This is, surprisingly, more a "Japanese landlords really prefer salarymen" than a "Japanese landlords really anti-prefer foreigners" thing. The second happens, too, but the first preference is more common and harder to talk around.
Note that often you're not discussing your suitability to rent with the landlord, you're discussing with their agent, like the property management company which actually runs the place.
So when the agent says "The landlord prefers I don't rent to foreigners" you can say something like: "Oh, clearly the landlord meant that they didn't want *those* foreigners, but I'm well-versed in acting like an adult, socially established, fluent, etc. Let's have a meeting."
But it's a lot harder to talk around a unique employment situation.
This is not primarily for financial reasons; merely flashing Obvious Ability To Pay signals negatively about your social stability and degree of not-likely-to-cause-problems-down-the-line.
This is not primarily for financial reasons; merely flashing Obvious Ability To Pay signals negatively about your social stability and degree of not-likely-to-cause-problems-down-the-line.
As a direct consequence, when I got written about in the Nikkei, I ordered five print copies. They're currently sitting in a safe deposit box against the possibility that, at some point in the future, I might need to e.g. rent an apartment as an entrepreneur.
Side note: credit scores are an underappreciated technology for justice. They make make it cheaper and more reliable to have a computer run a heuristic than to have a human practice retail discrimination as a defined standard operating procedure.
