/ARTS WEEKLY/JAPAN: Old Farmhouses Signal Return to Tradition

By Suvendrini Kakuchi Reprint | | Print |

Suvendrini Kakuchi

TOKYO, Mar 25 2003 (IPS) - The former home of an empress, old farmhouses and a determined citizens’ group are helping revive an interest in tradition in Japan.

Empress Michiko, the wife of Emperor Akihito, had lived in a charming, mock-Tudor house in the quiet district of Gochome in central Tokyo. And when the residents learnt of plans to demolish the 70-year-old house, they were outraged.

Mitsue Sumi – who leads the Group to Protect the Culture and Environment of Gochome – and her husband, Ikuo, filed a provisional injunction with the Tokyo District Court requesting the government to halt demolition.

"We have the right to protect local cultural assets," said Sumi, "We dearly hope the house will be preserved despite the government order to tear it down by Mar. 28." She has lobbied well, and her group has collected more than 100,000 signatures in support.

They need all the support they can muster. For ranged against the citizens’ group are the Finance Ministry – which has owned the house since 1999 in lieu of an inheritance tax payment following the death of the Empress’s father – and construction companies.

The old house is to be torn down to make way for a park. Although disused, the former residence of Japan’s empress has historical and cultural value, the citizens’ group argues. They have on their side Gochome residents living near the old house, and who don’t want to see a public park in their quiet corner of Tokyo.

Nor is the Gochome group unique. In January 2003, a citizens’ group in Toyosato, in the prefecture of Shiga, western Japan, filed a formal request that their mayor be removed from office. He had proposed that the elementary school building, constructed in 1937, be demolished, which incensed the residents.

"Japan is rediscovering its cultural and historical past," said Yoshiro Takishita, an architect who is best-known for his restoration of old Japanese farmhouses, called ‘minka’. "More people are realising that the pursuit of post-war material gain has resulted in the loss of Japanese traditions."

Japanese farmhouses, often constructed more than a century ago, feature massive, lustrous wooden beams topped by thick thatched roofs. Experts say the carpenters had extraordinary skill in joinery and a spiritual understanding of wood. Inside, instead of walls, screens and paper-covered panels separate the high-ceilinged rooms. Straw mats cover the floor.

The building of the steep and heavy roofs often demanded communal sharing of labour. The ‘minka’ are also respected as symbols of traditional Japanese values such as respect for hard work and communal effort.

"The Japanese gave up their ‘minka’ culture for steel and plastic – concrete replaced wood, a fundamental difference that mirrored the rapid post-war social changes and with it the loss of inner fulfilment," pointed out Takishita.

What became Takishita’s life work began in 1964, when he disassembled three large farmhouses that would have been submerged by the reservoir of a new dam, and had them transported to Kamakura, a 12th-century capital which lies west of Tokyo.

There, Takishita converted the three into one large house, in which he lives and which serves as an exhibit of the ‘minka’ values he has helped revive. The renaissance of the farmhouses has entranced the public. There is a constant stream of visitors to Takishita’s homes – he has restored 30 – which have successfully married the sophisticated architectural technology of the past with the amenities of a modern residence.

"These days it is difficult to build the houses from scratch as high-quality wood is scarce and many people who have the know-how are dead," said Takishita. "But still the appreciation for the simplicity and beauty of the past is growing."

In 1995, the ‘minka’ revival received a big boost when the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) named three villages in Japan’s central Gifu and Toyama prefectures a World Heritage Site. All the villages contained traditional houses.

This year, the Japan National Trust for Cultural and Natural Heritage Conservation, a non-profit organisation, will embark on two projects which illustrate the return of a traditional Japanese aesthetic. These are a 300-year-old kiln which produces the red bricks that were used to construct old buildings, and the Satoyama mountain in Chiba, on the outskirts of Tokyo, which is famous for temples and landscaping.

The Trust purchases and restores old buildings through donations, and its spokesperson, Akiko Yamamoto, said that the organisation’s new thrust is to preserve homes and buildings that are not designated cultural assets by the government, most of which are two or three centuries old.

"The decision to take on these projects reflects the growing popularity for artifacts that reflect the beauty of ordinary Japanese life and values that have been lost in rapid post-war materialism," explained Yamamoto.

Takishita, whose book – Japanese Country Style: Putting New Life into Old Houses – provides an inside look at the craft, explained that in the post-war years, wood houses were destroyed indiscriminately as they were considered symbols of poverty.

"After Japan was defeated in World War II many Japanese were influenced by Western cultures as they felt that everything, including their values and aesthetic senses were to be denied," he said.

As Sumi continues to lobby till the last for the old house in her neighbourhood, she is categorical about what she sees around her. "The new generation of Japanese have been taught to excel at exams but do not have a sense of national pride in their past," she said. That’s why, Sumi stressed, it is important to preserve old structures such as these.