For decades, Japanese regional policy often treated relocation as the ultimate success: move your residence, move your job and make a regional community your primary home. In a country where the overall population is shrinking, that creates an obvious arithmetic problem. Not every town can increase its permanent population at the same time.
A new collaboration announced Oct. 5 by Rakuten Group, Timee, LIFULL and Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance is built around a different idea: people can contribute to a region without fully leaving the city. The four companies are combining travel, short-term work, housing and disaster-risk research around ni-chiiki kyoju—dual-location living, in which a person maintains a primary base and a continuing second base in another region.
Putting travel, work and housing into one journey
The friction in dual-location living is not solved by finding a second house. People need somewhere to stay while testing a region, a reason to return, transport they can afford, income or work in some cases, and housing that is actually habitable rather than merely vacant.
The new Rakuten page tries to assemble those steps. Rakuten Travel offers accommodation discounts in participating areas. Timee lists short-term jobs that can place visitors inside local agriculture and other core industries. LIFULL points users toward rental options centered on vacant homes. Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance is examining whether a second base can also function as a disaster evacuation option and what costs might need insurance coverage after evacuation.
Why Japan put dual-location living into law
Japan’s Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism states the policy problem plainly: with the national population declining, every region cannot rely on increasing its permanent population. The ministry therefore promotes lifestyles in which people maintain a base in a specific region in addition to their principal residence, creating more movement and participation outside major cities.
A 2024 revision to the Act on Promotion of Development of Bases for Broad Regional Revitalization took effect on Nov. 1 of that year. It created a framework for municipalities to plan around housing, livelihoods and interaction with local residents, while also allowing municipalities to designate nonprofit groups and private companies as “Specified Residence Support Corporations” that help connect dual-location residents with communities.
The policy has continued into 2026 through implementation projects and model studies. Rakuten says the four-company initiative is receiving support under MLIT’s model-building program for such designated support organizations.
The first 12 municipalities are not one kind of place
The launch group includes Kamishihoro and Makubetsu in Hokkaido; Shiwa in Iwate; Nasu in Tochigi; Koshu in Yamanashi; Fujieda in Shizuoka; Minamiise in Mie; Kyotango in Kyoto; Sumoto in Hyogo; Umaji and Okawa in Kochi; and Usuki in Oita.
Some are tourism destinations; others are agricultural, coastal or mountain communities. The mix matters because this is not simply a second-home program for resort users. By connecting stays with short-term work, the model tries to turn visitors into participants in places where labor shortages are often seasonal and acute.
Timee brings work into the relationship
Rakuten and Timee had already formed a partnership in March 2026 aimed at creating “related populations”—people who maintain ongoing ties to a region without necessarily relocating. Rakuten’s pages direct users toward Timee listings for short-term work in primary industries and other local businesses.
The job can matter as much socially as financially. Working at a farm, inn, shop or local event creates a deeper relationship than sightseeing alone. For employers, spot work can also supply labor during harvests, tourism peaks or other short periods when a permanent hire may not make sense.
LIFULL turns vacant homes from a statistic into infrastructure
Longer stays quickly become expensive if the only option is a hotel. LIFULL’s role is to surface rental housing, especially vacant homes, that could support an actual second base.
But vacant does not mean ready to live in. Renovation, earthquake resistance, insulation, internet access, furniture, contracts, management and local transport can all become barriers. That is why MLIT’s broader dual-location programs also address trial housing, coworking space, local transportation and communications infrastructure.
The insurer sees a second base as resilience
Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance brings the most unusual angle. It plans to study whether a dual-location residence can function as an evacuation destination after a natural disaster, and what insurance needs arise from evacuation and rebuilding costs.
That treats dual-location living as more than leisure or a prelude to migration. A functioning second base could increase household resilience if the primary home becomes unusable. But the insurance concept is still exploratory: no coverage terms, premium or launch date has been announced.
“Furusato resident” does not mean moving your resident record
The collaboration also sits inside a second policy experiment. Rakuten established the Furusato Resident Support Consortium in September 2025 to help implement the government’s planned “Furusato Resident Registration System.” The concept would allow people to register voluntarily with a region they want to remain connected to even if they do not actually live there.
That should not be confused with ordinary resident registration. Public materials describe it as a relationship framework through which registrants may receive information and services from a municipality. Rakuten plans to launch a portal called “Rakuten Furusato Jumin” in spring 2027.
| Company | Role in the collaboration |
|---|---|
| Rakuten Group | Guide page, Rakuten Travel accommodation coupons, continuing digital relationship with regions |
| Timee | Local spot-work listings and short-term participation in regional industries |
| LIFULL | Rental housing information centered on vacant homes |
| Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance | Disaster-needs research and consideration of future insurance for evacuation and rebuilding |
There is a business model behind the public-policy language
Each company has a commercial reason to participate. Rakuten can connect travel, e-commerce, hometown-tax services and its future resident-registration portal. Timee can expand its worker marketplace into regional labor shortages. LIFULL can cultivate demand for hard-to-use housing stock. Mitsui Sumitomo can identify risks created by a lifestyle that conventional insurance was not designed around.
What the companies have not yet shown is outcome data. The announcement does not say how many people have begun dual-location living because of the page, how many Timee shifts have been filled, how many vacant-home leases have resulted or how much new regional spending has been generated.
A policy that could favor people who can afford two lives
Dual-location living also has an equity problem. Two homes and repeated travel cost money. Households with flexible white-collar work, disposable income and no school-age or caregiving constraints may find the model much easier than others.
MLIT’s 2026 program priorities reflect that concern. They include sustainable ways to reduce costs, long-distance caregiving, local transport, school attendance across jurisdictions and broader support for people who effectively have to live in two places rather than choose to.
- User numbers, nights stayed and repeat-visit rates across the 12 municipalities
- Timee shifts filled and repeat worker participation
- Actual dual-location rental contracts generated through LIFULL
- The coverage and price of any future Mitsui Sumitomo product
- Whether transport and housing costs can be reduced sustainably
- Whether municipalities can show measurable effects on labor shortages and local spending
Making a market out of the space between tourist and resident
Regional revitalization policy has long struggled with the space between “exchange population”—visitors—and permanent residents. The newer language of related populations and dual-location living turns that middle category into a policy target and, increasingly, a commercial market.
The four-company project is notable because it breaks that fuzzy relationship into concrete services: book a stay, take a job, find a home, insure a risk. A person may visit on weekends, work seasonally, rent an empty house or use a second base during a disaster. Regional participation does not have to take one form.
If dual-location living is to matter economically, the metric cannot simply be how many people moved. It will be how often they returned, how much work they did, how much they spent, which relationships persisted—and whether the region still benefited years later.
Sources & Reference Material
- Rakuten Group, four-company dual-location living collaboration, Oct. 5, 2026 (Japanese primary release).
- Timee, four-company dual-location living collaboration, Oct. 5, 2026 (Japanese primary release).
- Japan Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, policy framework for dual-location living.
- MLIT, FY2026 Leading Dual-Location Living Project Implementation Program.
- Rakuten Group, establishment of the Furusato Resident Support Consortium, Sept. 12, 2025.
- Rakuten Group, planned spring 2027 launch of Rakuten Furusato Jumin, Aug. 4, 2026.
- Rakuten and Timee, partnership to create regional relationship populations, March 2, 2026.
- Rakuten and six municipalities, Furusato Resident implementation collaboration, July 1, 2026.
Reporting cutoff: Oct. 6, 2026, 1:21 PM JST. Public materials do not yet disclose user numbers, resulting stays/jobs/leases, the design of any future Mitsui Sumitomo insurance product, or commercial revenue-sharing terms among the four companies.