Could tiny/smalls homes be a viable option in the UK?

Japanese homes are indeed tiny, I used to live there and have many Japanese friends, and their houses and flats were so small it was like just one bedroom to me and smaller than my student dorm when I was uni. Why do we need to make it work here? In the UK we tend to keep our houses, as in not demolish them, we also have more inhabitable land and are not earthquake or disaster prone. In Japan, demolition and selling land to rebuild is the normal thing, no one lives in 100 year old houses like here. My Japanese friends who had grandparents die, the house is demolished and the land is sold if the kids don't want it. Property does not appreciate like it does here, and people only want new or near new property. When I told me friends there that my house was built in the 1930s, there were jaws on the floor. Being an earthquake prone country with very little landmass that can actually be built upon (most of Japan in mountains etc... so population tends to concentrate in cities in like Tokyo), so houses are built small and flimsy out of wood so that you can hear all your neighbours if not the neighbourhood. People call the police there if you make noise. The UK situation is very different to Japan. Sure our houses aren't massive like the US and Aus, but we don't have the overcrowding and earthquake issues that Japan has to warrant us living in small wooden houses with paper doors, or flats the size of a bathroom.