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Building a house isthe biggest amusement in life‘Building a house is the biggest amusement in life.’ I keep saying so.‘Don’t be silly,’ some might say so.However, I am not joking or mistaken. In other words, building a house is a life itself, and a compilation in life. In short, it is a form of conception of life. I think it a matter we have to face in good earnest.For all that, people nowadays tend to neglect what building a house really means, only to accept the ideas given. They are shown systematized houses, asked to choose one of them, and then decide among options. This should not be the right way to make a compilation of life.First of all, materials are important for building a house. I have built houses with lumber produced in Hokkaido. It is the idea of local production for local consumption. At least wood grown in Japan are better for houses there.When Hokkaido once flourished in coal mines, many Japanese Larches from Shinshu (Nagano) were planted. However, the demand reduced as coal mines declined. Japanese larches are easy to bend and not suitable for building materials. Useless plantations were left neglected and desolated. There were Japanese Larches planted in my parents’ house in Ashibetsu, but none of them were ever used. Then, an idea of using them came to my mind.To tell the truth, when I started this business, I never had a thought of using lumber produced in Hokkaido. I realized their merits when a wholesale merchant in Nagoya asked me for Oak grown in Ashibetsu. Japanese Oak is bought and sold at a high price overseas and used for fine furniture. Then I thought there might be a big chance in Hokkaido, where there are plenty of forest resources.It is a meaning same as bringing up a forest to build a houseForestry Agency should know much about wood, so I asked their advice on how Japanese Larches from forest thinning could be used as building materials. They told me about a special drying technique. If they are dried in a kiln as a whole at a high temperature, they become straight, suitable for building materials. I developed this technique with Hokkaido Forest Products Research Institute, and that opened the way.Besides the establishment of the technique of making Japanese Larch a building material, there was another problem to be solved; the development of a system of the distribution of lumber. Conventionally, trading companies supply lumber with stores, and they sell it to construction companies or builders. This is still the main stream of the distribution of lumber. Therefore, we can only buy lumber that traders want to distribute. It does not guarantee you can get lumber you want.That is why I developed a system of direct dealings between producers and users. It assures that construction companies and builders can buy lumber produced in mountains. Easy to say, but indeed hard to accomplish.There are many processes on bringing down lumber from mountains such as cutting down trees, carrying them, stripping logs, sawing them up, and fabricating them. I persuaded people involved with these processes in turn, and organized them as an association. Cash transaction was undertaken, and a drying kiln for exclusive use was built in the mountain. It took us several years to establish the system but it turned out to be the first association in Japan(since1996), in which producers and building companies can cooperate with one another, dealing with domestic lumber.My idea of house architecture using lumber of Hokkaido for Japanese forest industry has become accepted outside Hokkaido, and we have built many houses in Japan.228The genuine article ‘does not become old and rather adds to attraction’epilogue