I think the Japanese don't get quite as invested in buildings of the past. They don't preserve and/or re-use buildings like we do in the US. Great for advancing architecture and design - not so great if you want to preserve history for some reason.
Yep. Regular apartment or business buildings are teared down and rebuilt regularly, every 25 or 30 years, for compliance with new earthquake regulations. [0] Also, the 80's economic bubble long term effects are still showing: a lot was built with low quality materials, land lots were super expensive and there was less money for high quality building...
Also, land and building ownership is separated on Japan, so depending on how you got your home, you could own an apartment or single family home, but still be paying rental for the land that it uses.[1]
Edit: Also, from the West we aren't familiar with how often do they rebuild stuff like, for example, the temples. We arrive to a, let's say, 300 years old temple, and we're imagining it being 300 years old. Of course, being mostly wood, they're like huge Theseus temples that, during the years, they're fixed and repaired and pieces substituted and probably right now the oldest wood piece is 'only' a 150 years old. Others were burnt down due to accidents or war. And not only that, some others are regularly rebuilt as a tradition or ceremony. Like the one in Ise (Mie) that has been rebuilt every 20 years since the 690 [2]
IMHO, being an island on the Pacific rim, I think Japan has had centuries of "Well, that structure was lost to [insert natural disaster here], guess we'll have to rebuild". Whereas, Europe has "Its amazing that this structure has lasted through [insert any number of man made disasters, wars or disputes], we should see how much longer it can survive"
Don't forget lightning. When touring temples in places like Mt Koya, it felt like all the buildings had been rebuilt because the original had been stuck by lightning.
