Traditional Japanese Timber Home Construction

[hbmcc]

From design to the point of move in, watch traditional construction....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HMa5tof...7%E9%A4%A8

[stav]

Great video. I really appreciate the work the Japanese put into their woodworking.

[John Clifford]

I don’t often have patience to watch a YouTube video for very long but this could have been 2 or 3 times longer and I wouldn’t have gotten tired of watching it. Thanks for posting this.

[Howard Pollack]

This is a wonderful video, to my mind well worth the time watching it. That is, if you're needing/wanting inspiration to do better work...- Howard

[Ricky]

I've been hooked on Japanese woodworking and timberframe channels. 
I somehow doubt the average Japanese home build involves this much craftsmanship, timber quality and detail.
But maybe I'm wrong.

[WoodCzech]

It's not a house, it's a piece of art.  Too bad all that beautiful carpentry work is covered up at the end.

[hbmcc]

It's not a house, it's a piece of art.  Too bad all that beautiful carpentry work is covered up at the end.

I've been hooked on Japanese woodworking and timberframe channels. 

I somehow doubt the average Japanese home build involves this much craftsmanship, timber quality and detail.
But maybe I'm wrong. ~ Ricky

My thought exactly regarding the coverup. It's probably what separates private abode from public temple. Unlike today's ostentation and Gross McMansion, this seemed to be a special effort to fit into a neighborhood discretely and, record a very traditional construction process. I can intellectually appreciate the architecture and construction process, but find "timber" home building far too much overkill and very wasteful. Think of the homes destroyed in the occasional fires that raced through Japanese cities pre-WWII. 

[AHill]

The upside is these houses last a LONG time. The downside is they are made out of wood, and wood is vulnerable to fire. When I was a kid (4th-6th grade), I lived at Misawa Air Base in northern Japan. We had a major earthquake when I lived there that damaged a lot of the homes on base. Base housing looked a lot like Western building practices. The Japanese homes off base mostly all survived the earthquake (8.2 on the Richter scale), but the earthquake broke a natural gas line and started a major fire than consumed wood homes in a matter of minutes. The fire destroyed 2 or 3 city blocks before it was controlled. It pretty much leveled that area. Now, this was in the late 60's, so I'm sure there are new codes that mitigate fire damage. I wonder if covering up those timbers had more to do with fire prevention and building codes than aesthetics.