Why Japan is Crazy AboutHousing

House NA / Sou Fujimoto Architects. Image Iw an Baan

Japan is famous for its radical residential architecture. But

as Tokyo architect Alastair Townsend explains, its

penchant for avant garde housing may be driven by the

countrys bizarre real estate economics, as much as its

designers creativity.

Here on ArchDaily, we see a steady stream of

radicalJapanese houses. These homes, mostly designed

by young architects, often elicit readers bewilderment. It

can seem that in Japan, anything is permissible: stairs and

balconies without handrails, rooms flagrantly cast open to

their surroundings, or homes with no windows at all.

These whimsical, ironic, or otherwise extreme living

propositions arrest readers attention, baiting us to

ask:WTF Japan? The photos travel the blogosphere and

social networks under their own momentum, garnering

global exposure and international validation for Japans

HouseT / Hiroyuki Shinozaki Architects. Image Hiroyasu Sakaguchi

outwardly shy, yet media-savvy architects. Afterall, in Japan

the country with the most registered architects per capita

standing out from the crowd is the key to getting ahead

for young designers. But what motivates their clients, who

opt for such eccentric expressions of lifestyle?

An unconventional home requires an unconventional client,

one whos willing to take-on, or can afford to ignore, one or

more types of risk: privacy, comfort, efficiency, aesthetics,

House in Saijo / Suppose Design Office. Image Courtesy of Nacasa&Partners

Inc.

etc. But Japans experimental commissions arent

necessarily luxury villas for a wealthy cultural elite. Many

are small middle-class homes, not a typology where we

expect to find bold avant garde design. So, what is it about

Japan that encourages such everyday risk taking?

In the West, deviation from societal norms can jeopardize a

homes value, since it may prove impractical or distasteful

to future buyers. Bold design decisions can present

investment risk, so clients usually temper their personal

tastes and eccentricities accordingly.

At least thats enshrined Western logic. Safe as

houses,right? Travel to Japan and this home truth is turned

on its head, largely because the Japanese can not expect

to sell their homes.

Houses in Japan rapidly depreciate like consumer durable

goods cars, fridges, golf clubs, etc. After 15 years, a

Kumagai House / Hiroshi Kuno + Associates. Image Courtesy of Hiroshi Kuno

+ Associates

home typically loses all value and is demolished on

average just 30 years after being built. According to a

paper by the Nomura Research Institute, this is a major

obstacle to affluence for Japanese families. Collectively,

the write-off equates to an annual loss of 4% of Japans

total GDP, not to mention mountains of construction waste.

And so, despite a shrinking population, house building

remains steady. 87% of Japans home sales are new

homes (compared with only 11-34% in Western countries).

This puts the total number of new houses built in Japan on

par with the US, despite having only a third of the

population. This begs the question: why dont the Japanese

value their old homes?

Here, without wishing to resort to clichs, a little cultural

background offers some insight

Firstly, Japan fetishizes newness. The frequent severity of

earthquakes has taught its people not to take buildings for

granted. And impermanence is an enshrined cultural and

House of Aw a-cho / Container Design. Image Eiji Tomita

religious value (nowhere more so than at Ises Grand

Shinto Shrine, which is rebuilt every 20 years). These oft-

repeated truisms nonetheless fail to offer a sufficient

economic rationale for Japans ingrained real estate

depreciation. Its disposable attitude to housing seems to fly

in the face of Western financial sense.

In the countrys rush to industrialize and rebuild cities

decimated after WWII, housebuilders rapidly spawned

many cheap, low quality wooden frame houses shoddily

built without insulation or proper seismic reinforcement.

Older homes from this period are assumed to be

substandard, or even toxic, and investing in their

maintenance or improvement is considered futile. So,

rather than maintain or upgrade them, most are simply torn

down.

Depreciation is also a holdover from the collapse of

Japans economic bubble in the late 1980s. Then, the

ballooning price of land shot up so rapidly, buildings were

considered temporary installations. This perception

persists today, propped-up, in part, by policies that

House N / Sou Fujimoto. Image Iw an Baan

artificially sustain land prices, despite years of economic

stagnancy and population decline.

The quality of todays typical homes most of which

arerobotically prefabricated has greatly improved, but the

earlier mindset remains entrenched as market logic.

Depreciation is the mantra of housing appraisers. Yet,

theres no material reason why, if properly maintained or

improved, these homes couldnt provide shelter in

perpetuity, like in the West, where reselling and moving

homes several times throughout ones lifetime is

commonplace.

Japans army of loyal salarymen enjoy secure jobs for life,

and rarely move to relocate to a new job. Although this is

starting to change, a stable salaried job is still a

prerequisite for a mortgage, which borrowers slowly repay

in full over the course of their careers. Selling up much

less profiting from the resale is out of the question, since

no one wants to buy a pre-owned home. As the salaryman

dutifully slaves away to pay off the mortgage, his or her

propertys value is all the while depreciating, eventually

leaving only the value of the land (minus the cost of

demolishing the house). In other words, negative equity is

the norm. Grinding economic and, consequently,

geographic immobility is an entrenched reality for most

Japanese homeowners.

Compared with other developed economies, where, mainly,

the wealthy hire architects, many more young Japanese

first-time homeowners buy land and hire an architect to

build their new home, perhaps because for all the

economic reasons just discussed theyre resigned to

living in it for the rest of their lives.

Wall less house / Tezuka Architects. Image Katsuhisa Kida / FOTOTECA

House in Kohoku / Torafu. Image Daici Ano

So, how do Japans bizarre real estate economics influence

its architecture? Clients need not contemplate what a

potential buyer will think 8-10 years into the future. This

gives them and their architects greater personal freedom.

Without property values to safeguard, Japan, generally

lacks planning scrutiny or incentives to protect and

preserve local character. Neighbors are largely powerless

to object on aesthetic grounds to what gets built next door.

This is a boon to architects creative license, but it also

reduces the collective incentive to maintain and beautify

communities by, say, nurturing greenery or burying

overhead power lines.

The freedom to build homes that are a highly personal

expression of lifestyle, taste, and aspiration, makes Japan

a fertile environment for architects and their clients to test

the limits of residential design.

House in Hiro / Suppose Design Office. Image Toshiyuki Yano

For architects, it also helps that civil lawsuits are rare.

Unlike their litigation-wary European and American

counterparts, Japanese architects rarely fear claims of

negligence, emboldening them to take greater risks.

Japans younger architectural clientele may be more open

to risk-taking at the behest of their architect, for whom each

project presents an opportunity to test new and innovative

ideas. Perhaps theres also a measure of youthful navet

as to the long-term consequences of design decisions that

they, as end users, will have to tolerate for the rest of their

lives.

It may seem sad that Japanese families slave, scrimp, and

save to build a home, only to see their investment rapidly

vanish over the ensuing 15 years. In this light, some of the

avant garde houses seem like fatalistic last hurrahs

follies to the futility of home ownership in Japan. Resigned

to their predicament, but needing somewhere to live and

Library House / Shinichi Ogaw a & Associates. Image Courtesy of Shinichi

Ogaw a & Associates

raise a family, its little wonder that Japanese clients reclaim

control and quietly rebel in the best way they can through

design.

Besides theyll eventually tear it all down anyway.

Alastair Townsend (@AlaTown) is co-founder of Tokyo

Architects BAKOKO. He also writes about architecture and

housing in Japan at alatown.com. He was the former editor

of the website ja+u (Japan Architecture+Urbanism) and

editor of JA Yearbooks 1990-2011.

Cite:

Alastair Townsend . "Why Japan is Crazy About Housing" 21 Nov

2013.ArchDaily. Accessed 21 Nov 2013.

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