The carpenters had not seen such awe-inspiring joinery except in textbooks until now. Even their master Japanese carpenter, with his 50 years’ experience in the trade, hadn’t laid eyes on such old-time craftsmanship before—not in practice, anyway. They examined the wooden bones of a 95-year-old, two-story kominka (or traditional Japanese house) and would not find a single nail fastening the works.
Dylan Iwanuki, 26, moves frequently from job site to job site working on old traditional Japanese construction projects such as kominkas and shrines. This kominka had belonged to a building company owner before being abandoned and then sold to a designer of chairs, Taka Yoshino, whose vision was to transform it into a chair museum—complete with a café overlooking Mount Fuji.
That’s where Iwanuki and his team come in. Their mission was to relocate the kominka from its present location in Saitama, near Tokyo, to their workshop first—where many of their discoveries and explorations would take place. Then finally they would deliver it to Yamanashi Prefecture for reassembling.
Initially, faced with its modernized exterior, the kominka’s jaw-dropping joinery lay mostly hidden. Not until deconstruction began would the carpenters’ minds be blown. First, they had to figure out how the joints fit together, which would be a daunting task despite all their experience—for how does one work on what one can’t see?
“From the outside, the joinery is hidden, and so we had to kind of figure out how it was connected so that we knew how to take it apart,” Iwanuki, a practicing Japanese carpenter from Saitama, told The Epoch Times. “That was also very fascinating for me personally.”
He revealed some of the history behind the trade. In the old days, when nails had to be forged by hand and were expensive, Japanese carpenters found ways to bind wood together and even tighten it through intricate systems of interlocking joinery and wedges. Such systems could achieve the same tightening effect as modern-day screws, and no metal fasteners were needed at all. Back then, there were no power tools, so all of the work was done by hand. That explains why custom kominkas are so expensive today.
“Only a select few or a small group of clients [are] willing to spend that much money or time to do that kind of work,” Iwanuki said. “It still exists, but it’s just that it’s definitely not common.” Today, there are “more efficient ways of building or cheaper methods,” he added.
The carpenters discovered another joint located in a place they didn’t expect as it wasn’t load bearing; that is, in the floor sills, which lie horizontally directly above the ground or concrete foundation. This joint, called “okkake daisen tsugi,” involves two pieces that slide together, one overlapping the other, tied by two wooden pins locking them. This was also found in beams, for it’s extremely strong.
One of the trickier specimens they found was a corner joint called “hako dome” where only a single vertical seam is visible along the miter (corner) from the outside. A far more intricate system lay unseen within with two wedges inserted within the inside angle to create tension that fastens the whole. These wedges were extracted with pliers before the joint was separated—and in a way that was, somehow, so satisfying to watch.
Though not part of the present project, one of the most complex Japanese joinery types Iwanuki has come across is called “kawai tsugite.” This unique joint can be fitted interchangeably to form three distinct angles that include two different types of elbows or a straight line. Needless to say, that one went viral.
The carpenters had to exercise great care in the disassembly process, which took about two months. Many of the interior beams consisted of unfinished logs lending a rustic look, while the rest was simply a timber frame. Each piece was meticulously cataloged with x-, y-, and z-axis coordinate labels on them before being transported to the workshop.
Once shipped, the carpenters set to work fixing pieces that had been damaged by age or termites or had been warped or twisted by time or weather. Sometimes they had to craft new pieces from scratch to be married with the old. It was through this process that they were truly amazed by the craftsmanship of their forbears; it remained so tight after so long and was so clean and precise that they were in awe.
Iwanuki himself felt obliged to honor their work by crafting something they would deem worthy. He did not wish to embarrass or dishonor them with poor or substandard work. He described the process of marrying old and new as “communicating with the carpenters of the past.”
“To see their work and see what they left behind makes you feel like you’re going to leave behind good work as well,” Iwanuki said. “I think that was the biggest takeaway.”
Once all of the repairs were done—it took about six months in the workshop, sometimes involving temporary re-assemblies—the pieces were relocated to Yamanashi Prefecture where reconstruction began. That took about nine months and involved installing an all-new interior that was up to code by modern standards. About “eighty percent” of the original old bones were preserved in the building, Iwanuki said. Nor would all the old be hidden in the newly-christened chair museum, but rather, shown off where it was possible to do so.
Today, the kominka is called Chair Laboratory—it’s a kind of quasi-avant-garde, interactive museum paying homage not only to excellence in traditional Japanese carpentry, but also the design of modern chairs. It features some 300 fine furniture pieces from around the world displayed on the main floor. There is a separate chair woodwork studio where connoisseurs can sit in and experience them, plus an upstairs where visitors may admire Fujisan while savoring a cappuccino.
