The Yamaguchi family, living in the western foothills of Kyoto, were local village headmen for generations. The main gate was erected in the late Edo period. The main house, built in a combination machiya and farmhouse style of the same period, served as the family’s residence for decades.
The complex was registered as a tangible cultural property in 1999, and I became 20th head of the family after my father’s death. As I was single, my thoughts at the time centered on how I could adapt my way of life so that the house would retain a spark of life, so I decided to live as my forebears had 100 years ago.

In Kyoto, there is a saying that homes should be built to make life easy in summer. Its machiya townhouses, employing ingenious methods to evoke cooling sensations, reflect this philosophy. These include adaptations to catch breezes, cooling visual and sound effects, uchimizu water sprinkling [to promote evaporation] and other customs. I ready my home for summer too. Before the rainy season, I change the inner partitions to reed lattices [to let air flow freely] and turn off the air-conditioning. Even on the hottest days, the house is wide open, and thanks to its deep eaves and the greenery around the house, an electric fan is all that’s needed to keep me comfortable. The cooling breezes that flow through the house evoke the gentleness of nature that I am grateful for. At night, I sleep with the windows wide open, a mosquito coil lit to ward off the pesky insects, and a mosquito net over my futon.

ust like in the previous times, there is no furniture in the room. In any case, there were fewer material goods then, and people made good use of nature and felt no need for all the gadgets that many today feel they cannot live without. I use only a minimum of dishware, and each room has a cupboard or closet for storage, so the rooms are free of clutter. As for what people ate, judging from the kitchen tools left behind, their diet consisted of dried, salted or fermented foods, accompanied by rice. Many of those tools were for processing and preserving rice, vegetables and legumes. I can obtain many foods nearby: bamboo shoots in spring, ume Japanese apricots during the rainy season, vegetables from the kitchen garden in summer, persimmons in autumn, and citron in winter. Many of those foods, which people grew for themselves, are considered luxuries now. A well provided water, which even today springs plentiful. The water stays at 14 degrees centigrade year-round; in winter, it feels positively warm. All the water I use, for cooking, bathing and laundry, comes from the well.

The old-fashioned cooking stove in the kitchen is still usable. I collect logs from small trees, boil water I have drawn from the well to make miso soup, and cook rice, all on that cooking stove. The ordinary meals of yesterday are something few people experience now, and I occasionally host groups gathered to eat the meals we prepare together on that stove. In winter, it’s bitterly cold, and the cold air that comes in through the cracks makes impossible to heat the whole house. If I close off one room to heat (or cool in summer), air doesn’t circulate well and temperature and humidity fluctuate. That’s not good for the house, as it can damage fittings, encourage mold and cause the whole structure to warp and decay. Luckily there’s no condensation on the windows. To keep warm in winter, I bundle up, move around or warm my toes or fingertips, but the cold is something one just has to get used to. At night, I warm my futon before going to sleep, but when I wake up in the morning, I’m sure that the indoor temperature is the same as outdoors. I rarely come down with a cold, though, so this simple lifestyle may be helping.

The house is hot in summer and cold in winter, there are insects everywhere, and I have to fix the roof every time there’s a leak. Living in this house is almost like living outdoors throughout the year, but I enjoy “chatting” with the house. Living like people did 100 years ago means forgoing modern conveniences and going along with what nature dictates. That helps me feel its blessings all the more keenly, and I enjoy living life in a more human way; something that has been forgotten in recent times.