Monday 8th December 2025, 16:02
I don’t know why exactly - seeing an empty plot of land where a house once stood feels so sad. There are the obvious personal reasons that in most cases don’t really apply to me because I can’t know all the previous owners of all the now gone houses. I don’t have memories of talking to the gone homeowners or visiting their homes. But knowing that these older homes are disappearing without anyone to move into them or to maintain them seems like a potential forever loss of knowledge of how to make and look after them. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe I just become too sentimental about anything older than me. Their construction out of timber beams, often exposed on the inside and outside, weathering and ageing in an unrepeatable way,- only with that magic elixir of decades, gives way to the new construction of homes made with composite, compressed sheets forming frankenstein beams of high-tech materials mass-produced mm to mm in factories from digital blueprints.It’s a way to cheapen and to standardise the manufacturing process, and no doubt to lessen strain on domestic resources of timber. I don’t know.
Perhaps there’s a pinch of me just being nostalgic for a past that I did not grow up alongside. To me it feels like some sort of secret history to uncover is hidden in the layers built up of patina in the grain of the wood of the doors and sometimes dullness and sometimes shimmer and shine of use. References of people's homes, of their grandparents’ furniture, of common fabrics and ornaments, crockery. You don’t really always know whether a bowl is a special sort of bowl or one that lots and lots of households had in 1975 for example. Walking into a second-hand homeware shop and seeing multiples of your family’s most treasured crockery set can feel quite strange, it must have just been a popular design. Same goes for prophouses, a great way to relinquish attachment to objects when you see rows and rows of them, ownerless, organised, and waiting to be placed in a set. Again, even the most “rare” items of your china cabinet you will probably find amongst the shelves of one of the London prophouses.
But this feeling of sadness about the homes after homes after homes either falling into abandon and disrepair, taken over by climbing vines and wayward seeds, or just bulldozed and gone completely - I don’t really know what to do about it. On the one hand there is nothing that can be done about someone dying and no longer needing their house to live in. But on the other hand, if buildings that hold the histories of society are systematically bulldozed and lost forever, what does that mean for future generations in understanding the layers of time that came before the one we live in now? Or is my perception just skewed because I didn’t grow up learning and understanding and being surrounded by that history?
Next door are going to bulldoze and have sold the land to an estate agent, bulldozing in March apparently. And all their trees will be cut down as well. There really aren’t enough trees in Niigata, no woods, not enough parks and green spaces. Is this a privileged European ideal? Is this a result of a post-war reality in Japan, not enough space and liberty to keep trees alive with the pressing need for industry and growth and only essential allotments. Parks are a privilege, green is a privilege, but access to spaces that promote good mental health should not be a privilege, but it is. Sometimes I think it’s just me who needs to go see a big wide expanse of space or canopy of branches and leaves to feel at ease. It can feel like everyone else seems to have an oxygen tank attached to them in order to breathe in the underwater murkeyness of endless asphalt. I suppose that’s a result of the privilege of growing up in an environment where there was lots of green nearby. Others gasp for city and building and noise and clutter of footsteps and busyness when detached too long from town.
Anyway, I think seeing and knowing and learning more about the generation that is not being learnt from, their skills potentially being lost to no new generation, that is what makes me sad. The houses they built, deemed no longer relevant or needed, within a generation. But maybe that’s just always how it’s been, new generation, new house, new way of building.. Something to find out more about..
But it’s strange to say to someone that they and what they do and what they have made is to you a crucial part of their (and your) country’s history and culture, and their tools and their know-how is a cultural asset that must not be lost and forgotten. In other words, their belongings and tools should be in a museum. Potentially, a generation has somewhat been skipped in learning these skills, or leapfrogged-over and mechanised. As Mr Souma said this morning, it’s only through the process of making that you realise what tools you need, how they should be made and what they should be able to do. Therefore, there’s no real merit to just owning tools to make with, one has to make - in order to give life to the tools and to find their purpose in your own life.
What is it about old, used inherited tools that is so poignant? They are things that have been developed over time, become outdated, yet why does it seem so wasteful and careless to throw old retired ones away?
In addition to what tools have been used to make, aren’t the tools themselves of high value, to be cared for and looked after, even after their users have long-gone and their use made redundant by their newly designed descendents. But the trace of touch imbued by signs of use and notches of time marked in the wear and tear of their bodies, points back so clearly at their many years of service and ultimately the human life attached to their once busy and now very still existence.
Can we say the same for grandparents, their ways of doing things outdated maybe, younger generations quicker, more efficient. I’m not sure what I'm trying to preserve exactly, or if it is something to preserve. You can’t hold on to all old things, yet at some point things from your childhood will eventually become artefacts in museums to learn about the past
But then again an earthquake or flood can happen just like that and the old buildings often suffer the most. Safe as houses, but maybe safer in newer houses..
I don’t know why exactly - seeing an empty plot of land where a house once stood feels so sad. There are the obvious personal reasons that in most cases don’t really apply to me because I can’t know all the previous owners of all the now gone houses. I don’t have memories of talking to the gone homeowners or visiting their homes. But knowing that these older homes are disappearing without anyone to move into them or to maintain them seems like a potential forever loss of knowledge of how to make and look after them. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe I just become too sentimental about anything older than me. Their construction out of timber beams, often exposed on the inside and outside, weathering and ageing in an unrepeatable way,- only with that magic elixir of decades, gives way to the new construction of homes made with composite, compressed sheets forming frankenstein beams of high-tech materials mass-produced mm to mm in factories from digital blueprints.It’s a way to cheapen and to standardise the manufacturing process, and no doubt to lessen strain on domestic resources of timber. I don’t know.
Perhaps there’s a pinch of me just being nostalgic for a past that I did not grow up alongside. To me it feels like some sort of secret history to uncover is hidden in the layers built up of patina in the grain of the wood of the doors and sometimes dullness and sometimes shimmer and shine of use. References of people's homes, of their grandparents’ furniture, of common fabrics and ornaments, crockery. You don’t really always know whether a bowl is a special sort of bowl or one that lots and lots of households had in 1975 for example. Walking into a second-hand homeware shop and seeing multiples of your family’s most treasured crockery set can feel quite strange, it must have just been a popular design. Same goes for prophouses, a great way to relinquish attachment to objects when you see rows and rows of them, ownerless, organised, and waiting to be placed in a set. Again, even the most “rare” items of your china cabinet you will probably find amongst the shelves of one of the London prophouses.
But this feeling of sadness about the homes after homes after homes either falling into abandon and disrepair, taken over by climbing vines and wayward seeds, or just bulldozed and gone completely - I don’t really know what to do about it. On the one hand there is nothing that can be done about someone dying and no longer needing their house to live in. But on the other hand, if buildings that hold the histories of society are systematically bulldozed and lost forever, what does that mean for future generations in understanding the layers of time that came before the one we live in now? Or is my perception just skewed because I didn’t grow up learning and understanding and being surrounded by that history?
Next door are going to bulldoze and have sold the land to an estate agent, bulldozing in March apparently. And all their trees will be cut down as well. There really aren’t enough trees in Niigata, no woods, not enough parks and green spaces. Is this a privileged European ideal? Is this a result of a post-war reality in Japan, not enough space and liberty to keep trees alive with the pressing need for industry and growth and only essential allotments. Parks are a privilege, green is a privilege, but access to spaces that promote good mental health should not be a privilege, but it is. Sometimes I think it’s just me who needs to go see a big wide expanse of space or canopy of branches and leaves to feel at ease. It can feel like everyone else seems to have an oxygen tank attached to them in order to breathe in the underwater murkeyness of endless asphalt. I suppose that’s a result of the privilege of growing up in an environment where there was lots of green nearby. Others gasp for city and building and noise and clutter of footsteps and busyness when detached too long from town.
Anyway, I think seeing and knowing and learning more about the generation that is not being learnt from, their skills potentially being lost to no new generation, that is what makes me sad. The houses they built, deemed no longer relevant or needed, within a generation. But maybe that’s just always how it’s been, new generation, new house, new way of building.. Something to find out more about..
But it’s strange to say to someone that they and what they do and what they have made is to you a crucial part of their (and your) country’s history and culture, and their tools and their know-how is a cultural asset that must not be lost and forgotten. In other words, their belongings and tools should be in a museum. Potentially, a generation has somewhat been skipped in learning these skills, or leapfrogged-over and mechanised. As Mr Souma said this morning, it’s only through the process of making that you realise what tools you need, how they should be made and what they should be able to do. Therefore, there’s no real merit to just owning tools to make with, one has to make - in order to give life to the tools and to find their purpose in your own life.
What is it about old, used inherited tools that is so poignant? They are things that have been developed over time, become outdated, yet why does it seem so wasteful and careless to throw old retired ones away?
In addition to what tools have been used to make, aren’t the tools themselves of high value, to be cared for and looked after, even after their users have long-gone and their use made redundant by their newly designed descendents. But the trace of touch imbued by signs of use and notches of time marked in the wear and tear of their bodies, points back so clearly at their many years of service and ultimately the human life attached to their once busy and now very still existence.
Can we say the same for grandparents, their ways of doing things outdated maybe, younger generations quicker, more efficient. I’m not sure what I'm trying to preserve exactly, or if it is something to preserve. You can’t hold on to all old things, yet at some point things from your childhood will eventually become artefacts in museums to learn about the past
But then again an earthquake or flood can happen just like that and the old buildings often suffer the most. Safe as houses, but maybe safer in newer houses..
