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If one has the land to put it on, for not much more than the price of constructing a modern house it is possible to transport a Japanese farmhouse from the country to the city.
Yoshihiro Takishita, 36, has been working on the preservation of such farmhouses for a decade or more. The idea started almost 20 years ago, when a foreign friend was offered an old Japanese farmhouse for the almost ridiculous price of 5,000 yen since if he didn't buy it the house was doomed to disappear under the swirling waters of a newly constructed dam in the area of the original location (Gifu Prefecture).
The house was transported beam by beam to Kamakura, where it was stored while waiting for the owner to purchase some land to put it on. It has now been completely restored and reconstructed and all modern conveniences such as central heating have been cunningly installed in hidden parts of the house. Needless to say, it wasn't long before the foreigner's friends all wanted something the same. This is where Takishita came in.
"I'm a matchmaker," he insists. "All I do really is keep in touch with my sources in the countryside and if there's a Japanese farmhouse in good condition about to be threatened with demolition I visit the area and check to see if it is suitable for transportation to another site.
"The bugs are a problem. Unfortunately some beautiful old houses are not worth restoring because they would collapses like a deck of cards if you moved them. The next step is to find a buyer.
"Sometimes I rescue the house anyway and store the parts here in Kamakura until a suitable buyer comes along. My main purpose is not profit so much as saving the house. If a buyer feels the same way as I do but has only a limited budget, somehow we manage to work out the problem of finances. As an antique dealer I can honestly say saving these houses comes more from a feeling of love than of making money. This is merely an extension of my profession.
"The question
I suppose is why are these houses disappearing? The
older generation have become accustomed to these old houses,
including their merits and demerits, but the younger generation can't
stand them. They want to live in a modern house with all conveniences,
something half Western and half Japanese. Usually they want to build
on the same spot of land, so the answer is to pull down the old house
and chuck it away.
"If the building is solid with good columns and massive beams not too riddled with bugs or worms I can usually save it. Fukui Prefecture is the best area for such houses. Fukui, being in snow country, has the most beautiful formation of beams using keyaki, cedar and pine.
"Each region has its own style. In Takayama, for example, they all have low ceilings. In Fukui the ceilings are high with massive cross beams where they used to hang sacks of rice to stop the mice getting at them. They are not only practical, and beautiful from constant usage, they are almost like sculptures.
"There are still framers in Fukui, but because of the introduction of modern machinery they don't need to use their houses so much for their work, and a lot of the time they travel around the country earning money in the cities during the off seasons. They don't need hay anymore, for example. They've stopped using thatch since the tile soon became a symbol of wealth, and there's also a lack of craftsmen. The tile roof changed the style a bit since you can't have a steep roof with tiles, only a regular angle. This is a problem in snow country because the idea of the gassho style was that the angle allowed the snow to slide off in winter.
"The next question is, why are these houses beautiful? I think they are practical and suitable for modern living. The ideal is to keep them in their natural environment but this is impossible for reasons I mentioned before. People just don't have the land.
"The government has been working hard to save such houses and has been successful to some extent, even reserving whole streets in some areas. The problem here is that if they designate a certain house an intangible cultural asset, then the owners are forbidden to change or modernize the house in any way. This causes a lot of inconvenience for those who want to install modern systems, so people tend to avoid having their houses 'protected' by the government because they lose control over them.
"What we actually save is limited. Usually we have to compromise by only rescuing the beams and then having carpenters from the area come to Tokyo to reconstruct the rest of the house in the traditional manner. The bathroom, for example used to be in the outer room but here in the city, people want it installed in a more suitable part of the house. The stable also can become a tatami room without much trouble. We don't change the basic structure, but we do modernize to some extent.
"The price is not so different between building a new house and transporting an old one. Most of my customers who love the feel of 'old Japan.' At first they were mainly foreigners, but these days more and more Japanese are becoming interested. The houses can also be transported abroad without too much trouble. We usually send the carpenters, too. It's cheaper in the long run than hiring local people.
"It is easy to dismantle the houses because no nails were used in the construction, so they can easily be unloaded and reassembled.
"I am happy the Japanese are growing to approve of this idea. Modern Japanese clients are at first somewhat wary, considering it a crazy idea to bring a house form another area, especially a used house. Most Japanese people like new things. Others don't want to wait the three months it would take to dismantle, transport and reassemble the house They want something already built. There is also the problem of convenience. Some people are happy to tell the architect they want four rooms and two bathrooms without thinking too much about howthey want them installed. When transporting an old farmhouse the clients, myself and the architect have to sit down together and work out how many rooms and so on they will need in the new residence. It takes time to adjust to special use of space within a fixed structure, but it can be done. Many people, however, don't want to take the time.
"I'm happy to say that there seems to be a trend whereby people are moving away from the tate-uri (ready-made) houses, especially amongst people with money, and they are thinking more about the houses in which they would like to live. So far I haven't had any requests for such houses from ordinary people, like salarymen, because I suppose they just haven't thought about it. But I think if a worker is earning over five million yen a year it is possible to provide him with such a house. There is no reason why it shouldn't be within his limited budget.
"Buying up and restore such a house, you see, is the equivalent of
something in between going to the department store or going to a
tailor to buy a suit. In my opinion people who order such houses are
very special people. Let's face it: they have very special houses."
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