Land repurchasing is for land sellers to repurchase lands from buyers by refunding the purchase price. Similar to pledging or mortgaging, the fundamental objective of land repurchasing is to regain possession of land offered as collateral. Studies of the establishment and development of land repurchasing practice were started rather recently, and few case studies of the practice, particularly in western Japan, have been reported. This study discusses how the land repurchasing practice was established and developed in western Japan during the Meiji era (1868-1912) and determined the following: The study was conducted in the prefectures of Fukui, Hyogo, Nara, Wakayama, Tokushima and Kumamoto and confirmed that land repurchasing practices existed in all six prefectures. It can be assumed that the practice existed in all areas of western Japan In the Edo era, when the sale of land was prohibited by the Shogunate, there were practices of de facto land repurchasing or land pledging similar to land repurchasing in those areas. The underlying motives originated from the notion that family estates had to be handed down. Once the sale of land was approved in 1872, those practices were recognized as land repurchasing. In the 1880s, the practice of land repurchasing was used as a credit instrument, restricting the private land ownership of the purchaser. This trend was significant during the Matsukata deflation period of 1881-1885. The land repurchasing practice was established as a result of requests made by debtors who were forced to sell irredeemable pledged or mortgaged land or sellers who sold land for cash to resell lands to them. It can be said that in western Japan the land repurchasing practice was established and developed as an alternative form of security to pledging or mortgaging, rather than as a second attempt at security. The rate at which land repurchasing was agreed was high and the rate at which sellers repurchased lands was also high. These features may be different from those in eastern Japan.
