What if Japan's vacant 'akiya' homes flood the market?
Japan's akiya vacant-home glut collapsing rural land values is a multi-decade demographic grind, not a tradeable shock — the near-zero cascade is correct. Rhymes with the post-1991 Japan land-price deflation that took rural and regional values down for 30 years. Transmission is into regional-bank collateral and municipal viability, largely contained within Japan. Forward angle: this reinforces the structural case for Japan demographic decline but offers no acute catalyst; it is a backdrop, not an event. Roots appropriately minimal.
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The butterfly cascade
How this trigger trickles across markets, left → right — the root shock, its first‑order moves, then the ripple effects. Drag any node; tap a market for its real price history.
Resolution timeline — how this probability is moving
Our model's odds (electric blue) over time vs the market's (Polymarket, amber), from the past toward the 3–10 years horizon. Each dot is a real macro event that nudged the probability — green pushed it up, red pushed it down. Tap a dot for the source. Loading the probability audit trail…
What it would mean
If this plays out, it is a risk-off shock. Japan's vacant-home count crosses critical mass, collapsing rural land values and municipal viability. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — Recession signal ▲ — which propagate through our causal graph to the markets below.