Little Lights

Japanese Traditional Timber Frame Home

Since I came to Japan a year and a half ago, I have been working with Somacousha 杣耕社, a company that exclusively builds traditional Japanese structures. In Japan smaller structures like houses are typically prepared in the shop before bringing all the materials and parts to the site and then assembling or raising the building. Last year around this time we started the raising for house/bakery called Little Lights, and I thought I would share a bit about that project.

My apologies as there are huge gaps in the timeline of photos that follows. My current living situation requires me to be in Tokyo every other month, so I missed out on every other month over the course of this project.

I started helping out on this project towards the end of the shop-work phase of things. Prior to my arrival the layout and most of the joinery had already been cut, but I was able to help out with a few remaining tasks such as handplaning the posts and beams, and also scribing posts to beams. The beams below were all hewn with masakari (鉞) and chouna (チョウナ) (Japanese axe and adze). My friend Jon did all the hewing work, which took a couple of months to complete; not an easy task. To make a clean connection between the hewn beams and posts, each post has to be scribed to fit the shape of the beam. The following photos show a bit of that process.

Jon did some really beautiful chouna work on these beams.

Here we are in the process of cutting a splicing joint on one of the hewn beams. There were a series of these joints to cut and you can see the assembled joinery further down in this post. These were some of the last bits of joinery that needed to be cut prior to the raising.

Cutting a massive joint requires massive saws. The bigger of the two pictured below has a 415mm diameter blade (around 16.25 inches).

Of course you also need massive chisels for joinery like this too.

Here I’m using a portable mortiser, that clamps onto the beam, to cut mortises for pegs that secure the tenons from the previously scribed posts. In Japan pegged mortise and tenon joints are typically drawbored, ensuring that the post and beam connection is really nice and tight. These portable mortisers (kakunomi – 角ノミ) are amazing for this kind of work. The machine below is the largest size that I’m aware of but is unfortunately not made anymore due to lack of demand.

Below are some more beams in the cutout phase of things. Notice the three mortisers. Typical joinery will involve mortises of a variety of sizes, so having multiple machines with a different size chisel in each saves a lot of time.

Last but not least was hand planing. We were at this for days, but I have no complaints about that. There’s really nothing more enjoyable than planing hinoki. Aside from the beams that were hewn and finished with the adze, any visible structure was handplaned, with the goal being to have as clean a surface as possible. (Meaning no torn-out grain, especially around knots)

Planing is always a learning experience.

Now for some photos from the raising. I need to follow my buddy Jason’s lead, and get a gopro for recording raisings like this. Aside from break-time, there is just no time for pictures. We had help from a few other carpenters, making 9 or 10 of us total, and raised the structure of the house, including the roof decking/boards, in 6 days. All of the handplaned surfaces have been wrapped in paper.

I don’t know what timber frame raisings are like in other cultures, but here in Japan it is an intense whirlwind of activity (despite the tranquil scene in the above photos). The first time I went to a raising I was pretty stressed out, especially given that my Japanese was really bad. It’s like a starting gun fires at 7 or 8 am and everyone just starts running around throwing together a house at a pace that I didn’t know was possible. Aside from break-time and lunch it’s like this day after day, until the structure is done, usually culminating with the roof. On the last day of the Little Lights raising I was on the roof passing boards to a couple of carpenters who are probably 10-15 years older than me, and I couldn’t feed them boards fast enough, I was literally running to deliver materials to them as they nailed the boards down. It was also hot as can be, around 31 celcius (90 F), and I remember thinking why are these guys working so hard! (since then my lazy American attitude has slowly come to terms with a new reality)

We had a full scaffold, and for 3 days a crane to assist with delivery of the heavy structural members. It’s hard to imagine doing this work without a crane.

The following photo shows the scribed posts and beam connections from the beginning of this post.

Below you can see how the previously pictured splicing joint looks when assembled.

Traditional structures often have a ceremony on the day that the ridge beam is placed, where a Shinto priest or the master carpenter prays for the longevity of the house and the safety of the household. Below is an altar of sorts, from the ceremony for this project, including a chouna (adze), capenters square, and inkpot and pen; traditional tools that are necessary for the construction of a house.

Along with the ceremony was a community appreciation event. The owners of the house run a bakery and they tossed out sweet breads and other treats to the neighbors in a show of gratitude for being welcomed into the community.

This is where things take a fast forward. Soon after the raising I returned home to my wife in Tokyo for a month or so. When I returned to the project things had really moved along. The walls of the house were all filled in with natural earthen plaster; a process that takes some time since there are typically at least three layers of plaster work. I really fell in love with earthen plaster walls after this project. Plaster is so much more interesting than sheetrock! It’s also sustainable, helps to regulate moisture, a great thermal mass for keeping warm in winter/cool in summer, and has so much more visual interest! It’s definitely more labor intensive and requires skill to do well, but the father/son pair who did the plaster work for this project really made it look easy. Unfortunately I don’t have any video or images of them at work, but you can see the results of their work below.

In the photo below you can see both the first rough layer (arakabe – 荒壁), and the middle layer (nakanuri – 中塗り). This project was fun because the clients decided to have portions of the house finished with different stages of plaster work. So one room had exposed arakabe, while the next room over was taken to a finished layer of clean white plaster (shikkui – 漆喰). Meanwhile the second floor had areas of both visible nakanuri and shikkui plaster work.

The photos above and below both show the walls after the naka-nuri (middle layer of plaster) was applied, but below you can see how much the color changes as the water in the plaster gradually evaporates.

And below is the same wall after the final layer of shikkui (white plaster) was applied.

The final photos below are all taken from the second floor living space, after all the plaster has been finished. There’s really nothing like the look of a timber frame house with exposed posts and beams and plaster walls.

The exposed roof structure is also amazing. Some little kid is going to have a great time running around up there some day.

Well I hope you enjoyed this tour of Little Lights. I feel incredibly fortunate to have found my way to working with people who do this kind of work. We’ve been working on some other really interesting Japanese timber framing projects as well, and I hope to post about those in the near future. Thanks for reading.