Anyone who still owns, much less uses, a fax machine may be embarrassed by the fact. The rest of the developed world has abandoned the device, and it seems that only in Japan is its utility valued, if for no other reason that to send maps to people who still don't know their way around Google. And the same march of technology that has rendered the fax obsolete is making land lines an unnecessary expense. Most young people who acquire their first apartments don't bother applying for them. Their mobile phones are perfectly adequate.

So what about those of us who still have land lines? More specifically, is the kanyuken — the subscription right to the line — worth anything? Once upon a time it cost as much as ¥80,000 to have a telephone line set up in one's name. That was the cost of the right to a subscription, a kind of investment in the country's telecommunications infrastructure, and you carried it with you your whole life; unless you wanted to sell it, which you could do. In fact, there was a market, with agents willing to broker your kanyuken to others. Though no one ever made money off their subscription rights, some people used it as security for small loans or pawned them.

Japan started offering telephone service in 1890, but the kanyuken system didn't begin until 1897, when it cost ¥15. However, households didn't really start getting telephones on a major scale until after the war, and it wasn't until the late 1960s that more than half of the country's population had phones in their homes. Many, in fact, were party lines. By 1976, the kanyuken cost more than ¥75,000, and subscribers could pay in installments. The telephones themselves were rented not owned. NTT was privatized in 1985, at which point the price of a subscription right dropped to ¥72,000, not including tax. It's been slowly decreasing ever since. Since 2005 it has cost ¥36,000, though you can buy it on the market for as little as ¥11,000. NTT does not and never has bought back such rights, so once you purchase it it's yours forever unless you unload it on someone down the line, and that's becoming increasingly difficult. Few businesses now trade in kanyuken, though we did find one on the Internet that was offering ¥1,500 for a subscription right.