Which don't exactly have laissez-faire approaches to folks renting out their properties, but the larger issue is that Japanese cities are just generally better about building enough housing to meet demand compared with most American and Canadian cities.
For example the whole of Japan had 28 million visitors in 2017[0].
I couldn't find more recent stats but Austin TX had 20 million visitors in 2011-2012.[1][2]
Tokyo metro has a population of 13million Austin tops out at 2 million.
Austin also has some of the highest airbnb usage, 400k+ guests in a year.[3]
I'm bring up Austin because I live there and definitely experience Airbnb affecting the prices.
Sure we all want more housing but the fact is that investors love to buy homes in cash to rent out for events driving the existing stock prices higher.
[0] https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/23/japan-welcomed-20-percent-mo... [1]http://www.austinrelocationguide.com/2012/Tourism-in-Austin/ [2]https://www.bizjournals.com/austin/news/2011/09/28/survey-re... [3]https://www.bizjournals.com/austin/news/2018/01/30/airbnbs-m...
These numbers are apples and oranges. For Japan, the number is for foreign tourists, while for Austin it is for all tourists. Tokyo and other Japanese cities also have domestic tourists, which aren't being counted in your 28 million number.