Last weekend, I indulged myself – once again… There was an open house near Kyoto University, and since the house was a semi-traditional Japanese one built some 80 years ago, I just had to see it.
In fact, it was not just one house, but three buildings on the same plot of land. There was one very large main house with 10 rather large rooms on two floors. Then there was a much smaller house with three rooms in total, and some sort of shed in the back of the garden. Here are some pictures from the agent’s leaflet:
It turned out the house was built for a professor of Kyoto University by a quite famous architect of that time, Koji Fujii. Fujii was one of the pioneers of ecological building in Japan, and he certainly had a keen eye for details. The ceilings are restrained but beautifully decorated with differently colored wood; There are tiny windows at the right spots, and there is even a reading room/office with built-in desks right at the windows, still original.
It is not a truly traditional Japanese house, but it is not one of the westernised homes with European exterior that were so popular in the Taisho era and among the university professors either. It is a very well designed Japanese house with modern influences, and this fusion is so well done you don’t even notice them. For example, on the ground floor are rooms with normal wooden floors as well as rooms with tatami. The latter are raised significantly higher as usual than the former, so that if you are sitting in seiza on the floor, you are at eye level with somebody sitting on a chair outside.
The state of the house is not good, unfortunately, but not quite as bad as the last one I visited. On the other hand, since it is more traditional, the interior is rather dark with the small windows and the paper covered shoji, and the wood which is mostly painted dark does not help much to be honest.
Still, I hope there is somebody who buys the house and renovates it properly instead of simply tearing it down and building another bloody mansion on top… I wish I could save this house from certain destruction, but I don’t quite have the money for it. Anybody who has a spare million Euros for me?