Tokyo has managed to keep housing prices pretty affordable (and while Japan's population may be shrinking, Tokyo's has continued to grow). Unsurprisingly, they build a LOT of housing and removed most legal/regulatory obstacles to building it a few decades ago.

They issue more permits for new housing units in a year than the entire state of California does, even though California has more than double the population. (or for an East Coast comparison - they issue around 9x the housing permits that NYC does, even though the population is <50% larger).

There have been many articles written on this topic by many publications that you can find, but here's one citation: https://www.ft.com/content/023562e2-54a6-11e6-befd-2fc0c26b3...