The latest data on land prices paint an overall positive picture. Prices in both commercial and residential areas in the three largest metropolitan areas — those around Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka — have continued to rise, while the margin of year-on-year decline in other parts of the country have declined, with prices in the big cities that constitute the core of regional economies, such as Sapporo, Sendai, Hiroshima and Fukuoka, moving up.

What the data also show, however, is the growing polarization in the regions outside the big metropolitan areas — between those core regional cities and many others that continue to suffer from population drain and falling land prices. The gap continues to reflect the uneven results of the Abe administration's economic policies that appear to have reversed the asset deflation mainly in large urban areas. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe needs to do more in his avowed efforts to spread the benefits of "Abenomics" across the country through regional revitalization.

According to the recent data from the land ministry, the average commercial land price in the Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka metropolitan areas as of July 1 was 2.3 percent higher than a year earlier. The average price of commercial land in Sapporo, Sendai, Hiroshima and Fukuoka rose faster at 3.8 percent, but the average price in the rest of the country continued to fall.