Thermoses in Japan are known as mahōbin (magic bottles). And magic they are! You can put ice cubes and water in one and, hey presto, 24 hours later the ice still hasn’t melted, even in the middle of summer. And vice versa with boiling hot water. So, why can’t I have a mahō manshon; in other words, an apartment that stays warm in winter and cool in summer?
It was a crisp two degrees when I woke this morning and I could see my breath. Mind you, that was, inside our shinshitsu, or the tatami-floored room where my wife, two young sons and I sleep, huddled together for warmth like polar bears. When the alarm went off, I crawled out from beneath three layers of kaké-buton duvet and blankets, pulled on a pair of Heat Tech long-johns, heavy socks, and a sweatshirt to face the harsh elements of my kitchen where I brewed a cup of coffee to help myself thaw out.
About ten years ago, we bought a fan heater that could be connected to the gas main in the kitchen. Let me tell you, I felt like Prometheus! With a flick of a switch, the heater kicked to life and the richest, deepest heat, like hot bath water flowed over me. Now every morning, when my boys wake, they amble two paces out of the shinshitsu and then lie down like cats before the heater, unwilling to budge for the next thirty minutes.
The thing is, no matter how cozy that heater of ours can get the room, as soon as it’s turned off, the warmth dissipates as if the very soul of our living room is being frittered away.
While the persistent cold is bad enough, my pet peeve is the moisture that forms on the windows overnight. Every morning, my boys—armed with special squeegees that have a receptacle in the handle—scrape the dew off, collecting two, sometimes four, cups worth. I have suggested to my wife that we drink it to re-capture the life-force that is being robbed from us in the dead of the night.
It doesn’t have to be this way, does it? Why a friend of mine in Iceland told me that even when it’s -10℃ outside, he can leave the window open and it will still be a comfortable 25℃ inside. Even a DIY amateur like myself can see that there are simple solutions to these problems. Better insulating, weather-stripping, and double-glazed windows are just a few things that come to mind, but I seldom see them in the wild. So, what gives? Why do the Japanese who are by no means poor, live as if they were?
Whenever I bring these annoyances up with my Japanese friends, they tell me the same thing: “Oh, Crowe-san, but Japanese homes are built for summer, not for winter.” To which I can’t help but shoot back: “You don’t really believe that, do you? Built for summer? Built to trap in the heat and humidity that prevents you from getting a proper night’s sleep for two months of the year? Really? Really?”
Sigh.
What I suspect, though, is that many manshon here are not built to last much longer than forty years or so. Yes, some of the better-built ones today could theoretically continue to be lived in 100 years from now, but all you have to do is look at the condos that were built in the 80s to imagine how today’s ones will look in only thirty years’ time—shabby and cramped, the sun blocked by more modern and taller neighbors. And because they aren’t built to last, corners are cut—mind you, not on safety, because Japanese buildings are some of the safest in the world—but rather on comfort. Why spend extra money on something that’s eventually going to be demolished, seems to be the thinking.
The same is true, if not more so, for houses. Several years ago, there was a fascinating paper published by the Nomura Research Institute (NRI) that has since been quoted by nearly every article written on the Japanese housing market since. (For some reason, the original article no longer exists; it has been bulldozed and scrapped like many older homes in Japan.) The article, summarized in a Freakonomics podcast on Japanese houses, claimed that despite Japan’s shrinking population, the number of new homes built every year was on par with that of the United States, which has three times the population. Per capita, Japan also has triple the number of architects as America and twice as many construction workers. So, what gives?
One reason for this is that houses are for all intents and purposes all-but worthless after only fifteen years according to the NRI paper, and thirty years by more conservative estimates. Again, why use the best materials when you’re just going to smash a wrecking ball into the place within a generation? And so, what you have today are charmless plastic boxes with thin walls and single-paned windows that are for the most part disposable.
I once stayed in an apartment in the hip Trastevere neighborhood of Rome. Inside, it was as comfortable as you could hope, with high ceilings, a rather spacious designer kitchen, and a modern, though somewhat small, bathroom. The building itself was over seven hundred years old and beautiful—700 years!—as were most of the buildings in Trastevere. And no one, but only a heartless real-estate developer perhaps, would ever consider tearing one of those treasures down. And isn’t that what architecture should be, a treasure, something that adds value to the land over the long run rather than being little more than a temporary tenant that will eventually wear out its welcome?
Ah, but I digress and now my coffee has gotten cold and so have I.
