There is a Japanese carpenter with 50 years of experience on YouTube who documents his construction of entire homes, which I would recommend to anyone who is interested in modern Japanese wood construction:
Thanks for the links! I'm already subscribed to his japanese channel, and I have watched a lot of his videos on it. I don't speak japanese, but that doesn't matter at all!
The bed we recently bought was "mostly Japanese joinery" type construction. It was an absolute joy to assemble, which when I think about it is a very weird thing to say about a bed. But I've told several people this, so it must have had an effect on me.
I'm curious how it sleeps and wears over time. I was thinking of building one like that, but decided against it because of the concern of the joints between the legs and the rails: if it's loose enough to assemble in the summer time without an almighty hammer, it seems like it'd be subject to a fair bit of racking and rattling during the winter when the air is much drier.
Does anyone here have any long-term experience with this kind of bed?
One of my favorites on this subject, focuses more on design than construction but goes into some details which many books on construction neglect or gloss over.
Thank you so much, I've been looking for this vaguely remembered book on the internet for many years. I read it in the library as a tween in the 80s but never saw it again.
Those houses have nothing to do with traditional Japanese construction and joinery, those are just cheap houses built to fill an immediate need. This is a fairly common thing anywhere that is experiencing rapid growth, you either meet the needs of the people or they move somewhere else, you can't expect them to be homeless until their palace is built.
Edit: I said traditional and the thread is about modern, but OPs link is referring more to design than construction, very much uses traditional techniques with some variations to adapt it too modern tools. Good article.
What a lot of these articles are missing is the additional building and maintenance costs.
Sure a building can be made to last a lot more than 30 years, provided you plan for it upfront with additional materials and architecture costs, and execute regular maintenance including on plumbing and potentially windows/door framing, which also have significant costs. All in all, considering Japan’s building constraints, the total budget for the house lasting 100 years will cost more than a standard house you scrap down and rebuild every 30 years.
Basically it’s the ship of Theseus’ paradigm: do you rebuilt a house piece by piece over time, or do full reboots at specific moments.
An illustration of this issue when looking at long term ownership of older houses:
One major thing to consider is that the last major revisions to Japan’s earthquake codes were in 1981, so until the last decade or so, buying a house over 30 years old meant that the house had a significantly higher likelihood of collapsing during a quake.
Wow, look at those beautiful precut joints. Meanwhile in the US, you're picking through a pile of ugly bent up lumber just to find something that's not totally screwed up.
Stick building does not require perfect lumber, part of its advantage. If you want good lumber in the US than don't dig through construction grade lumber, go to a proper lumber yard that caries higher grades, if they don't have it they will happily get anything you are willing to pay for. And if you want Japanese construction there are plenty of people in the US more than capable of it.
Has little to do with US versus other countries. You're probably looking through framing lumber. Those don't need to be straight and are priced accordingly.
If you want stuff that's dimensionally accurate, you'll want to look at the furniture grade selection (which will be a relatively small area) or go to a lumber yard where there's more selection. The big box stores mostly focus on the lower grade lumber.
there was a guy from Kentucky / Tennessee area that moved to California with his long, blonde hair and beard, and studied that carpentry. He had a long wood working tradition at home, and was skilled enough - in the 1970s, when Yoko and John were an item. This guy eventually did visit Japan, but the trip did not go well. Whatever happened, it did not go well.
Later, besides doing occasional museum demonstrations and other high-skill one-off things, you know because he just was not skilled enough for the natives or something .. he got a job rebuilding one of Larry Ellison's mansions, who had a fetish for Japanese wealth. OK actually, he was plenty skilled he was just not the right race apparently.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdf5QHEpfrg3KydeT3iD2IQ (English)
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdrVc2ByfvnNW14R6o_WpkA (Japanese)