Guest speakers at Minka Summit 2022

Special guest and keynote speaker

Long respected within the kominka community, Alex Kerr is a lifelong advocate of minka preservation and rural community revitalization. His own 300-year-old minka in the Iya Valley, Chiiori, is one of the best-known in all of Japan, and his revitalization efforts in Iya, rooted in sustainable tourism and living in harmony with nature serve as a model for other struggling rural villages.

After living in Japan during the mid-1960s, when his naval officer father was stationed in Yokohama, Kerr returned to Japan periodically, discovering the Iya Valley in 1971 and purchasing what would become Chiiori in 1973. He moved to Japan full-time in 1977.

Since Chiiori, Kerr has restored dozens of rural houses throughout Japan. His book Lost Japan (1993) was awarded the Shincho Gakugei Literature Prize for best non-fiction. His subsequent works include Dogs and Demons (2002) and Another Kyoto (with Kathy Arlyn Sokol, 2016).

A Minka Personal Journey

After moving to Japan in 2017 with his wife and two small children, Jaya and Chihiro Thursfield purchased an abandoned farmhouse built in the 1980s by a local miyadaiku (temple carpenter) in Chihiro’s hometown in southern Ibaraki.

Starting with no experience owning or renovating a home, Thursfield has been documenting the process of buying in public auction, clearing the land, and renovating the house as “Tokyo Llama” on YouTube since 2019. The ongoing renovation process has combined working with an architect, hiring carpenters, and plenty of DIY. Thursfield’s YouTube channel has almost 200,000 subscribers and over 15 million views to date.

Traditional and Sustainable Architecture

Originally from New Orleans, Azby Brown has lived in Japan since 1985. A widely published author and authority on Japanese architecture, design, and environment, his groundbreaking writings on traditional Japanese carpentry, compact housing, and traditional sustainable practices of Japan have brought these fields to the awareness of Western designers and the public.

In addition to The Genius of Japanese Carpentry, he has written Small Spaces (1993), The Japanese Dream House (2001), The Very Small Home (2005), and Just Enough: Lessons in LivingGgreen fromTraditional Japan (2010). He retired in 2017 from the Kanazawa Institute of Technology, where he founded the Future Design Institute, and is currently on the sculpture faculty of Musashino Art University in Tokyo.

The slow art of rebuilding Japanese craft businesses

As the first foreign CEO (代表取締役) of a Japanese sake brewery in Japanese history, Marcus is focused on rebuilding craft businesses as well as championing the traditional ways of Japan. Born in New York City to an Italian immigrant family in the food & beverage industry, Marcus gave up restaurant management for a career on Wall Street, working for companies such as Deloitte & Touche, American Express, and JPMorgan. His career quickly took him to Asia where he has lived across the region specializing in investment banking and strategic consulting.

This depth of experience enabled Marcus to refine his business knowledge and bring it back to his true passion – the craft food industry. He discovered Daimon Brewery in early 2017 and soon acquired it, turning it into one of the fastest growing sake breweries in the Kansai region. When not building businesses, Marcus and his team focus on acquiring, designing, and renovating traditional machiya and kominka in the region.

Sustainability & Tourism

Joy Jarman-Walsh (JJ Walsh) is a sustainability-focused consultant and content creator based in Hiroshima. Originally from Hawaii, she co-founded GetHiroshima in 1999 and InboundAmbassador in 2019. Since early 2020, Joy has been the host and producer of Seeking Sustainability Live (SSL), a talk show & podcast of interviews with "Good People Doing Great Things in Japan." Many of the most popular episodes focus on the value of traditional Japanese buildings, design, and the inspiration from many kominka projects across Japan.

Akiya Banks: What they are and how they work

Born in Osaka and raised across Japan from Kyushu to Hokkaido, including small villages in both Japan and Canada, Kawata worked as a representative of the Kyotamba government Akiya Bank. She is currently a Relocation Consultant with the NPO Small Farmers/Kyoto, providing online classes and workshops showing how to find rural houses and build traditional lifestyles, how to build trust with locals, and so forth.

Kawata-san’s presentation offered essential “How-To” information for those just getting started.

Organic & Sustainable Farming, Community Relations

In ten short years, Chuck Kayser went from having zero farming experience to becoming one of Japan’s best-known organic farming advocates. He’s based in the Takashima region of Shiga Prefecture.

Encouraged by local villagers, Kayser now farms multiple plots of land brimming with sustainable agriculture on once fallow fields that, in turn, helps to revitalize his adopted inaka (rural) community. His Midori Farm offers frequent workshops and hands-on experiences, with Kayser and others passing on their invaluable knowledge.

Minka Architecture & Traditional Carpentry

Kohei Yamamoto is a 1st class licensed architect and carpenter. He was initially passionate about creating furniture but on the advice of his professor, took a job as a Japanese temple and shrine carpenter. For eight years, he worked on some of the most famous temples and shrines in Japan, including Important Cultural Heritage sites such as the Grand Shrine at Izumo.

His experiences with buildings that have stood the test of time made him interested in why present-day homes aren’t given much thought during planning and construction. He also fell in love with the mark that carpenters in the past left using traditional methods of sawing, milling, and finishing. In 2012 he was given the opportunity to build a new home in Fukuyama city. He accepted the challenge and built one of the first traditional ishibatate homes (see Structure) in the area since the end WWII.

His work includes everything from finely-planed to adze and axe finishes used in rough milling. Thus began his company Somakousha. The character for Soma (杣) means traditional sawing/milling. The character for Ko (耕) means to cultivate. (The final character Sha [社] is a typical character meaning company.)

Minka Architecture & Traditional Carpentry

Jonathan Stollenmeyer is an Okayama-based traditional architect. A 2005 graduate of the University of Cincinnati DAAP architecture program, he began his career at Traditional Boatworks in New Hampshire, learning the craft and building a traditional Norwegian Snekke from start to finish.

After exploring the architecture of Japan, Mexico, Switzerland, and Argentina, and after more than a year living in a Zen monastery in Kentucky, he moved to Japan in 2009 to pursue his dream of working with Japanese carpenters, eventually joining Nakamura Sotoji Komuten in 2010 on projects in the sukiya (teahouse) style.

Inspired by Kohei Yamamoto’s work in Okayama Prefecture and the ishibatate carpentry style (wooden posts scribed into stones), in 2013 he began work at Somakousha, learning the ishibatate framing style under the tutelage of Mr. Yamamoto. Presently, Jon is leading private home, teahouse, and restaurant projects in Japan and abroad.

Traditional Plastering & Sustainable Building

A plasterer, researcher, and educator specializing in natural building materials and sustainable systems such as natural plasters and energy efficiency, Holzhueter is a graduate of the Kyoto Plastering Institute and the first westerner in Japan to pass the level one Japanese National Plastering Exam. He also has a PhD in Bioresource Sciences from Nihon University where he researched the hygrothermal environment of strawbale walls and building practices to control moisture. He is currently the president of the Japan Straw Bale House Research Association.

In 2017, Holzhueter founded Permaculture Center Kamimomi, a permaculture demonstration and education site in Okayama, Japan dedicated to reviving Satoyama through sustainable agriculture, natural building, and renewable energy.

A Minka Personal Journey

Co-founder of Okuni: Japan Unbound, a travel company specializing in “Hidden Japan,” Lauren Scharf has lived in Japan off and on since 1990, mostly in the Kanazawa area. In late 2015, rather unexpectedly, she and her husband, a Scottish master joiner and jack of all trades, found themselves the owners of a 1907 kominka in Hakui on the Noto Peninsula.

In her talk, Scharf took us through the process of self-renovating, a lengthy but ultimately rewarding process. Their efforts include the desire for sustainability while finding the balance between preserving the original minka architecture and traditional lifestyle with modern applications to make life that little bit more comfortable.

Community Relations panel member

Born in 1955 in California, Rebecca later migrated with her family to Australia. There she studied Japanese which lead her to Kyoto in 1978 where she enrolled at Otani University, simultaneously attending the Urasenke Tea School for foreigners. She graduated with a Master of Arts in Buddhist Studies in 1981, then married Toshiro Otowa, the 19th generation living in a large farmhouse in neighboring Shiga Prefecture. She has lived there for 36 years, raising two boys and becoming an active member of the community. Rebecca has written and illustrated three books, all available on Amazon. She also paints, grows vegetables, and is happy doing any kind of handwork.

Community Relations panel member

A forest bathing and nature guide who came to Japan for university ten years ago, Lee Xian Jie has guided hundreds of tourists on nature-themed journeys in Kyoto City. He moved to a 120-year-old minka surrounded by mountains of sugi forests in Ryujinmura, Wakayama, in April 2020. In addition to restoring the floors of the kayabuki (thatched roof) farmhouse in which he now lives with the help of local carpenters, he will also be opening a Singapore curry and meat skewer restaurant in an adjacent minka in July 2022. The ingredients will be sourced primarily from local farmers practicing no-pesticide, no-chemical fertilizer farming in the surrounding village.

Community Relations panel member

Having first encountered Japanese culture onboard a fisheries vessel off the coast of Alaska in 1986, Shelley spent the next 16 years making her way to Japan by way of China. Finally arriving on a post-doctoral fellowship, she purchased a kominka in the Sasama area of Shizuoka Prefecture in 2005 and used it as her base for international fisheries assignments until 2019. Returning to Japan full-time just before the outbreak of the COVID pandemic, and ready for more renovation, she purchased the abandoned mansion of the historic Sasama chieftains and has been restoring it to its former glory. The Sasu·Ichi project relies heavily on input and cooperation from Sasama villagers and has been documented in several national newspaper and television spots.