<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

<p>This article expands and complicates the literature on “craft” by examining the seeming anomaly of a <italic>craft community</italic> dominating a significant production sector within an advanced industrial economy, and despite the existence of cheaper high-tech and labor-saving alternatives. Japanese house-carpenters, organized into very small firms with very local markets, and producing “traditional” house-frames in small batches, have long held prefabrication and other alternatives at bay through a process of <italic>conservative innovation</italic>. The primary goal of their innovative process has been the protection and continuance of house-carpentry as a relevant and marketable skill, and of its practitioners as a self-sustaining community. This craft is not an exemplar of sustainability in other ways, however, despite its association with the traditional and organic. Its house-products have unnaturally short lives given Japanese methods of accounting for property value, and its raw material, foreign-sourced old-growth forests, are increasingly subject to global conservation efforts.</p>
</abstract>

This article expands and complicates the literature on “craft” by examining the seeming anomaly of a craft community dominating a significant production sector within an advanced industrial economy, and despite the existence of cheaper high-tech and labor-saving alternatives. Japanese house-carpenters, organized into very small firms with very local markets, and producing “traditional” house-frames in small batches, have long held prefabrication and other alternatives at bay through a process of conservative innovation. The primary goal of their innovative process has been the protection and continuance of house-carpentry as a relevant and marketable skill, and of its practitioners as a self-sustaining community. This craft is not an exemplar of sustainability in other ways, however, despite its association with the traditional and organic. Its house-products have unnaturally short lives given Japanese methods of accounting for property value, and its raw material, foreign-sourced old-growth forests, are increasingly subject to global conservation efforts.

“The Way We Build”: Craft, Innovation, and Sustainability in Japanese House-Carpentry

Dept. of History and Asia Research Institute

HoST - Journal  of History of Science and Technology

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

This article expands and complicates the literature on “craft” by examining the seeming anomaly of a craft community dominating a significant production sector...

“The Way We Build”: Craft, Innovation, and Sustainability in Japanese House-Carpentry

Published Online: Dec 14, 2021

Page range: 63 - 87

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/host-2021-0013

Keywords
craft, Japanese carpenter/carpentry, prefabrication, house-building, Japanese house

© 2021 Gregory Clancey, published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

“The Way We Build”: Craft, Innovation, and Sustainability in Japanese House-Carpentry

Published Online: Dec 14, 2021

Page range: 63 - 87

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/host-2021-0013

Keywordscraft, Japanese carpenter/carpentry, prefabrication, house-building, Japanese house

© 2021 Gregory Clancey, published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Keywords
craft, Japanese carpenter/carpentry, prefabrication, house-building, Japanese house