgage buffer with that ceiling in mind.1
Discounts reward the same buildings the 1981 article favors
Post-1981 confirmation, rated seismic grades, and base isolation cut premiums because they cut expected claims. When comparing two homes, the newer one's cheaper insurance is part of its price advantage.2
The premium buys a tax deduction too
Earthquake premiums qualify for the earthquake insurance premium deduction on income tax up to a fixed statutory cap. Confirm the current cap and filing method with the National Tax Agency or your insurer at filing season; the deduction slightly trims the rider's effective cost every year.
See also
- Fire Insurance and the Carrier-Substitution Trick
- Mortgages for Foreign Residents
- Setting Up an Emergency Fund Adapted to Japan
- The Household Earthquake-Preparedness Kit