Figures released this morning by the Bank of Japan show that the increase highlights an end to more than a decade of stagnation. This corroborates figures released in January and in March by the government that showed commercial land prices in Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya rose in 2005 for the first time in 15 years.

The government and the central bank use different methods to calculate the price changes. The government looks at a sample of properties and averages the year-over-year percentage changes in the prices of each property. The BoJ looks at the same properties but calculates the aggregate change in value for the entire sample.

According to the BoJ, commercial land prices rose 4% in 2005 and in Tokyo they were up 5.5%. Since the bursting of the late 1980s "bubble economy", land prices in Japan have fallen sharply.

The Bank of Japan said the weighted average of Japan's land prices had risen 1.4% year over year as of Jan. 1, 2006, the first positive reading since 1991, around the time that Japan's asset price bubble burst. The report also notes that the index of commercial land prices in Japan is still only a third of that recorded in 1991, but prices are recovering because of strong consumer demand for condominiums and strong demand from investors for commercial land. Banks have increased lending on property and foreign investors are targeting investment properties in the cities.