Japanese Heritage Shōya House

The Huntington Gardens, Pasadena

“Once again I am driving southwest on the great Tokaido Road that runs between Tokyo, the present capital of Japan, and Kyoto, the ancient capital . . . I am headed for the dream-haunted calm of the old inn called Minaguchi-ya.” —Oliver Statler

Last week, as I was walking through the wonderland of the Japanese gardens at the Huntington today, I suddenly recalled how much I once loved Oliver Statler’s book The Japanese Inn.

Have you read it?

Like the historic Edo-period inn of Staler’s book, the new “shoya house” at the Huntington is a building with a long history— from its creation three-hundred years earlier in Marugame (Shikoku), it has been passed down within the same family, generation after generation. The family were once samurai and later served as hereditary village heads (or shoya). Therefore the home was not just for the people of the family— but served as a meeting place for the entire village. It was where they paid taxes, for example—but it was also where they gathered for festivals and to attend ceremonies.

Now living in the United States, the current family heads Mr. and Mrs Yokoi found it challenging to keep up their grand ancestral home back in Japan. Anyone who lives in an old house knows what is involved in maintaining and caring for them—but this one was three centuries old and across the ocean!! Finally, it became too much for them and they decided to donate the structure to the Huntington Library and Gardens in Pasadena.

And so the venerable house was disassembled and then sent across the ocean for its story to continue on here in California….

Because the house was originally built without nails, using traditional Japanese joinery, the craftsman who disassembled it back in Japan, had to travel to California to put it back together again.

After the installation of the home in Pasadena, a garden was designed to reflect the village where it came from, which was primarily agricultural. Already, there are small crops growing around the house—including sesame, mizuna, burdock, and rice. In Japan, the home was originally surrounded by what was a large irrigation canal where rain and melting snow from Japan’s mountains provided water for fields and homes. There were fish ponds for disposing of table scraps and toilet waste was used to fertilize the fields. Like in other farming communities in Japan, rice paddies filtered the wastewater like a natural wetland.

Curator Robert Hori has placed a strong emphasis on the inherent eco-friendliness and sustainability of the traditional way of life in Japanese villages.

This is captured by the traditional Japanese concept of satoyama. Made famous by Totoro, satoyama is a mix of small-scale farmland, rice fields, and wetlands, as well as its surrounding woods, Satoyama is not pristine or untouched. Its objective has always been human use—but these areas were sustainably so. They are, in effect, the polar opposite of the massive-scale monocrop agriculture tracks owned by corporations in the U.S.

Some people might know about satoyama from the fabulous BBC documentary with David Attenborough from years ago, called Satoyama: Japan’s Secret Water Gardens.

A kind of commons, they are communally used and communally managed transition zones between forests and rice fields and villages. Streams, ponds and rivers are used as water sources for paddies, and people make limited use of the forested areas to forage and hunt.

Even though we make an effort of sorts, surviving with only one car with solar panels on the house, I reckon my impact and carbon footprint is three or four times what it was in Japan. Probably more….Many years ago, in a book put out by the Union of Concerned Scientists, they estimated the average American is equal to four British and eight Japanese~~ so maybe I am underestimating things regarding my own impact here….

Happy Holidays to everyone!!!! Thank you all so much for reading xoxoxooxoxox

Books:

Oliver Statler’s The Japanese Inn

Winifred Bird’s Eating Wild Japan: Tracking the Culture of Foraged Foods, with a Guide to Plants and Recipes

The Honjin Murders (Detective Kosuke Kindaichi, #1) by Seishi Yokomizo, Trans, Louise Heal Kawai

At Home in Japan: A Foreign Woman's Journey of Discovery, by Rebecca Otowa

Lovely article from National Geographic about Alex Kerr’s wonderful farmhouse in Shikoku….