Japan's land ministry has opened a one-month public comment period on a draft Cabinet Order that would relax four building-code requirements, and the headline change targets a specific supply-chain pain point for homebuilders.
Under the current rule, a builder using an already-approved standardized housing design, known as a type approval, must recertify the entire design if even one certified material becomes unavailable, for instance after a disaster or a pandemic-driven shortage. The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism proposes carving structural-strength provisions out as their own separate approval category, so builders can keep the structural sign-off and check only the swapped material through an individual building confirmation. The stakes are sizeable: type approval is already used in roughly 90% of housing supplied by Japan's homebuilders.
| Area | Proposed change |
|---|---|
| Structural type approval | New standalone approval category for structural-strength provisions, letting builders retain approval when a certified material becomes unavailable |
| Daylighting rules | Exempts short-stay welfare facilities, such as day-service-only elder care centers, from window and opening requirements |
| Fire and evacuation | Lifts interstory drift-angle and compartmentation rules for certain fire-resistant buildings judged safe without them |
| Hazardous material limits | Removes storage caps on compressed and flammable gas fuel equipment that meets ministry safety standards |
Three further relaxations round out the package. Daylighting rules would no longer apply to welfare facilities where visitors stay only briefly, such as day-service-only elder care centers, on the reasoning that short stays and time spent at home make the current window requirements unnecessary. Fire and evacuation rules covering interstory drift limits and fire compartmentation for certain fire-resistant buildings would be lifted for structures the ministry judges safe without them, based on new technical findings. Storage caps on compressed and flammable gas used as fuel would disappear entirely for equipment meeting ministry safety standards, addressing complaints that current limits force frequent gas deliveries to sites in mixed-use districts.
Comments are due by August 30, 2026, after the window opened July 31. The ministry expects to promulgate the order in September and bring it into force on November 1, 2026, but the exact criteria for each exemption, including which facilities and building types qualify, will be spelled out later in ministerial notices rather than in the draft order itself.