Who owns land?
By William Wetherall
11 January 2026
The short answer is no one, on any continent, in any era -- native, invader, squatter, or present tax payer. Humans are at best temporary occupants who -- like other animals that build and protect their lairs and nests -- roost in this world for only as long as they are able to rut and rally, before running off to the next world.
I hereby acknowledge that my home and the land it sits on belongs to the temporary government to whom I pay an annual fixed asset tax on their combined assessed values. The house no longer has any market value, as wooden structures of its vintage -- now over 60 years old -- quickly depreciate. Though the structural "improvements" have a nominal value for assessment purposes, only the land under the house has any real value -- at least when it has value.
Real estate values are bubbles. They expand and burst according to supply and demand in a competitive market that may not be free. To temporarily own a piece of land, one has to pay the fees of the agent who facilitates the purchase, and of the judicial scrivener who does the paper and leg work to duly transfer title at the land office -- though anyone can do that oneself at the expense of learning how and taking the time to deal with the bureaucrats.
Someday my daughter and son will inherit the title to my the property. Should they decide to sell it, the buyer will probably want only the land, on which to build a new home, so the cost of demolishing the old home will very likely come off the selling price. Or they might demolish the home before they sell, to possibly get a better price. Another option is that one child will buy the other's interest and build a new home.
But just as the land is not really mine, neither will it truly belong to my children. Should they fail or refuse pay the annual taxes. the municipal government could garnish or attach other assets, put a lien on the property, even seize the property and sell it at a public auction to recover unpaid taxes, penalties, and any maintenance that came at public expense.
I bought the property from the owner of a company that imported electronic components. He had bought the property in the company's name to build a home in which he only briefly lived before he rented it out to a series of families. Three left signs of their occupancy -- a marble name plaque on one of the stone piers of the iron entrance gate -- a couple of bronze clamps used by an artist to make public wood sculptures -- a formal letter under the mat in the Buddhist alter from a daughter to her parents on her wedding day.
Forgotten bones
I've crawled under the bathroom and parts of the adjacent hallway and closet, through a hatch in the bathroom floor, but I haven't explored other foundation spaces. Who knows what might be found there. I've dreamt of a demolition crew pulling up flooring and exposing a mummified woman. The company president's first wife?
I've also imagined my children deciding to build on the property. When digging a hole for a rainwater harvesting tank, the excavator uncovers a skull, and my children bring it to the local police box. They will know it's not mine, for the fragments of my cranium will be among the ashes they scatter along the headwaters of Teganuma.
Perhaps the officer on duty will record the skull in the lost-and-found ledger. And one day, a man who lost his head will come to claim it. And the officer will look at the protruding forehead of the skull and point out that it belongs to a woman.
Or maybe the skull has an arrowhead lodged near an orbital bone. So the police give it to the local historical society. An archaeology professor prevails upon the city assembly to halt construction to allow his graduate students to conduct a salvage dig.
The skull turns out to be that of a Jomon man, but the origin of the arrowhead is late paleolithic. An indigenous people's organization claims the land and sues for title. They argue that the shooter was protecting the land from the Jomon invaders who preceded the Yayoi rice cultivators and the founders of Japan.
The court agrees with my children, that there are no reasonable grounds for claiming indigenous ownership -- even if it were possible to produce a chain of title going back to a broken promise. The claimant and my children strike a compromise, according to which my children will post the following land acknowledgement at the entrance gate.
We acknowledge that this land
belongs to the elements, that
we are but its present custodians,
following countless predecessors,
who left their spirits taxes here.
Last revised 14 January 2026