2024 April 20th – Minka Summit

Traditional Houses in Japan

Traditional Japanese houses consist of several buildings, including an entrance gate, various warehouses or reserves, wells, and habitable buildings. The main building, with rooms furnished with woven rice straw mats called tatami, is composed of a large space adaptable by sliding wooden partitions, which, depending on the size of the needed space, can open and close at will. The living space is often surrounded by a wooden corridor opening onto a traditional garden. The shōjis 障子, sliding wooden lattice doors, are lined with white paper allowing light to pass through.

If your goal in Japan is to buy a traditional house called minka 民家 or kominka 古民家, the Minka Summit is an annual symposium not to be missed under any circumstances. It brings together architects, carpenter artisans, joiners, cabinetmakers, roofers (especially specializing in thatched roofs), and restorers of traditional houses. People from all over the world have participated. We have made exceptional encounters there, such as this young Franco-Japanese woman who came to learn traditional carpentry in Osaka, or Julius, a young German cabinetmaker who makes traditional furniture with a master in Nagano, a villager from Kuta who stored thatch for 30 years before redoing his straw roof in just one summer and who started to harvest it again for the next time.

Azbee Brown, during his conference, talked about the master carpenter Tsunekazu Nishioka, whom he had the privilege of meeting. A restorer and builder of traditional temples, he notably repaired and restored the temples of Horyu-ji (Ikaruga) and Yakush-ji (Nara), both classified as UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

Among the teachings he inherited and passed on, here are those that particularly struck us:

• during the construction of a temple, do not buy beams, but a whole mountain. You will use the wood that grows to the North for the walls exposed to the north, that of the south for the walls exposed to the south, and so on.
• just as the temple is composed of trees, each with its own personality and must work together, the team of builders is made up of men of different characters and constitutions. The strongest and most solidly built are employed in more physical work, while the delicate are employed in carving and the most intellectual in plans and calculations.

The trees used for traditional temples are often a thousand years old and are designed to last a thousand years. When this master craftsman rebuilt and restored certain temples for a cost that seemed exorbitant compared to what a concrete construction would have cost, he simply responded to the criticism directed at him by saying, “my work is meant to last a thousand years.” Everything in his vision was a projection for the very long term, and even the way the wood would work and change over this long period of time, which far exceeds the scale of a human life, was consciously present in his mind.

One of the other speakers particularly impressed us: arriving on the island of Ojika, he asked for permission to settle for free in an akiya (abandoned house) in poor condition and offered to renovate it in exchange. By collecting materials from other abandoned houses, which are legion on the island, he began to turn this experience into paid work, and since then, he has been moving from abandoned house to abandoned house, renovating them with recycled materials.

We became aware of the importance of preserving this traditional heritage there, as 50,000 Japanese houses disappear each year, victims of the heaviness required by their maintenance and the lack of means or the disinterest of their heirs who often live in a distant city and sell the land to someone who will clear everything and rebuild anew.